VISION
The Adopt-A-Block program is designed to train churches in fulfilling the Great Commission through impacting strategic areas of their city by consistently building relationships through servanthood and networking.
MISSION
Our mission is to continually enlarge and develop the Adopt-A-Block program in the Cleveland area and to inspire churches to impact the community by building the body of Christ with the principles of God’s Love and Heart found in Adopt-A-Block.
PHASE I. Establish friendly relationships with the community through servvanthood and networking.
PHASE II. Connect the community with the Body of Christ for the purpose of discipleship and developing a healthy relationship with God to lead people in their God-given destiny.
PHASE III. Educate the community through vocational training and work programs for the purpose of providing them a better opportunity to enhance their economic position and living situation.
HOW TO BUILD AN ADOPT A BLOCK:
STRATEGY:
The Adopt-A-Block is built on teams of 4 to 6 people adopting one area of the city consisting of 20 to 30 different doors or homes. This will be done on a street, city block, apartment building, housing estates, etc., as long as it consists of knocking on the doors of 20 to 30 different families. In some areas a team can accomplish 2 or3 blocks alone depending on the number of families, and in other areas it will take 2 or 3 teams to accomplish one block.
The strategy is for the team to knock on the same doors every Saturday morning. Instead of trying to reach the entire city, you become faithful to one area. This builds relationships that lead to salvation and discipleship
The mission of the team then becomes simple, build relationships. I have heard it said many times that 95% of the average church consists of people brought to church through some form of relationship; relationship building ministry must be our focus. Most people have been hardened to traditional evangelism and preaching. They need someone to serve them. It is the Old cliché; people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.
This makes the approach very important. When we knock on a door for the first time, we say “Hello, we are from Adopt-A-Block and we are one of the many churches adopting the city of Cleveland. Is there anything we can do to make your life a little easier?” We offer work ranging from mowing yards, painting houses, cleaning, and prayer along with many other forms of service.
The serving is what breaks through their hardened hearts and prepares the ground for the seed of the Gospel. As you become faithful every Saturday morning, the people begin to trust you. This is a long process. People do not open up immediately. There may be doors slammed in our faces initially. But as our faithfulness begins to show, people begin to open up their lives to us.
The program is simple. Our workers meet at 10:30AM for thirty minutes of prayer, worship, encouragement and announcements and food. You do not want to exhaust them before they hit the streets, so keep it quick and fun, but full of God’s Power. Then at 11:30 AM we hit our blocks for anywhere from 2 to 3 hours. It is very important that we do our best to knock on every door each week. When we get into the habit of missing doors we are limiting ourselves to the possibility of seeing miracles.
If a team has a major task, the team will finish visiting first, and come back in the afternoon or later in the week to finish the task. All tasks must be finished or begun within 7 days. If it is a small task, we will leave a couple people to work on it, as the rest of the team continues knocking on doors and building relationships. Try to gather new information every week. Learn the family’s names and write them down in a journal. Every Block should have its’ own journal to gather information such as : names, birthdays, number of children, addresses, phone numbers and needs for prayer requests, answered prayers, etc. This is also a great way of collecting the testimonies to share with your church and supporters. It is important to write down all of the projects they request if they cannot be done when you are there. Always review the journal so you never leave anything undone. Pray continually for your families and learn their information. Once they open up to you we then suggest a Bible Study on an alternative day or evening in one of the homes on the block. Bringing refreshments of some sort is a must. Some have gone as far as to bring dinner for the group each week. This has proven affective. Adopt-A-Block is for the whole man, body, soul, and spirit.
KEYS:
The Two Foundation Stones:
I have discovered that consistency and relationship building are two of the most important principles of Adopt-A-Block and many other ministries. If you have consistency, but are not building relationships, your workers become unfaithful. They develop the attitude that I have never met those people, so if I miss a week it will not hurt the ministry.
If you try to build relationships but have no consistency, people feel God will only show up when it is convenient. This produces negative feelings towards God. Once or twice a month ministry is not done for the people, but for ourselves to feel like we have done our duty as Christians. It does not produce loyal or long-term fruit.
IF Adopt-A-Block is to work these foundations stones must be in place. It must be done every week and too the same people.
JOY
The world does not need anything else to make them feel more miserable than they already are. We cannot go to our community with a frown. They need joy. To be effective, we must learn to laugh and smile. Preparing the heart of your worker is the most important principle you can learn. Preach Joy every Saturday morning before your workers go out.
