Fanning the flames: grants available for innovative ministry

Do you have an innovative idea for starting something new to reach your community? Do you have a heart for the lost and a passion for the Gospel? Do you have an idea and a person or two willing to walk with you, but you need a little financial spark and coaching to get things going? If the answer is YES, the South Georgia Conference Congregational Development Team would love to come beside you and spark that idea to life with Spark Grant funding!  
 
New leaders are doing new things to reach new people all around the conference. There are tiny sparks of hope and life around SGA that are causing others to catch a vision for what could be in their area as well. BBQ Church is happening twice a month to encourage fellowship and connection. Game Church is telling Jesus stories in a way a gamer can understand. Ump Church is meeting the spiritual needs of baseball and softball umpires who are busy on the weekends and can’t get to church.  There are home churches and new church starts in various stages of development, and new things are popping up all over the place. 
 
How are these leaders doing so many new things in the face of limited resources? What can the rest of us learn from what they are doing? 
 
Here are a few things all of these new things have in common: 

• Discipleship focused: The goal of these new things isn’t to grow a church, it’s to grow God’s people. When you grow God’s people, you will develop the church! 
• Passion for the lost: Successful disciple-making comes from a heart to reach those who are unreached. Our desire to see people come to Christ must be bigger than the desire for us to have a comfortable place to worship. 
• Commitment to the calling: Jesus never said the life of a disciple would be comfortable or easy!  As a matter of fact, Jesus compared it to carrying a cross. Starting something new and reaching the unreached is a challenging and unpredictable endeavor.  Remain committed to your calling, no matter where God leads you. 
• Flexible in method, persistent in mission: The way we’ve always done things isn’t working. This means we will need to attempt new methods to reach people with the gospel and introduce them to Jesus. Some of the things we attempt will succeed and others won’t. We must be persistent in our mission of making disciples but flexible in the way in which we accomplish that mission. If we don’t, we will quickly find ourselves more committed to the method than the mission. 
• Think differently: If you are committed to reaching people no church is reaching you’ve got to think differently than the way other church leaders are thinking. The same thinking will not produce different results. Read things that are challenging to your mindset and point of view. Learn, grow, and stretch in your understanding of what the church can be. 
• Willingness to get messy: “If you’re not sweating, you’re not serving.” While serving can get us physically messy, more importantly we should also be willing to get emotionally and relationally messy. People who are far from God often find themselves in messy and sticky situations they think will disqualify them from God’s grace. Walk with them in their mess. Be Jesus to them as you listen without rescuing or solving their problem for them.  
• Gospel-focused, prayer-soaked: Why should we expend all this energy starting new faith communities and helping people become disciples?  It’s not to “save our church,” it’s to share the good news of the Gospel and respond to the saving work God has done in us.  If Jesus isn’t the focus and prayer isn’t a priority, the new things we create will crumble like sand. We want to build on the rock, on a foundation of faith, truth, love, and the joy of being His children.  

To learn more about the Spark Grants, visit www.sgaumc.org/ministryproposal1. The Congregational Development Team looks forward to seeing all God will ignite around South Georgia now and in the future. Let’s fan the flame together! Questions? Contact Anne Bosarge at abosarge@sgaumc.com.