HISTORY:
CRISES was founded in 1993 by Executive Director Gerry Phelps (www.gerrycharlottephelps.com) in Austin, Texas. A 501(c)3 non-profit, it developed the LIFT Project to help people exit the Welfare system.
The LIFT program was based on the previous experience of the founding Executive Director in starting and running two large homeless shelters. One became a national model with a 65-75% success rate in getting families out of homelessness.
LIFT clients were exposed to the gospel, taught from the Bible and encouraged to become active, church-based Christians. Not only did they receive carefully structured help from churches, but they and their children were also trained and mentored weekly by church teams. Employment was required, and any help given required full participation in the protram, which achieved a 76% success rate.
What we learned about how to help people exit poverty through churches was summarized later in the book, "Up and Out: A Guide to True Compassion for the Poor," by Gerry Phelps. (The book and other training material are available upon request.)
MISSION: THE PROBLEM
Our present mission grew out learning that most of today's poor were poor because of harmful changes in our culture. While these changes have affected us all, they have been most destructive to the poor.
Here is what we learned:
1. Fatherlessness is the major predictor of poverty. Most of the poor are never-married mothers and their children.
2. Fatherlessness has also become the major predictor of violent crime.
3. Therefore, as the major predictor of both poverty and violent crime, fatherlessness is a sign of dangerous cultural toxicity.
4. Fatherlessness on such a large scale is a new phenomenon, arising from the sexual revolution of the 1960's.
5. Therefore, the sexual revolution must be reversed, for the poor, for our children and for our safety from crime and violence. In addition, to reverse the decline of marriage, the increase of divorce and cohabitation, the increase of abortion, and the general coarsening and decline of the culture.
6. In addition, our children are being seduced away from the Christian faith, by a debased culture and by a government-run school system, among other causes. Once our children adopt counter-cultural values, they help perpetuate the problem.
7. Until practicing, discipled Christians become a great majority, Christian values and practices will continue to come under effective attacks to limit the rights and legal powers of Christians.
MISSION: AIMS
1. Reverse the Sexual Revolution.
2. Grow a national majority of practicing, discipled Christians.
3. Use that majority to change the country and the culture.
MISSION: STRATEGIES
Strategy 1. Make the nation's churches strong, big and prosperous.
DIFFICULTIES: How could our churches become that strong, big and prosperous? Why are most not that way now? One reason is that we assume two things about our church members that are usually wrong. One is that they are converted. The other is that they are well-taught. Unfortunately, both assumptions are usually untrue. When church members are converted, and well-taught, it is a different church world!
BENEFITS: - of having strong, big, prosperous churches? Incalculable.
Strategy 2. Make the churches strong, big and prosperous through "Fruitful Church Growth."
HOW? This church growth method is evangelistic, discipleship-oriented and 'back-to-basics'. What makes it different is that it also emphasizes the conversion of church members. Christian pollster George Barna has found that even in the most evangelical churches, not more than 50%, at most, of the people in the pews on Sundays are actually converted believers. This is in the most evangelical churches! In the others, it is even worse, and worst of all in the mainline denominations.
These unconverted members are like 'Cornelius' in the book of Acts. When they are approached carefully and sensitively, one-on-one and in private, most convert. Afterwards, most change. Then as more and more members are converted, the church changes dramatically. As all the church is also taught carefully, going 'back to basics' first in both sermons and classes, then to a Bible-based program of carefully graduated and selected studies, the church takes off. Membership grows quickly and there are many signs of spiritual growth. And - whether or not there is a giving program - the money just flows in, usually with continually-increasing surpluses.
NOTE: "Fruitful Church Growth" is now a book in process. The method is not an untried theory, but was developed and tested in three churches; an Anglo church in California, an Hispanic church on skid row in California, and an Anglo church in Texas, all United Methodist. When the pastor first arrived in each church, the percentage of church members who were already converted was, by actual count, 12% (CA), 12% (CA) and 17% (TX) respectively. That percentage rose to over 50% in each case before that pastor left. Each church grew about 12.5% a year during the pastor's tenure. After the pastor's first four months, the Hispanic church, which was subsidized by the denomination, moved steadily closer to being financially independent. The two Anglo churches, after the pastor's first four months, began running larger and larger financial surpluses, without being asked to give. Most of all, there was obvious spiritual growth in the churches.
Watch this space for more on "Fruitful Church Growth." Coming soon!
