My Story…

Meet The Need began fifteen years ago, during a long drive back home to Atlanta from a vacation in Jacksonville.  Weeks earlier, I had asked my church where I could serve somewhere in the community.  I told them my passions and interests, hoping for direction.  I was surprised but they weren’t sure where to point me in the city.  As I was driving, I was thinking about how the Fortune 500 corporations I consulted all had those types of answers – they knew where to direct people when they wanted to buy something.

As I dug into the issue, it didn’t take long to figure out…

• it wasn’t just my church that had this problem
• the Church had been the food bank and homeless shelter for its first 1900 years, but was no longer on the front lines of compassion

So, how could churches, even one as large as mine, be so disconnected now from the needs in the community?  Jesus, His disciples and the early church modeled the power of demonstrating love in sharing the gospel.  They knew people don’t care what you know until they know you care.

Meet The Need’s Mission

To MOBILIZE and EQUIP the Church to lead millions more to Christ
by following Jesus’ example of meeting those in need exactly where they are.

That was the mission statement we came up with soon after I got back to Atlanta that day.  And it remains the same today.

We heard from many churches that they wanted to engage much more in the community but had no efficient way to share local (or even internal) needs with their members.  So we spent years and millions on the EQUIP portion of our mission – designing, building, testing and rolling out systems that empower churches and charities to communicate needs to those who could help.

EQUIP – New Enhanced Software!

Our commitment to EQUIP your church and charity continues to this day!  In fact, we’ve just completed a 2 year project to make all of our tools EVEN MORE accessible, user-friendly and state-of-the-art.  

We’ll be rolling out our brand new systems next week, including…

• Smart Phone & Tablet Compatible – Displays conform to the devices being used!
• New Functionality – Best practice features around group signups, real-time reporting, live check-ins and customizable emails!
• More Simplicity – Faster registration, easier administration and automated self-service!

MOBILIZE – New Strategies and Coaching!

We developed Meet The Need’s comprehensive suite of software based on the assumption that churches would move beyond seasonal events (which often do more harm than good) if MTN could be the first to bring tools for them to manage and communicate needs on a year-round basis.  For many churches that has been the case.  MTN expanded nationwide and has had tremendous success in many cities.

However, the general trend among churches in America today is not toward unleashing members into year-round ministry in their communities.  Systems don’t change heart and minds.  We continue to see far too many unmet needs in cities across the country.  The greatest source of help and hope available to those hurting and lost resides, largely idle, in the pews of America’s churches.  

That’s why we plan to spend much of our time going forward on the MOBILIZE half of our mission – encouraging churches to follow Jesus’ example of demonstrating His love before telling them who He is.

As many of you know, my background was in management consulting – solving strategic problems for large companies.  So for the past couple years I’ve put my management consulting hat on and done extensive research, trying to find out why:

• the role of the Church in communities across America has fundamentally changed
• American church growth models encourage internal, not external, focus
• the Church (overall) in the U.S. is not succeeding on any significant metric – growth, impact, influence, or public perception

After all that digging, it turns out that organizational behavior best practices, which align very well with Biblical principles, held the key all along to why the Church is struggling.  There is a flawed assumption underlying most decisions churches make today.  The modern American church is violating one of the most basic tenants of all successful organizations, including the early Church.

Making that groundbreaking discovery would not have been possible without extensive experience in consulting followed by years of work with churches of all sizes.  Little did I know the Lord was preparing me all that time to understand and disclose the root cause issue behind the Church’s decline.

Next week, we’ll be unveiling those findings to you and launching our new coaching offering on our NEW WEB SITE in hopes of fulfilling the 2nd half of our mission – to MOBILIZE the Church!

Are You Ready?

If your church could get its hands on a Biblical roadmap to increase in size, impact and influence and perception, would you be willing to take a look?  What if your church or charity could get a complete suite of best-practice tools for managing all of its charitable activities – all at no cost?  Would you be open to checking out what we have to offer?  If so, get ready for MTN’s launch of our new tools, materials and web site next week!