Since our founding nearly a quarter century ago, Meet The Need’s mission statement has been, “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”.  Our commitment to that mission has never wavered.  However, our understanding of the word “church” has evolved.  We initially, naively saw “church” as a building, pastor, staff, weekend events, and group activities.  After working with thousands of churches across the country, studying Scripture, and investigating church history, we started to question our definition.  Misalignments with the principles and priorities of the early Church were evident.  We wondered…

• Why is compassion work seasonal when local needs are perpetual – and Jesus and the early Church served constantly?
• Why is discipleship being done through small groups when the process is intended to be intensive – and Jesus made it personal?
• Why is evangelism training rarely offered, encouraging testimonies and invitations to church services, when all believers should lead people to Christ?
• Why does apologetics seem reserved for seminary grads when every churchgoer should be able to answer typical questions people ask about Christianity?
• Why does preparation for weekend services occupy such a high percentage of the staff’s time while those other critical functions take a back seat?
• Why don’t churches from across denominations in a community collaborate to help one another and achieve Kingdom goals unattainable without unity?
• Why don’t reaching the nations and supporting persecuted brothers and sisters overseas mean as much to us as they did to churches in Scripture?

“Church” (as described and modeled in the New Testament) is and does all the above. Continual Compassion, Discipleship, Evangelism, Worship, Community, and Missions should be core features and functions of every church, not just the Church universal.  Those capabilities and giftings exist within each congregation.  No church is exempt from any of those responsibilities, whether it’s low income or affluent, young or old, urban or remote, independent or denominational.

Current State

What forces could have caused such a dramatic shift from the early Church to church as we know it today?  Management consulting, specifically Customer Relationship Management, taught us that strategy is shaped by markets and metrics.  Could business principles have infiltrated contemporary church, driven by survival instincts or growth ambitions?  Has attraction and retention taken precedence over equipping and deployment?  Maybe it wasn’t considered necessary to prepare church members for what they were no longer doing.  The body of Christ became divided by form and function, with separate entities taking the lead in various components of assignments originally given to the Church.  Many leaders became distracted, bypassing mandates to make disciples, transform communities, unite selflessly, alleviate poverty, and train members to share the Gospel.  Decades ago, those responsibilities were largely abdicated to “parachurch” ministries and reserved for special occasions.

After those realizations, Meet The Need’s modus operandi became removing any barriers (or excuses) that could keep a church from equipping and mobilizing members for year-round prayer, care, and share.  We traveled, gave speeches, wrote blogs, and published eBooks encouraging church leaders to refocus on evangelism, discipleship, and compassion.  However, we weren’t Monday morning quarterbacks criticizing the Church’s Sunday morning gameplan.  Meet The Need also enabled churches to practice what we preach by building and offering technology solutions at no charge, moving them toward the biblical definition of the term (“church”).

During the Dot-com era, when eBusiness entrepreneurs were leveraging the Internet to generate wealth and the web was known for “bad things”, Meet The Need (as a non-profit) was using it for “good”.  When we heard…

• “We don’t know the needs in our city” – we built the first web-based volunteer management system
• “We aren’t sure who else is helping these families” – we invented collaborative shared case management
• “We can’t manage multi-church compassion events” – that was Meet The Need too
• “We’re worried people are signing up multiple times to get help” – we launched a drive scheduling platform
• “We don’t know how our church can help foster families and reduce child removals from homes” – we created a portal for sharing and meeting needs
• “We want to work with schools but need to open a line of communication” – we developed the first dedicated church-school partnership app

Churches said, “build it and we will come”.  However, removing logistical excuses for why churches weren’t more engaged in those causes didn’t resolve the underlying issue.  Instead, it uncovered and exposed it.

Meanwhile, parachurches who had assumed the Church’s lead role in compassion were telling us…

• “We can’t route food thrown away by stores and restaurants to shelters and agencies that feed the hungry” – so Meet The Need developed the app behind the nation’s largest food rescue network
• “We can’t get data from our Homeless Management Information System to analyze and improve outcomes” – so we built that tool for homeless coalitions
• “We need a platform to find jobs for ex-offenders to lower recidivism”…
• “We want to list all service providers in our city in a searchable directory”…

…and the list goes on.

Future State

Then in the early days of AI, in 2017, we realized poverty rates weren’t declining and even Meet The Need’s applications were being used too seasonally.  Like its Internet predecessor, AI was becoming known for “bad things” (e.g. job displacement, hallucinations).  As a Christ-centered ministry, Meet The Need intended to use AI for “good”.  Working with thought leaders like The Chalmers Center, authors of When Helping Hurts, we designed a solution called Link2Hope to provide a better solution to poverty, addressing its root causes by ending isolation and fostering dignity, providing a hand up rather than handouts through relational, not transactional, compassion.

Now we see an opportunity to use AI to close another gap in the Prayer/Care/Share continuum opened by the American Church’s departure from its biblical roots.  Church members should be viewed as “Kingdom employees” commissioned to pursue the target “customer” identified in Jesus’ mission statement.  We shouldn’t simply invite friends who don’t worship Jesus to a holy worship service to hear the Gospel from a “professional”.  We should embody and personify “church” between Sundays within our spheres of influence.  Multiplication is the Lord’s math and relationships are His path for reaching family, coworkers, and neighbors – many of whom are unwilling to come to a church.  Yet few churches still offer Sunday school or evangelism training.  So Meet The Need has developed a plan and prototype for a “Personal Apologist” app in partnership with Apologetics, Inc., to prepare millions of Christians to share their faith and answer challenging questions.  The app includes virtual “mentors”, Q&A, user discussions, micro-lessons to fill knowledge gaps, debates to assess readiness, and a Seminary-lite curriculum.

There’s an unprecedented urgency for deeper understanding of apologetics in America today…

• Few Christians possess the theological underpinning to defend their faith
• Many youth grew up in churches and were taught all the Bible stories, but when confronted by progressive professors in college, have no answers
• Concurrently, there’s a notable increase in curiosity and conversions to Christianity among Gen Z, particularly young men
• New believers are excited to share the hope they’ve found but aren’t being armed by churches with solid responses to objections raised by their peers
• Seminary isn’t an option for many next generation believers given their schedules, budgets, and learning styles

Like Uber for taxis and Airbnb for hotels, Meet The Need will disintermediate inaccessible (or unavailable) theological training, offering convenient and affordable apologetics education.  We will equip a broad base of “ambassadors” to contend for the faith with confidence, clarity and conviction.  No longer will the keys to the Kingdom (knowledge) be retained in the hands of the “few”, a reality in Jesus’ day that He rejected and confronted.  A mobile, web-accessible, DIY, on-demand platform will soon be available with carefully curated content for evangelism training and mobilization – through methods and media that resonate with America’s youth.

Imagine the future of the Church in America – with hierarchy flattened, footprint expanded, structure decentralized, and disciples empowered – retaking ground surrendered by strategies that grew some churches at the expense of the Church.

It’s Your Turn…

Could empowering and equipping “Kingdom employees” for GC³ (Great Commandment, Great Commission, Great Calling)  return the Church to the position it held for 1,900 years as the destination of choice for those in need of help and hope?