The WHY and WHAT of God's calling:
Why we do what we do:
We believe giving and receiving with God and
others best honors the beautiful value in every person regardless of who they
or where they live.
What this means:
Dan is employed by Polis Institute as an Urban Missionary to Atlanta, GA. We believe God has called Dan to equip churches and ministries in Atlanta, GA to learn to be good neighbors to the poor through Polis' curriculum Dignity Serves while living this out as the Discipleship Pastor of a church in the neighborhood.
This role as an Urban Missionary has two functions. He is a Trainer for Polis Institute's curriculum Dignity Serves and serves as a Discipleship Pastor at Community Life Church in the South Atlanta neighborhood in Atlanta, GA.
Here is a brief description of how Dan divide his time up in these two roles:
This role as an Urban Missionary has two functions. He is a Trainer for Polis Institute's curriculum Dignity Serves and serves as a Discipleship Pastor at Community Life Church in the South Atlanta neighborhood in Atlanta, GA.
Here is a brief description of how Dan divide his time up in these two roles:
Dignity Serves Trainer/Networker
- Dignity Serves Facilitator: Facilitating the Dignity Serves Curriculum.
- Walking with churches that have gone through Dignity Serves to know best next steps.
- Networking and connecting for new Dignity Serves clients.
- Building a Polis Atlanta team.
- Vision building for Dignity Serves.
- Speaking at conferences about Dignity Serves and leading Missions Teams, which educates them around the principles of Dignity Serves.
- Creating content out of questions we are asking about our brothers and sisters in poverty.
Discipleship Pastor at Community Life Church in the South Atlanta neighborhood
- Co-lead Straight Forward Youth Group Monday nights as a ministry of the church.
- Discipleship Pastor during Sunday Morning services at church.
- Pastoral presence in neighborhood and one on one-discipleship times with young men.
- Friday morning Coffee and Bible Study for homeless and unemployed of our community.
- Organizing and supporting community led initiatives of Straight Forward Productions and sports activities.
- Being the best neighbors we can be by hosting weekly gatherings and dinners in our home in which our neighbors can share a meal together. This sometimes includes neighbors who are trapped in prostitution.
A more detailed description is here:
Polis Trainer/Networker – Dignity Serves
I spend a third of my week as a Polis Trainer for our curriculum Dignity Serves. It is a six lesson experiential study that penetrates the heart of service and accentuates the principle of Dignified Interdependence with those we serve. I frequently meet with interested churches and ministries to introduce Polis’ curriculum Dignity Serves. Often, that leads to a more formal, 60-minute presentation of Dignity Serves to these same churches and ministries. From there, I facilitate Dignity Serves with these different entities as I train gifted individuals to be facilitators. I nurture on-going relationships with them, equipping and supporting them individually through frequent meetings, as well as quarterly. My role is all about encouragement and instruction – building relationships and mentoring them as champions of Dignified Interdependence to be lived out in their specific ministry contexts. In addition, I’m always reaching out by e-mail or by phone to bring more churches into the fold of Dignity Serves. I promote the credentials and integrity of Dignity Serves as a frequent blogger, promoting them on Facebook. I also have been tasked by Polis Institute to create content out of my experiences of living and ministering with our brothers and sisters struggling in poverty. The hope is to develop a curriculum similar to Dignity Serves out of these interactions. This curriculum will then help people know how to best serve our friends in need. Recently, I’ve been excited and encouraged that a church conference has asked me to share the concepts of Dignity Serves to a wide gathering of people.
Ministry in the
Neighborhood
A third of my 40-hour workweek is given to ministry in the
neighborhood as a Discipleship Pastor at Community Life Church. I lead
communion and have a Pastoral presence during the service, preach occasionally,
and prepare and lead a Bible study for the adults on Sunday mornings. I
organize bimonthly gatherings for men of the church and neighborhood. I lead a
discipleship group for youth group leaders on Wednesday nights, and mentor
these young men one on one. I walk the streets around our neighborhood. Doing
that, I get to know men and women who are homeless. I learn their stories in
order to welcome them into community at our church and connect them to places
which can offer help if they so desire. Out of this I facilitate a Bible Study Friday mornings at 10 at our church to give the last, least and lost of our community a place to belong. I co-lead a Monday night meeting called StraightForward for 15 to 22 young adults in our neighborhood. Finally, I am generally available for
prayer or pastoral counseling for church members or neighborhood residents, and
these connections usually end up with a meeting for coffee or breakfast and a
continued relationship.
