It is our commitment in Mission Anabaino that in every church we plant we include a church-based and gospel-centered empowerment initiative. This means targeting poverty — whether economic, mental, social, or relational — so that people are no longer powerless but instead powerfully relying on God to be self-sustaining.
As per our “Total Christ” understanding of Christ’s ascension ministry today, we believe the church is an essential element of the gospel. Personal flourishing requires spiritual, social, and moral transformation holistically worked out in both the inward and outward person. A church-based strategy focuses on a community’s strengths more than it’s needs, using every resource for human restoration and empowerment. It takes seriously the gifts and talents within a given community to provide the social reinforcement and accountability that is carefully designed in the apostolic church. It results in community-oriented empowerment with one another rather than for one another, protecting people’s dignity and leading to sustainability. Here is an example of what that looks like:
Loving New Haven Impact Week
During one week of the summer, all of our congregations come together to host a Vacation Bible School Sports and Arts Camp, theology camps for high school and middle school students, community workshops, and mercy projects such as retiling the bathroom floor with a single mom and replacing leaky windows for a widow. We work together and then we celebrate God’s work among us every night over dinner. Click here to see some footage from the 2013 projects and click here for 2015.
Scholarships
We have two exciting study opportunities partnering with other resources in New Haven!
The Overseas Ministries Study Center provides residential programs for the renewal of missionaries and international church leaders as well continuing education in cross-cultural Christian ministries and research and publication in mission scholarship. Mission Anabaino is pleased to offer a scholarship for participation in OMSC’s resident scholars program.
The Rivendell Institute at Yale is a study center exploring the intersection of Christian faith and contemporary scholarship. Hosted on the campus of Yale University, a select group of graduate and advanced undergraduate students in the humanities and social sciences gather for instruction, development and encouragement.
Christian Counseling Center
We are in the process of creating an eagerly anticipated, profoundly necessary Christian counseling center to restore Christ to counseling and to restore counseling to the church. The Center will be committed to healing and transformation of body and spirit within the context of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Its mission will be to provide Christ centered, holistic counseling to people of all faiths, and none, in the greater New Haven area.
For more information, please read our Counseling Center Plan and Core Commitments.
Hope Empowerment Alliance
HEA is a CPC initiated 501(c)3 corporation organized to provide oversight, financial and other resources to support economic empowerment projects and services in churches planted by CPC in the greater New Haven area. Examples would be a service and merchandise co-op store, health counseling services for greater New Haven, mortgage lending, and micro-enterprises such as a landscaping or car detailing business, home improvement trades, or office cleaning services.
Whether it takes the form of spiritual empowerment through leadership teaching and training or economic empowerment in the form of micro-enterprise, gospel-centered empowerment is church-based empowerment.