TCBF Missions

What are you willing to get off the couch and do?

youngmike124 — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:39:12 +0000

Whatever you can do,

or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius,

power and magic in it.

–GOETHE

I’ve been reading a lot about community development lately, specifically interested in how congregations might discover new ways to get outside our worship boxes and be more missional. My initiation into this topic was through my participation on the Together For Hope leadership team. This has let me to several books (specifically Practicing Community Development by Donald and Dorris Littrell; The Power of Asset Mapping by Luther Snow; Memories, Hopes and Conversations: Appreciative Inquiry and Congregational Change by Mark Lau Branson). I also was privileged to attend the University of Missouri Community Development Academy a couple of weeks ago.

In the course of my research and reading, two very practical questions arose (specifically from reading through Mike Green’s material):

1. What are the gifts of “hands, heads, and heart” in [your congregation]?

2. What are you willing to get off the couch and do?

Great questions for all of us as individuals and for our organizations, churches, and businesses.

Jennifer in Uganda

youngmike124 — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:23:56 +0000

Jennifer Wilmore is a remarkable young woman whom Tennessee Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was privileged to support this past summer as she joined twelve other students on the Student.Go Millennium Development Goal Special Project Team. This team visited 5 countries on 3 continents observing and working along-side CBF field personnel whose work address directly the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This project was designed in hopes that the participants would return home as advocates for the things they had seen and the people they had met. Jennifer described the trip as “the greatest journey of my life.”
“Our third stop brought us to Uganda, and by the end of our short time there I knew I wanted to come back,” says Jennifer. Her desire and call has come to fruition. She has accepted an opportunity to live and work with CBF Field Personnel in that area for the next several months.
“My primary role will be to oversee and implement development projects. These communities have suffered as a result of conflict and are lacking in many basic necessities, including food security, clean water, basic health care, education on all levels, malaria and HIV/AIDS awareness. I will work closely with local churches and partners and have the opportunity to participate in teaching and training. I expect to join the [CBF Field Personnel] in ministering to groups of refugees, widows and children and to help host volunteers and teams from the United States.”
Be in prayer for Jennifer as she engages this wonderful work. If you would like assist her financially in this endeavor, please send your tax deductable contributions to Tennessee CBF designated for Jennifer Wilmore. You can also follow her work on the her blog: This is the First Day of My Life or on her website: Jen in Uganda. There is also a Facebook group you can join.

Welcome!

youngmike124 — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:52:36 +0000

Welcome to the TCBF Missions Blog. I hope this space can inform you about TCBF Missions as well as facilitate some missional conversations that spark our imaginations as to what we might do to engage our world with the good news of the God’s kingdom. Click some links, ask some questions, engage in coversations…