Ministry Partner
Development
I devote the remaining third of my time to Ministry
Partnership Development, which has a deeply theological underpinning to
pursuing vocational ministry through raising personal support. This involves
calling and emailing people to arrange times to share our motivations – how God
has specifically led us to join His movement in the city of Atlanta and why we
were compelled to answer His call. I devote so much effort to connect with
people, to earn their trust and acceptance in friendships and relationships.
Often they feel led to partner with us in this mission. It takes more than a
humble heart. I do this through faith, by faith, writing updates, and
establishing enduring connections. I’ll call people – and many are surprised
the first time – to let them know we are praying for them and their concerns,
and I also write thank-you notes. I seek to live out my partnership with the
Gospel by honoring and holding in high esteem the people who commit to partner
with us.
Phil Hissom, the Founder of Polis Institute in Orlando,
holds my work in Atlanta strongly accountable. We confer weekly to review my
goals and progress in my ministry, modeled on Results Based Management, which
focuses us on what needs to be done.
A typical week in the life of Dan Crain looks like, meetings with potential Dignity Serves clients, studying and prepping for upcoming teachings and trainings, calling and emailing our partners in ministry, training people through Dignity Serves, lunches with people who have gone through Dignity Serves and want to take the next step, lunches with young men from the neighborhood I am discipling, getting things prepped and ready for Monday night's Straight Forward, counseling people from the church on Sundays, pastoral duties during the Sunday morning service, teaching a Bible study to homeless, updating the Dignity Serves Facebook page, blogging about life and principles surrounding Dignity Serves, connecting urban ministry leaders to conversate around the role of the church in the city, connecting people in the community together to share gifts, organizing church events and flag football, and getting to know the homeless and unemployed around the ministry center in which I work out of. There are many other things I do as a Pastor here in the neighborhood as well. Each week looks different as the uniqueness of my Pastoral role takes on a whole new meaning when you live in your ministry context as Intentional Neighbors of FCS Urban Ministries.
A typical week in the life of Dan Crain looks like, meetings with potential Dignity Serves clients, studying and prepping for upcoming teachings and trainings, calling and emailing our partners in ministry, training people through Dignity Serves, lunches with people who have gone through Dignity Serves and want to take the next step, lunches with young men from the neighborhood I am discipling, getting things prepped and ready for Monday night's Straight Forward, counseling people from the church on Sundays, pastoral duties during the Sunday morning service, teaching a Bible study to homeless, updating the Dignity Serves Facebook page, blogging about life and principles surrounding Dignity Serves, connecting urban ministry leaders to conversate around the role of the church in the city, connecting people in the community together to share gifts, organizing church events and flag football, and getting to know the homeless and unemployed around the ministry center in which I work out of. There are many other things I do as a Pastor here in the neighborhood as well. Each week looks different as the uniqueness of my Pastoral role takes on a whole new meaning when you live in your ministry context as Intentional Neighbors of FCS Urban Ministries.
The thrust behind why we live in the neighborhood we do is summed up by Christian Community Development Association's (CCDA) philosophy:
"Many of our communities have been neglected and left to deteriorate for decades. Sadly, the church of Jesus Christ has at best sat back and watched this happen. In many areas, it has even contributed to the problem. A new generation of Christians are faced with a question about how they will respond to the troubles of the poor and under-resourced communities today. The desperate conditions that face the poor call for a revolution in the church's approach to the problem. Through years of experience among the poor, many have come to see that these desperate problems cannot be solved without strong commitment and risky actions on the part of ordinary Christians with heroic faith.
There have been
many attempts by "outsiders" to alleviate the problems, but most have
fallen short of lasting change. Rather, the most creative long-term solutions
to the problems of the poor are coming from grassroots and church-based
efforts. The solutions are coming from people who see themselves as the
replacements, the agents, for Jesus here on earth, in their own neighborhoods
and communities.
This philosophy is known as Christian Community Development, which is
not a concept that was developed in a classroom, nor formulated by people
foreign to the poor community. These are Biblical, practical principles evolved
from years of living and working among the poor. CCDA pioneer, John Perkins,
first developed this philosophy while working among the poor in Mississippi."
We love the work, the people, and the purpose into which God
has called us. It’s an honor and a privilege to guide people to think
differently about the most effective ways to serve each other.
We have found our passion, and it’s helping people learn to give and receive as children of God with their fellow
neighbors.
