40 Days of Community Distinctives

40 Days of Community has several features that set it apart from 40 Days of Purpose. Based on the feedback from many of the churches who participated in 40 Days of Purpose, we made a few changes and innovations to this new campaign that will make 40 Days of Community fresh and impacting for your entire church.

NEW!  Youth & Children: We are offering age-appropriate materials for every member of the family, from birth to senior adults.  Those churches that incorporated students and children into their 40 Days of Purpose campaign already know the power of everyone in the family learning about the same biblical truths together.  For the Community Campaign, we are recommending that your Youth and Children’s leaders have a role on your Campaign Team.

NEW!  Missions Project: There is a brand-new idea that is at the heart of this Community Campaign – the Local Missions Project.  This outreach project is the vehicle that will move the church outside of its four walls, and into the harvest field of a world that is in desperate need of the love of Jesus Christ. Your Missions Project Team will identify local outreach and mission opportunities for your small groups to do together.  This might be a single church-wide project where all of the groups choose a component of the project to perform or a collection of projects that each group does independently.  Tackle one of the major problems in your community, and with God’s help you can make a difference!

NEW!  Better Together - What on Earth Are We Here For? Workbook:  A new innovation for this campaign is the combining of three items – the daily devotional book, the daily journal, and the weekly small group study guide – into one soft-bound book that will be the campaign companion for everyone in your church.  This wonderful tool is a savings for your church compared to investing in the books plus the journals plus the study guides that you may have done last time. There will be devotionals for children and youth also available for purchase which will have your young people reflecting on the same daily themes as the adults.

CHANGE!  Host Homes:  During the Purpose Campaign, you had a choice of the Connection method or the Host Homes method to launch new groups.  We also tried to focus equally on increasing Sunday school attendance and small group participation. Because this is a Community campaign, it is natural to make the Host Home strategy the only strategy for launching groups for this campaign.  In addition, the local missions project requires small groups to carry it out.  The adage, “If you’re not in a small group, you’re not in the campaign” is all the more true of the 40 Days of Community campaign.