It began with conversations, lots of them over a series of months. Each of the dialogues with human-service agencies started off with a question: “Where do you find yourself turning on a regular basis to find someone to help you do something that you can’t, and you keep finding no one there?” Then there was a bold statement, “That’s who we want to help the Church to become.”
Two and one-half years later the Human Needs Crisis Network (HNCN) has become a growing force for empowering the Church in her response to basic human need. An even greater miracle, this network crosses over a dozen denominations and throughout a three county area. The vision? Lives restored. It’s not enough for followers of Jesus to just pay a portion of an electric bill or provide a bag of food and send a person on their way. There should be a greater level of involvement.
An incarnational response to human need understands that the church is the body of Christ. In so being, she must be about life restoration – in this case, lives moved from crisis, to stability and, where possible, to self-sufficiency. The aim should be to come to a point when that individual or family doesn’t have to ask for help any more. That means personal investment and accountability. That’s where HNCN comes in.
HNCN provides churches with:
1. Growing levels of training for this redemptive response,
2. A regularly updated Church Resource Guide to assist them in response and
3. An Internet-accessed database for tracking the responses of other churches and agencies aiding in accountability.
All of these pieces to the Network provide empowerment for the Church to respond in such a way as to express the life-restoring presence of Jesus, as His body should.
See:
www.charlestonoutreach.org
www.charitytracker.net
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