Grantee Directory

The ENGAGE process has been created to help local churches determine how to organize and minister to their stakeholders more effectively. It has been used successfully in a variety of contexts, including rural and urban churches, and with churches in the process of a pastoral search. As a faith organization, an ENGAGED congregation cultivates a deep spirituality and love for the surrounding community. ENGAGE helps a congregation to develop measurable goals, develop a plan of action to engage in meaningful opportunities that produce spiritual, physical, and financial growth in the church, and helps enhance their commitment to the surrounding community by developing ministries that minister and witness effectively in the name of Jesus Christ. Congregations that complete the ENGAGE process will better understand themselves and be able to discern the ministry and outreach most suited to the church’s resources and passions. With this crucial concept developed, the result is an empowered ministry with an increased understanding of the congregation’s mission, vision, and goals for the community and themselves. Churches with this knowledge can confidently identify and call a like-minded pastor, creating a longer, more substantial, and fruitful relationship between the pastor, the congregation, and the community.

Scottsboro Cumberland Presbyterian Church (SCPC) is a midsized congregation in rural Alabama that has developed OptIN, a program that guides congregants in reshaping their story, schedules, and skills toward God and so uncovering God’s constant presence in the ordinary of day-to-day life. This 10-month, multigenerational curriculum has deepened congregants’ understanding of their context, developed individual and corporate clarity on values and missions, and assisted in developing practices to embody this clarity. From its inception, OptIN was developed with an eye to SCPC’s secondary mission, “To be a church for the least, the last, and the lost.” This entails supporting other congregations that aren’t experiencing the same stability or renewal. Through the OptIN: Congregational Renewal Initiative, SCPC seeks to learn what systems, schedules, and skills have largest impact on the day-to-day Christian flourishing of Cumberland Presbyterian (CP) congregations. Using a learning community of leaders from 12 CP congregations, the initiative will refine SCPC’s existing OptIN resource to be a “jig” (a tool built to reduce the mental load in performing repetitious tasks) that can be implemented by other churches, even under supported and understaffed ones. OptIN seeks to reinvigorate the most basic unit of the congregation -- individual congregants and their family units. Through a cycle of experimentation and adaptation in our learning community, OptIN: Congregational Renewal will identify what daily life changes can be made with the greatest impact on flourishing and rebuild the OptIN curriculum to incorporate these learnings.