Ministry is a process. When you sense God’s call to engage vulnerable groups in your community, it’ll take your church some time to go “all in” on serving them.
One day, you hope your church becomes an advocate for vulnerable groups, helping to involve other communities of faith and nonprofits in the work of helping the vulnerable. But your church’s journey to the multiplying ministry of an advocate is really a story of many journeys of people throughout your church. Before your church can go all-in, you have to help your members take their next step in involvement.
That journey begins with getting to know these stages of involvement and how you can move your members through them.
In this post, we’ll explore these stages—Awareness, Understanding, Engagement, Leadership, and Advocacy—and provide actionable steps for moving people forward in them.
What Are Vulnerable Communities?
Vulnerable communities are groups of people facing significant challenges in meeting basic needs or achieving stability. Age, poverty, social isolation, and systemic barriers often increase the risks to these groups.
In Jesus’ day, these were often the hungry, the alien, the naked, and the imprisoned—those Jesus referred to as “the least of these” in Matthew 25.
But there’s no exhaustive list of vulnerable people Jesus wants us to engage. Today they include groups like:
- The unemployed and underemployed
- The chronically ill
- Addicts
- At-risk youth
- Orphans
But ultimately, any person or group experiencing hardship or marginalization can be considered among ‘the least of these,’ inviting us to respond with Christ-like compassion and action.
The Stages of Involvement: A Roadmap to Advocacy
Understanding the stages of involvement can give you a clearer picture of where people are in their journey of supporting vulnerable communities. Once you know where someone stands, it becomes easier to help them take the next step forward.
Keep in mind, though, that these stages don’t reflect where your entire church is as a whole. Everyone moves at their own pace, so you’ll probably have people spread out across different stages. That’s perfectly normal and something to embrace as you guide them along the way.
Those five stages are:
- In the Unawareness Stage, you’re disconnected or unaware of community needs.
- In the Awareness Stage, you recognize the need.
- In the Understanding Stage, you develop a deeper comprehension of the need through relationships with others in the community.
- In the Engagement Stage, you take intentional first steps to address the challenges in the vulnerable group.
- In the Leadership Stage, you take ownership of ministry efforts and leading others into service.
- In the Advocacy Stage, you begin speaking up and taking action to influence systemic changes in your community that empower vulnerable populations and address result root causes.
Your goal is to move people from one stage to the next, trying to get them to take on increasing involvement in the work. You might want to develop a spreadsheet that tracks where you think people are and what their next steps are. Or consider looking for ways to track them in your church management software.
Stage 1: Unawareness
Most people start out with very little insight into the vulnerable communities around them. Even people who are part of these communities often don’t recognize themselves as vulnerable and certainly have limited realization about other vulnerable groups near them.
At this stage, you simply want your congregants to see the needs around them. How do you do that?
- Share stories and statistics about local needs in church services.
- Pray corporately for the needs of vulnerable communities.
- Organize prayer walks so your congregants can intentionally observe and pray over your neighborhood.
When congregants start asking questions about vulnerable communities around them, you know they’re beginning to “get it” and are moving into awareness.
Stage 2: Awareness
In the Awareness Stage, the person realizes there’s a vulnerable group in their neighborhood or starts to understand just how serious the issue is. But it’s just on the radar. They are not doing anything about it yet.
At this stage, you want to help your members empathize with vulnerable groups, asking questions about their lives and struggles. Awareness means you know the problem exists. Understanding means you start to care about the problem as you empathize with people who are impacted.
You want to move people from knowing about the problem to caring about the problem.
How do you do that?
- Invite guest speakers from local nonprofits to share their stories.
- Form small groups where people can learn more about a biblical theology of justice.
- Encourage conversations with people in these vulnerable communities or organizations serving them.
Eventually, your members in this stage move past surface-level questions and toward genuine empathy toward vulnerable groups. Then they’re ready to act.
Stage 3: Engagement
When a church member is in the engagement stage, they are actively involved in the work of caring for vulnerable populations—through either giving, going, or praying (and hopefully all three!). It’s an exciting time, and many church members are satisfied staying here. And frankly, for some of your members, this may be as far as they need to go.
But for others, you’d like to see them begin to expand their influence and take on leadership tasks.
How can you do that?
- Give volunteers small leadership tasks (organizing events, coordinating teams, etc.).
- Encourage volunteers to mentor new volunteers.
- Provide leadership training to help volunteers obtain necessary skills.
Then, at some point, many of these volunteers will start expressing initiative and sharing ideas for improving the work you’re doing for vulnerable communities. They may begin to lead teams or projects. That’s when they’re ready to consider leadership roles.
Stage 4: Leadership
The people of your church who are leading the efforts to care for the vulnerable are the backbone of your ministry. The reality is, your work will never expand until you can add new leaders to the mix.
But no leader is a finished product. You want to help leaders take their next step into further involvement. Your goal is to help as many as possible take their step into entrepreneurial care where they begin to meet emerging needs in vulnerable communities and advocate for the systemic changes that lead to lasting impact.
How do you do that?
- Offer leaders opportunities to partner with other organizations working with vulnerable groups to multiply impact.
- Encourage your leaders to take ownership of new ministries, giving them the freedom to fail—and thrive!
- Introduce leaders to organizations and outside leaders with experience in engaging systemic issues in vulnerable communities.
Over time, your leaders will begin seeing and acting on new opportunities to help vulnerable groups. For example, some might be working to care for a homeless community when they realize a need among homeless teens for mentors. A leader who has transitioned to the Advocate Stage will organize efforts to meet that need.
Stage 5: Advocates
Think of advocates as spiritual entrepreneurs. They care deeply about the vulnerable group they’re serving. They care so much they’re willing to lead others to serve.
These leaders are closer to the vulnerable groups in your community than anyone else at your church. You want to challenge them to continue meeting needs as they become apparent. The advocate sees additional needs and takes the initiative to organize others to help.
Advocates also begin to take these new opportunities to other organizations that can multiply the impact. For example, a leader of a foster care ministry will likely realize your church can’t find homes for all the children in need. To meet the need, you’re going to need to involve other faith communities. The advocate then goes to other churches to mobilize them to help.
These are incredibly important people in your ministry efforts. Although they may only make up 1-2 percent of your church, you want to do all you can to serve them and help them do ministry more effectively.
How do you do that?
- Encourage your advocates to communicate what they need to reach emerging needs to you so you can help.
- Commit to providing the resources your advocates need (or help them find the resources).
- Help your advocates learn about self-care because they can get all consumed with ministry if you let them.
Although this is a small portion of your church family, there are likely many more advocates sitting on the sidelines in churches because churches don’t have a systematic plan for developing them.
Start Small, Think Big
It may look like a gigantic leap from the Unaware Stage to the Advocate Stage, but it’s really just a few steps. Your church can help more people if you take a systematic approach to helping people more deeply engage the vulnerable groups around you. Begin encouraging some of the action steps in this article and see where God takes your ministry!
To learn more about how your church can help vulnerable groups, check out the free guide, Neighbors in Need: How to Identify and Help the Most Vulnerable.
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