Within Reach: Partner Resources
Updated: April 1, 2020
At Within Reach, I am beyond encouraged by the rapid response of church families and city leaders to the current COVID-19 crisis. Significant and strategic steps are being taken to extend compassion and care toward those whom we serve on a day-to-day basis in our local churches, businesses, and neighborhoods.
I am also encouraged by the Crisis Response Team that has gathered so that, together, we may provide well-coordinated service and support to our great city. The team is comprised of church, business, and non-profit leaders who are committed to leveraging their leadership influence and capacity for your benefit.
In short, we are here for you and want to come alongside you by providing community-wide updates on crisis-relief efforts and relevant resources to help expand your ability to bring the hope and healing of Jesus to our city streets.
At its best, Within Reach is a collaborative movement and conversation; therefore, as you encounter helpful resources and develop best practices for responding to the current crisis, please share them with us by contacting me directly at jed@withinreach.com.
Finally, my prayer for you. May King Jesus empower you to be a city on a hill, broadcasting the light of his goodness and beauty to every person who calls the Metro home. May he cover you with his supernatural grace, calm your fear with his indescribable peace, and send you out with his uncontainable power to bring hope to our congregations and neighbors.
We are for you,
Jed Mullenix & WR Crisis Response Team
Time-Sensitive Opportunities:
Live Webinars: Within Reach is partnering with Crown College to offer two FREE webinars to help leaders provide care and healing services to their congregations.
Incarnational Caring: A Foundation for Church-Led Trauma MinistryWhen: April 1, 2-3PM. *Dr. Cathy Sigmund will briefly discuss an incarnational approach to counseling, pastoral care, and ministry including applications to church-led trauma ministry in the midst of COVID-19 and other crises. This webinar seeks to raise awareness of basic self-care, grief and loss, and biblically-based trauma counseling strategies. Here's the link to register!
Foundations in Emotion-Focused HealingWhen: April 3, 9-10AM. *Dr. Troy Backhuus will help you understand and address the emotional influence of fear within your church and organization. This training will explore levels of connection, the four-phased emotion process, virtual methods for emotional engagement, and a biblical model for guiding others from fear to peace during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Here's the link to register!
The Global Leadership Network released a series of articles last week to encourage leaders during a season of crisis including, Overcoming Fear & Embracing Both Realityand Hope, which included the article Fear-Less Leadership by Jossy Chacko. Chacko reminds us that, "the more we allow God’s promises and greatness to dominate our thinking, the less fear can grip us."
Coronavirus and the Church: Rick Warren and Ed Stetzer have partnered together to build a treasure trove of information for church leaders about how to prepare for and respond to the effects of the coronavirus in our congregations and communities. For more information, visit this link! One of their best resources is a research-informed, step-by-step, faith-based manual that provides great how-to’s for church leaders on responding to the current crisis. Here’s the manual.
Online Church Resources: Our friends at Stadia Church Planting have released several helpful resources including a 75-minute webinar to help churches create fast and affordable online worship experiences. Here is the link to Stadia.
Church Resources:
Day-to-Day Operations (All Ministries)
The team at Christ Community have put together this all-encompassing snapshot that is guiding all of their ministries’ day-to-day efforts from children’s and student ministries to communication to weekend services and so much more. You can access the plan here! For more information, contact joshual@cccomaha.org.
Dr. Deb Hoffman, Care Pastor at Lifegate Church has put together two tremendously helpful resources for church leaders and their teams.
Working at Home: Tips for Success: Here's the Link!
The Importance of Grief: Here’s the Link!
Mike Hintz @ Lifegate Church & Brent Breshor at Permanent Equity have developed a must-have resource called, Navigating Financial Crisis With Your Church Team, that can help you and your team make necessary adjustments to the financial impact that the current crisis will undoubtedly have on our week-to-week giving. You can find their resource here!
Online Service Tools & Platforms
Our good friends at Calvary Christian Church in Bellevue, host online campuses every week across five campuses. They are willing to share best practices to help your church get online services and programs off the ground for your congregation. For more information, contact Steven Morris at steven.morris@calvary.ch.
Church Staffing
Our friends at Lifegate Church have developed the following resources to guide their staff as they make the transition to portable work environments and make adjustments to communication, spending, training, and reporting.. You can access the portable work document here. And the staff-wide HR communication here.
Congregation Care
These four questions provide a helpful process for determining how to direct compassion efforts outward while continuing to care for those in our congregations.
Call every single person in our church to ask three questions:
How are you doing?
What needs do you have?
How can we pray for you?
Encourage congregation to go to those they know personally (i.e. neighbors, friends, colleagues). Make the phone call, knock on the door, and offer to help, pray, shop for groceries, run errands, or pick up prescriptions.
Address needs directly around your campus. For example, one church abuts a large low-income apartment complex. Church leaders are currently asking how they can make a sustainable impact on the lives of their neighbors living in the complex.
Ask, “How can we link arms with other churches/organizations to form a unified response?” For example, Mission Church in North Omaha is working with local churches and organizations to provide meals 7 days/week to young people in their neighborhoods. First Christian Church in Council Bluffs is hosting a local food & goods pantry in their lobby, opening the door for hundreds of personal interactions/week. For more information about relief efforts in N. Omaha, contact Myron Pierce at myron@thisismission.org. To learn more about how to join what is happening in Council Bluffs, contact mbortmess@firstchristiancb.org or doug@citylightcb.org.
Good News Church has created this comprehensive plan for caring for seniors, hosting online services, and following up with prayer requests. You can access their care plan here!
Community Resources:
Volunteer Opportunities
The following community resources are available to anyone who has been directly or indirectly impacted by COVID-19.
Food Host-sites by Zip Codes.
For more information or access to those documents, email jed@withinreach.com
For volunteer opportunities around the Metro, visit shareomaha.org