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The Cleburne Service Center hosts youth and women’s groups on Wednesday evenings as well as a Sunday morning worship service.
Cleburne, Texas, Service Center is,
be nice to have a room just to
well, a lot. They host small groups
designate for clothing,” she said.
for youth and a women’s group
The room hosts the advisory board,
on Wednesday nights, worship
women’s ministries, gym and
on Sundays at 11 a.m. with a meal
clothing closet. Any donations they
afterward, clothing distribution,
receive are immediately distributed
school supplies, Angel Tree,
because there’s no warehouse in
outreach to the many islander
which to store them.
families who immigrate to the
Still, she said, it’s passion for
area and, after the 2013 tornadoes
people that takes precedence. With
that devastated Cleburne, they
the woman suffering through
distributed Walmart and Lowe’s
stage 4 cancer, one of her needs
gift cards to help with cleanup.
wasn’t monetary at all. “We prayed
Sharon Wilson, Texas’ region
with her and hugged her,” said
2 service unit representative, said
Aranguren. “She obviously had
passion fuels their incredible
been withheld touch for a long
witness to the community, despite
time, because she clung to us and
the center’s lack of space. “There’s
she needed to be touched. It was
one room that is used for several
awesome that she could receive it
different entities, and it would
from us.”
Pathway of Hope moves forward
services to families that are ready
to take action to break the cycle
of poverty for their children and
generations to come,” said Major
Michele Matthews, Pathway of
Hope director. “For most Army
units, this is a fundamentally
different way in which we engage
with clients. It’s not a one-time
appointment with assistance,
but it’s intentionally working
with them to move from crisis
and vulnerability to stability and
sufficiency.”
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best of what The Salvation Army
is already doing. The Southern
Territory’s goal is that 84 percent
of corps will be implementing
the POH model by the year 2020,
which coordinates with the bold
nationwide goal of “making a
lasting difference in reducing
intergenerational poverty across
the United States by transforming
the lives of 100,000 families by 2030
by increasing hope and stability.”
“The mission of the Pathway
of Hope is to provide enhanced
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present, but also a sustainable
future for generations to come.
The Salvation Army nationwide
shares a common vision using
the POH model: a shift from
serving beneficiaries to helping
them solve the root causes of their
behaviors. POH uses the Army’s
varied resource base – advisory
boards, congregations, staff
and relationships with the local
community – together to get to
that solution. It’s integrating the
SA
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The typical writing regarding win-win
relationships is related to both parties understanding
and accommodating so that a mutually beneficial
outcome is transacted. I want to enlarge the concept
from a mere utilitarian outcome approach to a valueladen investment-in-relationship approach.
This is not the concern of those in ministry alone.
A published work by Cynthia C. Williams, Ed.D.,
“Perspectives of School Superintendents in School
Crisis,” offers a very similar list of researched
outcomes as those we find necessary to excellence
in ministry. Williams boils her work down to two
important elements in preparing for eventualities
in the work of education: communication and
relationships. This is not surprising. Williams’ work
is an at-face-value research project as to the “what
is necessary.” Theological underpinnings for Christfollowers, however, speak to communication and
relationship as necessary components of our created
being. Part of our imago dei is exhibited in the ability
to interconnect and influence each other and to enjoy
mutuality and reciprocity with others.
Bernard of Clairvaux writes as if he is talking to
today’s generation. The way in which situations
and people are approached, the reason for the
approach and the resources brought to the approach
are critical to growing, not depleting, relationships.
Communication and relationship are inseparable.
Clairvaux implores us to be a people of depth and
substance. This takes intentionality and practice. The
sound bites of today’s communication style foster the
“canal” style of communication. Not only do we use a
shorthand form of writing (i.e., r u ok?), but we have
trained our minds to live in the surface regions and
stifled the time it takes to plummet the depths of our
spirits. Therefore, we lack depth of thought in general
and react to the perception of what is seen before
considering deeper issues or elements.
How are we to become reservoirs – a rich and
spiritually nutrient dense source? The practice of
solitude and silence offers an important means for
living deeply.
A number of people today remind us of the need
for solitude and silence. One such person is Ruth
Haley Barton. In her book “Invitation to Solitude and
Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence,”
we read: “We are starved for quiet, to hear the sound
of sheer silence that is the presence of God himself.”
… If we are able to stay with our frustrations long
enough and not give up, we may begin to suspect that
the things that most need to be known and solved and
figured out in our life are not going to be discovered,
solved or figured out at the thinking level anyway.
The things we most need to know, solve and figure
out will be heard at the listening level, that place
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