Daniel C Berman

IT - Photography - International Relations
Jun 3

Project: Tracking Relationship Development

As a member of the missions committee for my church, I was asked several months ago to create a tracking tool to deepen our understanding of our support and interaction with the 57 people, and 16 organizations that we support financially and in prayer.Currently we are tracking, name(s), organization, location, ministry scope, date of last correspondence, current support %, and % of our Church’s missions budget on an excel sheet. For future applications in a wider context I would like to create a database tool to track not only this information, but member care by the supporting church, ministry plans, local situations of concern, and current prayer needs gleaned from recent correspondence. From a philosophical perspective,  tracking this information is valuable and quite useful for encouraging additional involvement in the lives of the people that a church supports. However there are a number of questions that also must be answered in a personalized manner for each congregation’s situation. These questions include. What are we hoping to learn? What is our purpose in tracking this information? What are we committed to do with the data once we have it? How are we going to protect the privacy of the people and organizations involved? In these data intensive 21st century times a tool like this offers the potential, when  properly used, to process the information flood that a mission committee wades into on a monthly basis.  With better understanding of people’s situation(s), the potential to forward some of this information on to the general congregation and prayer warriors of the church for wider congregational mobilization becomes a reality.
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Jun 3

Case Study: Forming A Compassion Team

In an effort to respond more promptly to local, regional, and global needs and events my church is working on the formation of a Compassion Team. Here is an overview of our current concept.

Primary duties: - Discern the area and the need from news, literature, emails, and websites. - Quantify the needs - E.g. Number of people affected; the type of needs such as housing, food, water, medicine, clothing. - Enlist the help of the committee members to gather information. - Research what other organizations are doing or proposing to do. - Bring a recommendation of how we could be involved with funds, tangible goods or personnel.
Scope: - Local - Within one day’s drive - National - United States - International - All Others Resources: - Partnership with aid agencies - Direct money contributions - Purchase of needed supplies and materials - Sending personnel - Prayer Ideas: - Develop a template/grid for tracking current issues - Location - Causes of need - Types of aid needed - Projected length of recovery or needed aid - Current situational statistics - Who is doing what - Is direct gospel outreach possible? - Rank the issues, dividing them into local, national, and international - Set an information sharing system via email, websites Has anyone done anything similar? Possibilities for how we might improve this idea? It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next 3, 6, 9, and 12 months.
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About Daniel Berman

Daniel Berman is a native of South Eastern Washington. Coming from rural roots with a technical bent, he has constantly found himself building bridges between cultures. Whether herding cows on horseback or diagnosing computer problems, he has learned to be careful where you step cause there just might be cow pucky...
       

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