Discipleship Ministries Partnering with Good Neighbor Experiment

NASHVILLE, Tenn. June 7, 2021/Discipleship Ministries/ – Discipleship Ministries, as an extension of its #SeeAllThePeople movement to reach people with intentional discipleship, is partnering with the Good Neighbor Experiment to help congregations discover new ways to be in ministry with their communities.

The Good Neighbor Experiment is a nine-month training process for local churches that want to be better neighbors in their communities.

Jeff Campbell, Acting General Secretary at Discipleship Ministries, said the Good Neighbor Experiment, a nonprofit established by a United Methodist pastor in Kansas, can transform communities.

“When Discipleship Ministries invites disciples to See All The People in our communities each disciple, each church must contextualize the best strategies for healthy community engagement,” Campbell said. “As disciples, we cannot follow Jesus and ignore our neighbors and our community. We are invited by Jesus to continue to grow in our faith, which always leads outside the church doors, and toward a humble encounter with all our neighbors.”

The Rev. Adam Barlow-Thompson, Executive Director of the Neighboring Movement and an elder in the Great Plains Conference, said he hopes to expand the #SeeAllThePeople vision within The United Methodist Church and provide an authentic way for community engagement that goes beyond the church as a service provider or proselytizer.

“When Discipleship Ministries released the Rev. Junius Dotson's work, See All The People, it connected deeply with my soul,” Barlow-Thompson said. “Churches that do best are ready to move from providing program-driven ministry to relationships-centered connections, from scarcity to abundance, and from inauthenticity to joyfully celebrating their authentic self.”

Participants in the Good Neighbor Experiment practice actionable steps in a learning cohort through workshops, small groups and individual coaching.

To learn more about the Good Neighbor Experiment, go to https://neighboringmovement.org/good-neighbor-experiment.

For more information about #SeeAllThePeope, go to www.seeallthepeople.org.

The mission of Discipleship Ministries is to support annual conference and local church leaders for their task of equipping world-changing disciples. An agency of The United Methodist Church, Discipleship Ministries is located at 1908 Grand Ave. in Nashville, Tenn. For more information, visit www.UMCdiscipleship.org, the Press Center at www.UMCdiscipleship.org/about/press-center or call the Communications Office at (877) 899-2780, Ext. 1726.