Faith based Community Organizations

Faith-based Community Organizations have demonstrated an amazing ability to achieve social justice in the urban communities of the world. In parts of India this organizations helped achieve water and sewer plants for their neighborhoods. In other parts of the world people who had been kept out of jobs for various reasons were able to get jobs through agreements with employers or labor unions. With all the good that these organizations do I think the one thing they do the best is to build leaders. Usually the poor have been so beaten down that they cower before the powerful. Injustice happens because there are powerful people and weak people, powerful organizations and weak organizations. Community Organizers work with the poor, equipping them to understand the issues and then they, the poor, stand up to power and achieve their goals. The poor discover that they have power equal to the powerful and can achieve their goals if they band together.

What makes faith-based organizations different than other community organizations is faith. These FBCOs usually are organizations of churches that build the people from the foundation of faith. These organizations bring God back into public life. No longer are the religious relegated to serving God only on Sunday; no, they discover that God is relevant every day of the week. What's even more important is that public institutions also recognize the public life of the church. Faith-based Community Organizations are not evangelistic (that is left to the individual Churches); they are about justice and identifying & building leaders. These newly discovered leaders take their personal faith and make it public. The urban centers of the world are more livable because of the work of faith-based community organizations.