Committed to Multi-Ethnic Ministry
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Opportunities: What are Your Enabling Factors?
Inventory the opportunities and resources within your church and community
A - Resources in your church or community (people, skills, money, time, etc)
- Who has a vision for Hispanic outreach or ministry? Who is praying about it?
- Start a pray-and-plan team to brainstorm about ministry opportunities.
- Ask your pastor and elders and other church leaders to pray with you.
- Who has God brought to your church who can speak Spanish or teach English?
- Will they teach some key Spanish phrases to others in your church?
- Could they or others help teach English as a second language?
- Who has experience in cross-cultural ministry? How can they help?
- Find out what skills or resources they can provide.
- Follow up on other contacts they recommend.
- What specific resources are available or can be obtained? How & when?
- Make a list of your resource assets. Pray about how to use them. People: Skills: Facilities: Money: Other:
B - Needs of Hispanic people in your area (physical, spiritual, etc)
- Organizations, agencies or churches working with Hispanics.
- Find out who is doing what, and why, and how it is working!
- Observations of people in your church, community, schools, and elsewhere.
- Get as many perspectives as possible to understand the needs!
- Opportunities that your church could uniquely or quickly address.
- Make a list of specific needs that your church could meet soon!
- Practical needs (housing, food, clothing, language, etc)
- Spiritual needs (prayer, counseling, parenting, marriage, etc)
C - Data & information about Hispanic people and needs (statistics, surveys)
- Job prospects and projections www.iowaworkforce.org/
- Whats the job outlook for Hispanics in your area?
- How are Hispanic businesses growing in your area?
- What is the Hispanic income level, and need for assistance?
- What can you learn from area Spanish-language newspapers or radio?
- School enrollment information www.iowa.gov/educate/ & http://nces.ed.gov/
- How are your area schools changing? www.iowa.gov/educate/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=346&Itemid=299
- Population growth and outlook http://data.iowadatacenter.org)
- How will the Hispanic population of your city or county grow?
- What other census or survey data can you reference? http://www.seta.iastate.edu/
- Hispanic population http://data.iowadatacenter.org/datatables/CountyAll/coracehispanic20002005.pdf