The Story
Christ Community Ministries was founded in 2005 by its sister organization, Christ Community Health Services (CCHS), to facilitate spiritual renewal in the urban neighborhoods CCHS serves and to provide opportunities for medical personnel to use their gifts to advance God’s kingdom in the most under served regions of the world.
Since that time, Christ Community Ministries has focused most of its resources on its international mission. Over the past four years, Ministries has sent medical personnel to Central Asia, India, Northern Africa and Eastern Africa. In co-operation with local NGOs, Ministries has helped to facilitate a number of medical projects including the development of ten TB-DOTS treatment centers throughout Central Asia, training local physicians and nurses in a hospital in Central Asia, running a rural hospital in India, and initiating community health programs in Africa.
One of our core values is incarnational ministry, living among and listening to the people we serve. As we get to know the people in our communities, we seek to be responsive to their concerns. In East Africa this has led our missionaries to start an English language school and an orphanage. In India, our physicians built a strong relationship with a local pastor who was raising thirty orphans. Moved by his compassion and dedication, our physicians assisted the pastor to build a children’s home.
Locally, a commitment to incarnational ministry has led over 50 families to relocate to Binghampton, an urban neighborhood in Memphis served by one of CCHS’ five community health centers. Again, in response to the physical and spiritual concerns of the neighborhood, these families have started house churches, integrated themselves into the life of the community, and have responded to the concerns of the community by assisting refugee families to find affordable housing, start a small business, and develop financial literacy.
Ministries has adopted a process called CTT, Community Transformation Training, to equip others to replicate our incarnational approach to ministry in other communities locally and internationally. CTT was developed by a friend of ours, Dr. Charles Fielding, to promote discipleship and the multiplication of churches that reproduce both the “preaching and healing” ministries of Jesus in the communities they serve.
Based on Biblical principals found in Luke 10, CTT equips teams of two to enter communities, and respond in meaningful ways to their concerns while training others to live according to the teachings Jesus. We believe that as followers of Jesus, we should take a holistic approach to discipleship and thus put equal emphasis on reproducing both the “preaching” and “healing” ministries of Jesus in the communities where we live and serve.
We have incorporated the CTT training into a medical internship program. Medical students from across the country come to Binghampton for 2-6 weeks to work in one of CCHS’ health centers and to learn about incarnational ministry. In the mornings students shadow doctors and nurse practitioners as they see patients. In the afternoons, these students focus on spiritual formation, learn about incarnational ministry through the Community Transformation curriculum, and volunteer with organizations that serve the community. The purpose of our internship program is to cast a vision for how health care can integrate with discipleship and church development to transform communities locally and internationally.
In the future we plan to continue to use the CTT process to respond to the concerns of the communities we serve.
We invite you to take a look around our web site. Check out our programs and projects for ways in which you can get involved with our ministry, or download a podcast or newsletter for more information.