Sketcher
Born Imperishable
So do we, but what I was getting at wasn't teaching resources per se, but material resources and connections.My non-denominational church has plenty of resources to draw from. Since we're not tied to any one denomination, we use materials from a wide range of publishers.
Right, but let's say you're on here and someone new to the faith asks what kind of church they should go to. Your answer probably isn't going to be as simple as "Catholic" or "Free Methodist".Branding: Our church is known as "the church for people who don't like church". We do advertise but much of it comes from folks inviting others to church.
It's not a small thing. When my grandfather was still with us, he would go to the jail every week to reach out to prisoners. They would ask him what kind of Christian he was because they could sense he was the real deal. He couldn't give his denomination in good faith, because there are many liberal churches in that denomination, though his wasn't one of them, so he didn't have branding working for him. But if he could have had that good faith in his denomination as a whole, he could have given them an easy answer.
My church does similar things, and we sponsor foreign missionaries (we're a big church). There are missionary organizations that will train and fund short-term and long-term missionaries, but denominational churches are better connected to some of them, through the denomination.Missions: We do plenty, we prefer to work within our own community though. We have groups that work with women who were in the sex trade, underprivileged kids in THE roughest neighborhood in the city, partnering with other churches to go to the reservations and build homes and infrastructure (if you want to see devastating poverty, find a local NA reservation). We do 2 "major" mission trips a year to Mexico, building houses and infrastructure (water/septic). We don't "sponsor" missionaries like many churches...we ARE the missionaries. It's kinda "put your money where your mouth is".
I still consider non-denominational the best option for me, the trade-offs are worth it.
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