The Concept of the Core Team
An essential and fundamental building block of JOSHUA, core teams:
Respond to the concerns and passions of the congregation.
Identify and train leaders.
Build the base for JOSHUA.
A core team should reflect and model what JOSHUA is like, how it runs its meetings, how it develops leadership, how it initiates actions, how it evaluates, how it develops culture of one-on-one relationship building, etc.
To understand the nature of a core team, we must first clearly understand what organizing brings to a congregation. The three primary contributions the core team can make are the following:
- Create a culture in intentional and intensive relationship building.
- Recruit, train and develop leader and agitate them to assume responsibility in the congregation.
- Take the church into the public arena in an effective way to that it cna live out the scriptural mandates of justice and respond to the concerns and passions of its people.
If we clearly grasp these three elements, we will know if we are doing it right or if we are doing it wrong.
Intentional and Intensive Relationship Building
It is the belief of JOSHUA that relationships are essential. We learn a tool to build relationships - "the one-on-ones." It is also a constant theme that a church must be about the business of creating community.
The core team MUST itself be a group of people that is doing one-on-ones within the congregation.
Secondly it must be an available resource to the Pastor to help build relationships. For instance, if there is to be an outreach in the church, the core team should either lead or be an important part of it. If there is not a group in the church that welcomes new members, that goes and visits the family, the core team should volunteer. The core team should be anxious to either create or participate in strategies that build community in the congregation.
The Identification, Recruitment and Proposition of Leaders to Accept Responsibility in the Congregation
A healthy church is one in which leaders are encouraged to play a role in the development of the congregation. Every person in the congregation should be given some responsibility to make the congregation better. A core team takes inventory of the talent in the congregation and figures out how it might be utilized with and through the Pastor. The core team members are on the hunt for leaders: they are doing one-on-ones with members to identify passions, talent and ambitions. They are recruiting people to go to the National Leadership training. It should be the core team that is primarily responsible for this recruitment.
Moving the Congregation into the Public Arena
The essence of organizing is to lift the veil of public decisions and invite, agitate and challenge people to move into them and take part in them. In the Christian Judeo tradition, God is the God of History. God is active in shaping the history. God's people are to be partners in the shaping of history. However, religion, all religion, has a tendency to be a sanctuary that protects and insulates people from acting in the public area. Because of this, we have a task in getting people to ask questions, to challenge power in the public arena, to lead others. At the same time, we have a mandate - the scriptures that clearly obligate its adherents to work for justice.
The way the core team beings the congregations into the public arena is twofold.
It invites the congregation to participate in issues that JOSHUA and WISDOM and the task forces of these organizations have developed. This will mean that members of the core team:
- Are active in the issues committees
- Encourage turnout for major actions
- Write letters and emails and call government officials
- Being their people into the programs and campaigns.
They will work with other people and/or community groups to bring positive change on justice issues. For example, members of JOSHUA core teams have set up and participated in power on-on-ones with city, village, and town officials and representatives. Core teams have also attended Green Bay City Council meetings and Brown County Board meetings to speak about issues of concern and also so the presence of JOSHUA is felt at those meetings.
The second way to core team brings the congregation into the public arena, is to identify, create and define its own issues. A core team can, and should cut its own issues and do its own actions. A core team cutting its own issue properly will train and develop leaders, energize the congregation, deliver directly for the membership and possibly open avenues for evangelization and stewardship.