CANDY
I am always joking that candy is the key to the anointing. But there is a lot of truth in that statement. People open up quickly to candy. Give candy to everyone, young and old and watch them respond more quickly.
TRASH BAGS
It is good to always be seen serving. Picking up trash is great way to make a visible statement that we are there to serve.
SATURDAY GIVEAWAYS
It is fun to bring different things to the door every week. Give away anything from coffee mugs, light bulbs, soda, etc. Sometimes a little thing to let people know you are thinking about them and love them can do wonders.
INFORMATIONAL JOURNALS
You need to gather and collect new information very week to be posted in your information journal. Use this journal to keep track to family names, number of people in each home, birthday, prayer request, praise purports, etc. Also write down each major project done for the family, and if it is not possible to start while you are at the home, use the journal as a reminder of what needs to be done. Also have your weekly checklist to keep yourself accountable of what needs to be done each week.
DEVELOPING NEW MINISTRIES:
Visiting many churches around the world, I often found the same problems, Ministries that are not relevant. So what can we do to insure the ministries we build and develop are relevant to the needs of the community? The answer I believe is found in Adopt-A-Block. When you teach your leaders and members to visit and serve the community on a regular basis, they begin to see the real needs of the people in your city. Without first seeing the needs, you limit yourself to the miracle potential of God in your church. When Jesus healed the blind man in John chapter nine, the words He Saw occurred first. Jesus put himself in a situation where a miracle could occur. When your consume yourself with the community around you are able to find the real needs and build relevant ministries to meet those needs. This is how we started a majority of the ministries in our church in Los Angeles. We discovered hungry people, so we built a food ministry. We discovered people who needed clothes, so we started a clothing ministry. You must realize people will not show you their needs until they trust you. This is why consistency is so important. Going every week, proving yourself to the people, is what opens their heart to showing you their real needs. This is how we developed our ministry to people suffering from the AIDS virus. It did not happen the first week, or month. It took time building relationships until they trusted us enough to share what they were dealing with. And as soon as we find a need there is a new ministry to build.
CREATING BIG EVENTS:
Adopt-A-Block by itself can become very monotonous and tiring. To keep the excitement alive among your team, Big Events become essential. Big events should be done every 6 to 8 weeks. This keeps the block teams focused and excited about their mission in the community. Big events give people something to look forward to and something to create a greater passion in their Saturday morning work.
What is a Big Event? A big event is used to gather large crowds to the church building. There is an invisible barrier around every church and people are scared to cross the line because they do not know what the church really is. Our job is to get them to cross the line in a non-threatening way. Using a big event to draw people is the key. Big events must be celebrations. They are intended to be fun and provide an atmosphere of love at your church. When people feel comfortable at your church it is easier for them to begin attending services once they realize the church is not a threat, but friend. This is what the Adopt-A-Block and Big Events create. Another focus of big events is evangelism. It is a great opportunity to see the lost brought to Christ. A system that woks great is to throw a great party on Saturday and host an evangelistic event or drama on Sunday. When you throw this one-two punch, with the foundation of Adopt-A-Block, you begin to see results quickly.
IDEAS:
National Holidays are key times for big events. People are already moving into a celebration attitude and you can create the location for them. Christmas is probably the greatest day to capitalize on. You can do many things from a Christmas play or musical, dinner, present-giveaway for the children, and may other things. You can turn the church into the place for the city to celebrate, and they will be drawn into the presence of God that way. Easter is also a great event. The 4th of July, Cinco de Mayo, Thanksgiving, and many other holidays can be used. You can create your own holiday or event. We created a Back-to-School celebration day where we have a huge Sunday giving away school supplies for all the childern in the community. You can create celebrations that are built to serve the community. My friends in England go out one Saturday morning and do their regular Adopt-A-Block and tell the people today from 1 to 4 pm we will be ironing clothes and shining shoes at the church. There will be free coffee and sandwiches provided, so if you need and clothes or shoes done, stop by. My friends in Sweden have Saturdays where the men in the church bring their automotive tools to the church and when it is time to change the snow tires into summer tires they have made it a celebration day. Big events can be picnics, barbecues, parties, sport events, plays, musical, or anything you can create that is fun, exciting, or serving needs. What happens during big events is many people visit the church. Now the following week not all the people from the big event will be back, but you will keep some of them. So with every big event you are adding people to the church, and you will begin to break barriers you thought were impossible.
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