After several months of preparation, we are ready! Now is the time to give ourselves for something bigger than ourselves, for the city... and its children.
Eph 2:10 tells us that "we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." We seek to partner with you and your congregation in these good works on behalf of at-risk children, for their sake and for the glory of God.
Volunteers willing to serve as mentors are needed! Training for mentors is required and available.
Please spread the word and recruit volunteers who will help raise a generation of Whole & Healhy Children. Print the brochures available through the link below. And make these life-changing serving opportunities, and the mentor trainings, part of your announcements in word and in print during services for the next few Sundays. We need your help ... and so do our elementary school kids.
Click Here for information about Mentor Training Dates.
Click Here for brochure and more downloadable resources.
Click Here to register as volunteer (mentor, intercessor...)
Monday, September 8, 2008
We need your help...
Reach out to Dropouts: a short story (2)...
by Suzy Seidel
I attended the CFISD walk this morning. The team at our school (Cy-Fair High School) was very well organized and things were completed rather quickly. It was a great experience on my part and would do it again in a heartbeat. I'm not sure if anyone else from MCF attended b/c there were several school options. I hope Mark Day and Danielle were able to advocate for this through their compassion contact base too. (Randy Schroeder and I were at the same school.)
Thanks for all you do to bring events like this to our attention. Keep them coming!
Have a GREAT weekend!
Suzy
Reach out to Dropouts: a short story...
by Jim Herrington
Everyone in my household participated in the Reach Out to DropOuts walk. It was a very positive experience that reminded me again of the great needs in our city. In one of our visits we met Javier. He is the 20 years old son of Mexican immigrants. They live in a one bed room apartment in the Montrose Community and Javier is zoned to Lamar High School. We visited him on Saturday and he promised to go call the school that day to get re-enrolled.
By the time we got back to Lamar, Javier was there with a friend, getting registered. We felt deeply gratified for this one success. On Sunday, Betty and I decided to go back to Javier's home and give him our telephone number. We wanted to offer encouragement and support for this young man. We had a 20 minute conversation in which we learned that he was out of school, in part because he had gotten in to a fight and was suspended, and in part because, he was having to work to help his parents pay their meager bills. We found Javier to be an engaging, winsom young man. He said, "Everywhere I go to find a job, when they find out I have not graduated, they won't hire me." This seems to have provided motivation for Javier to get back in school.
We plan to stay connected to Javier. We were impressed with him and from the visit on Sunday got a deeper awareness of the many challenges that he faces to finish his degree. We all need encouragement, support and accountability. We offered this to Javier. He took our phone number and gave us his. Soon, I hope to be able to tell you the rest of this story.
Read another story.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
WMBC Partnering with Mission Houston and Shearn Elementary...
by Pastor Gary Long
Willow Meadows Baptist Church
Every now and then an opportunity comes along that is clearly from God. in my estimation, the chance for Willow Meadows Baptist Church to partner with Mission Houston in the adoption of Shearn Elementary is a great opportunity. Through our long-time ministry partner, Mission Houston, we will work with other churches to meet various needs among the students, often mentoring and tutoring and work to beautify the campus of Shearn. This is all under the umbrella of "The Whole and Healthy Children Initiative."
The school's administration, headed by Principal Bill Buck, is excited to have us on campus to get involved by mentoring kids beginning this fall. To take part in that, you simply need to call or visit Shearn and see Ms. Sylvia Healy to complete background checks and be paired with a teacher for the fall. The commitment is one hour per week for the course of the year, and you'll be spending time with two children. Ms. Healy can be reached at 713-2955236 or at shealy@houstonisd.org.
Click here for more information.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Tracking results...
by Jim Herrignton
This weekend, Matt Register of the Gottlieb Foundation, sent me a note from his web site about the importance for non-profits to track results. It reminded me of a conversation more than a year ago when David Weekley gave me a copy of Good to Great in the Social Sectors that promotes the same idea.
When Mission Houston launched in January 1999, we spent an enormous amount of our time building relationships. We had a deep conviction that if the enormous negative social trends of the past 40 years were going to be reversed, it would take the whole body of Christ working strategically in unity across the entire greater Houston area. We knew that there were deep divisions in the Body of Christ – between Evangelicals and Charismatics, Protestants and Catholics, a wide range of culture and language groups, men and women, and urban and suburban congregations.
For six years that was our primary focus, and we had a lot of success in building authentic relationships of trust in many places. (And yes, there is still much work to be done in that arena.)
At some points along the way, different folks said, even if the only thing you are currently doing is building relationships, you need to find a way to track and measure your progress. For a variety of reasons we didn’t do that. Over time that came to haunt us. It resulted in what some in the business world call “crisis in investor confidence.” You might be surprised to know this but most of our funding does not come from congregations, though there are some great congregations that do support our work like Memorial Drive Presbyterian, Calvary Community Church, Cypress Bible Church, Copperfield Baptist Church – just to name a few. The vast majority of our funding comes from individual believers who work in the private sector. Their call for clarity about tracking and measuring things began as a suggestion and grew steadily to heartfelt cry.
And we finally began listening. . .albeit slowly. For our resistance to listening we repented about a year ago. We have spent the last year clarifying and refining our measures for success. Ultimately we are after the spiritual and social transformation of the city. Those measures are very long term and include things like impact on the number of people coming to faith in Christ, decline in the poverty rate (especially among the children in our city), the divorce rate, and things like that. But in the Whole and Healthy Children Initiative, we believe that mobilizing the Body of Christ around children in our educational systems and tracking progress there will make a significant impact on the long term measures. So in the Whole and Healthy Children Initiative, we are tracking these things.
1. The number of communities that launch an initiative. Our goal is to launch in at least five to six communities in school year 2007/2008 and to increase that every year until we have an initiative in all 45 communities across the greater Houston area.
2. In each community where an initiative is in place our goal is to have:
a. 100 mentors for 100 children in three schools with high percentages of at risk kids.
b. 100 intercessors praying for each of the mentors and child they are mentoring.
c. An annual campus beautification project in each school.
d. $10,000 raised from the private sector for the faculty and administration of each school.\
Are these the right measures? Time will tell. But they are the measures to which we believe the Lord has led us and for which we are going to be accountable. Our Board has agreed to these measures. Our staff is deeply committed to being accountable for these measures. We will report to you on a regular basis about progress being made.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Adoption Day for Missouri City – Title One School –
For several months, the CSA 2 (Missouri City) team has been praying about the elementary “Title 1” school they should adopt. Also, after learning about last year’s Compassion Project held in conjunction with the Global Day of Prayer 2007 at another school, the newly hired Campus Improvement Specialist at Ridgemont Elementary contacted that project coordinator seeking help. At the March meeting, a map of the area showing the location of “Title 1” schools was discussed and prayed over. Suddenly a Spiritual connection was made!... The Lord IS building relationships between the community and the school; and our schools AND our community are being TRANSFORMED!! Praise God!
