Creative Collaboratives......

...... you may never have heard about!

Cross-Over Ministry, a health ministry to the poor, is working with several churches and ministries to provide a Lay Health Promoter Program for their communities. The aim of the program is to train community volunteers to teach others about healthy living and disease prevention. Upon successful completion of the 40-hour course, participants earn a certificate and share the information they learn with others in their community. Cooperating churches like Charity Missions International Church use the class as an outreach in the hopes of pointing people to the healing ministry of the Great Physician.

Prison Fellowship and the Commonwealth of VA have been working together to provide a network of churches and mentors for individuals coming out of the state prison system. The result, Operation Turnaround, is building trust between the state and the evangelical community without either compromising their core interests.

CMU has had relationships with four churches on the South Side that are all in the same neighborhood but who hardly knew each other (the Salvation Army, New Life Outreach International, Ramsey Memorial Methodist, and Praise Chapel). They all have a vision to reach out and evangelize their community, but now they are coming together to thing cooperatively about how to have a greater impact by sharing resources, working together, and thinking big. The plan: host a big concert for the kids. Stay tuned for details.

The Richmond Christian Medical and Dental Society (CMDS) has long had a passion for helping pastors build relationships and work together. It recently reached out across racial lines to help the Men’s Bible Study Fellowship of the Baptist General Convention host a men’s conference.

Prayer Walking is a growing movement across the world. Coordinated locally by March for Jesus’ Jeanine Guidry and Pat Allen of First Baptist, other churches and individuals across the city are working together to walk and pray over every block in the city.

The Christian Counseling and Training Center cooperated with Needles Eye Ministries for the second time to host the national Peacemaker Ministries’ conference on how to resolve conflict biblically. Nearly 400 were blessed by the excellent teaching.

Several ministries such as CMDS, the Common Thread: Richmond Intercessors, and CMU partnered together under the leadership of pastors Randy Mathis and Phillip Hunt to host a second Priority One prayer gathering. In March the first such event was held simultaneously at seven different churches. In October, participants gathered in five new geographically and racially diverse sites for prayer and worship, part of which was linked together by the magic of the telephone.

Christ Church Episcopal called CMU recently wondering what it could do with some property someone had donated to the church. CMU found a small church near the property that had a vision for a community center that could help it serve the neighborhood and win people to Christ.

Bride of Life International has been working with businesses and nonprofits brokering tons of goods being offered to ministries locally, and to the needy in Appalachia, Africa, and Russia, and North Carolina. But they have to refuse tons more, however, which points dramatically to the need for a large HQ for CMU, a need mentioned in the our newsletter.