A multi-year study hosted by the University of Maryland and including several area groups concludes that faith-based organizations can better weather an economic downturn by building stronger ties with the ministries the congregations that support them.

From a release issued on Thursday:

Particularly during an economic downturn, faith-based organizations tied only to one or two congregations, especially if those were not thriving congregations, had the most trouble raising resources and some shut down. While single-congregation support of a program might be considered more authentic, faith-based organizations supported by a wider umbrella or an interfaith base fared better.

“We compared everything from small food pantries directly connected to a congregation to national hospital systems and their local affiliated hospitals,” said Maryland Associate Professor Jo Anne Schneider, who led the project. “Congregation-focused models work well for mainline Protestants, Quakers and African American churches, but only if several congregations provide support or the sponsoring congregation is sufficiently active with enough resources to support the nonprofit. Jewish and Catholic systems rely on their communities as a whole with the Jewish Federation, Archdiocese, or Order providing centralized support. Some thriving evangelical organizations rely on networks with no formal connections to congregations.”

Other key findings of the report, entitled “Faith and Organization Project: Maintaining Vital Between Faith Communities and their Organizations:”

* A new breed of evangelical organizations has emerged with a different understanding about how to develop an organization to do a specific mission that is firmly based in a particular set of beliefs but that focuses on personal relationships to provide services rather than sharing their faith as a means to improve the lives of those served.

Continue reading "UMD study stresses ties for faith-based ministries" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

I've been away the last couple of days, and will be back to posting full-time on Thursday. In the meantime, we did have a couple of stories in the newspaper on Sunday that you might have missed.

In the first, a Muslim scholar told a Baltimore conference on Saturday that the use of Islam to justify killing is "an innovation" in the religion, and added: "Most innovations lead to hellfire."

"The Satan always has people that he will be able to deceive," Dr. Waleed Basyouni told hundreds at Ilm Fest 2009, an Islamic education conference making its first appearance in Baltimore. "The good news," he said during a presentation he called "Reclaiming Islam from the Jihadists," is that "the nature of the Muslim community is to fight terrorism. The nature of the Muslim community is to reject extremism."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

In the second, we reviewed preparations for H1N1 among different faith congregations. We were interested in the comments of the Rev. John Kingsbury, pastor of St. Mary's in Annapolis. He had taken precautions against the spread of the virus during Mass, but worried that the spiritual impact of the pandemic "has yet to be faced,"

"There will be less, probably, Communions to hospitals," he said. "I'm guessing the hospitals will begin to become stricter with people visiting if things become more serious.

"People dealing with mass suffering -- by which I mean, a lot of people sick -- are going to want spiritual comfort at the very time that it's going to be the most difficult to give it."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Sun colleague Joe Burris has a nice story on "the thunder that followed the lightning:" the joyful return of Bethel A.M.E. members to their historic church, two months after fire forced them to take up temporary quarters at Temple Oheb Shalom.

The Rev. Frank M. Reid III, Bethel's senior pastor, said he hopes the reopening serves as an inspiration to the city that one of its oldest churches has quickly rebounded.

"At the same time that people are being hit by economic lightning and fire, in less than two months our church, which suffered tremendous damage, is back in," said Reid, the longest-serving pastor (20 years) of a church that dates back to the late 1700s.

Reid marched in the middle of the processional, surrounded by parishioners who embraced and sang songs such as "This Is the Day That the Lord Has Made."

"It's a reminder to people," Reid said, "that no matter how bad a hit you take, when we turn to each other, instead of turning on each other, a bad situation can become a good one."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Bethel A.M.E. Church, the large, predominantly African-American congregation that has been holding Christian worship services in a synagogue since a July 1 lightning strike damaged its historic building, plans to head back home next week.

The church is set to return to the landmark sanctuary at 1300 Druid Hill Ave. in time for Holy Convocation, the annual event with which it welcomes members back at the end of summer, spokeswoman Crystal Lowe said. The four-day event, which includes guest speakers, financial seminars and a lunchtime "Hour of Power" daily, is scheduled for Aug. 24 through 27.

The first communion service is set for Sunday, Aug. 30 -- less than two months after the church sustained fire and water damage in the lightning strike.

Church members held their first Sunday services after the strike at Pier Six Pavilion in the Inner Harbor. The next week, Senior Pastor The Rev. Dr. Frank M. Reid III and Rabbi Steven M. Fink of Temple Oheb Shalom announced that the church would hold future services at the synagogue on Park Heights Avenue.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: African-American Church, Interfaith, Judaism