Advancing sustainable solutions to material poverty through church missions.
The North American Church is losing ground in attendance, influence, credibility and virtually every other category that really matters. In this day and age, many see the church as the hope of the world only as it “proves” itself in practical ways that touch the everyday needs of everyday people. But that’s not a cry for more traditional forms of charity or the missionary model of the past 200 years. Instead, thoughtful people, from Millennials to Boomers, are looking for churches that have moved from simply doing good things to solving real problems in lasting ways. Churches that invest in this kind of mission work become more helpful in lifting people out of poverty and better partners to ministries on the frontlines. They also become more relevant and credible to their community, more fulfilling to both pastor and people, and more appealing to those on the margins looking for a reason to attend a church.
Our mission is to help churches reframe their missions and charitable work around sustainable solutions and create room for business-minded people who can help that happen. Our annual SATtalks and other resources highlight some of the most innovative churches and faith-based ministries around the world working to move missions in this direction. We do this because the Church needs the stories of early pioneers and innovators to inspire and help us see what could be!
Tom Bassford, Founder/President | Significant Matters & SATtalks
Catalyst for Collaboration and the Common Good | by Tom Bassford
The Church as a catalyst for collaboration is one of the four essential practices of what we call a Missions 3.0 church. Along with the practices of Reframing Expectations, Tackling Outcomes and Cultivating Innovation churches that want to make a lasting impact on their communities have to become a Catalyst for Collaboration. Why? Because no one church can do it alone AND because the Church alone can’t do it. In 2011 Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) introduced the concept of “collective impact” in an article by the same name. It described a form of collaboration that was more [...]
Solving Complex Social Problems with Innovative Sustainable Models | by Dr. Justin Beene
With a background as both a recipient and provider of philanthropic efforts and human services support, I often have wondered how to truly develop the economic capacity and well-being with people on the margins of society. I wrestle with some seemingly contradictory statistics and a puzzling trend in my own community. Specifically, Grand Rapids, Michigan, is consistently rated among the most philanthropic communities in the county1, it also continues to be one of the worst cities in the country for African Americans to live economically.2 Despite all of the supportive efforts that have lauded national recognition, these alone have [...]
Catalyzing Transformational City Movements | by Dr. Randy White
Catalyzing Transformational City Movements is the second chapter in Dr. Randy White and H Spees new book "Out of Nazareth: Christ-Centered Civic Transformation In Unlikely Places" available at Amazon.com. They have made this entire chapter available to us as a whitepaper. Email us at info@significantmatters.com and we will send you the pdf file. For this article we pulled from a section entitled: Faith-Rooted Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurship It was this work that first caught my eye because it demonstrates the need to think differently about how we use our charitable dollars to help people lift themselves out of poverty. It doesn't make [...]
Why I Would Want to Work with the Church Even if I Were an Atheist | by Tom Bassford
I had the opportunity to address a gathering of people at the Kauffman Center a few years back who were all involved in Social Entrepreneurship programs at various Colleges and Universities across the country. We were involved in a project that was spear-headed by a group of churches working with some various folks at UMKC (University of Missouri, Kansas City). I usually speak to church crowds, or at least faith-based crowds but since this was a secular setting with a secular crowd I decided to present a secular value proposition for why the community might want to work with [...]
How Are the Children? | by Nancy Mitchell
Two years ago, one of our Kansas City superintendents addressed a community gathering by saying, “Kasserian Ingera?” He explained that this is the greeting of the Masai community in Kenya. He explained that when one Masai greets another they ask, “How are the children?” The values of Masai culture reflect that their first concern is the next generation. The reply they seek is, “All the children are well.” They do not believe their society is doing well if all of the children are not doing well. So, I ask that question of you, “How are the children in our cities doing?” I believe [...]
What About Millennials and Missions
With so much being said today about millennials and the role they will play in the very near future of the church I was delighted to run across one of the most reasoned and well-written articles I've read in a long time on the subject. It was written by Dr. Wanjiru Gitau and published in Global Missiology , January 2018, entitled; " Millennials, Missions, and Missio Dei: Bridging the Conversation (Part 1)". Dr. Gitau is a research fellow at the Center for Religion and Civic Culture (CRCC) at the University of Southern California (USC), pursuing a multi-year global research project commissioned by [...]
