A home repair team, in the most rudimentary form, needs very few things:

1. A couple of people who want to use their knowledge and skills in construction-related ministry
2. A project or several projects requiring volunteers
3. A method of funding materials

Anything larger than "a couple of guys" requires some level of organization or things can get chaotic quickly. At that point, you will need to:

4. Identify a team leader
5. Determine a method of distributing information to the volunteer team (meeting, email, website, etc.)
6. Develop a plan to distribute information to supporters and let potential "clients" know about the ministry
7. Create a database or tracking mechanism for projects and volunteers
8. Build a volunteer pool over time and a plan to manage and develop your volunteers
9. Establish guidelines for carrying out the ministry need, including safety, types of projects the team can/cannot handle, scope, financial need of clients, etc.
10. Foster communication between the team and church leadership so that all are kept abreast of the ministry development and progress
11. Develop an accountability system to ensure that the spiritual aspect of serving on a home repairs team is being included, and so that there is proper follow up and quality control for completing projects.

Want more information on starting, finding projects, how to pay for projects and more? We can help! Register on our site today at no charge!

Suggestions for a Local Short-Term Home Repair Mission Trip

So how do you start looking for your short-term mission trip opportunity? Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Contact your local or county senior services agency volunteers coordinator to see what they know needs volunteers.

• Contact Dept. of Family and Children’s Services (or whatever it is called near you) to see whether they know of a low-income family fostering children and in need of home repair help. This is especially needed where there are teens being fostered.

• Contact agencies that help people with disabilities to see if they can direct you to a need.

• Are there single mothers in your church network (members and their extended families and neighbors) whose homes need attention but cannot pay for maintenance?

• Has there been a localized disaster, e.g. a flood or tornado that swept through a neighborhood (though it may not officially be a declared emergency, see how those in the path feel about it)? Contact your county or state Emergency Management Agency to see whom to contact about helping.

• Inner-city/low-income neighborhood church leaders often know of someone in their congregation who needs help. Use the opportunity to serve alongside other Christ-followers.

• Make sure that you have a waiver to cover accidents and your team. Also, make sure that your team members are insured!

So How Do I Start a Home Repairs Team?

Now that you’ve got a project, how do you start a team and what do you need? We’ve created a website – www.homerepairs.org – where we have collected the resources that can help you start up your own home repairs ministry at your church. You’ll find articles and forms that will take you through all phases of starting and running a ministry, a blog with posts from the front-lines of the ministry, a forum to ask and answer your tough questions (coming soon) and a list of churches by area to help you partner with other like-minded Christians. Sign up today and get your short term mission or youth trip ready for the summer!

Five reasons why your church should be involved in home repairs ministry.

Click the image to watch a short video.

We are glad to have you looking around the Home Repairs Ministry (HRM) website. In an elevator conversation (it’s a very tall building), in explaining who/what we are, I might tell you that:

HRM is a nonprofit dedicated to mobilizing handy people from as many Christ-centered, Bible teaching churches as possible to help as many needy people as we can with their home repairs challenges and to address their spiritual needs by pointing them toward a relationship with Jesus Christ.

The big plan is for us to help churches start or refine their home repair teams to serve their low income or otherwise hurting, home-owning, members and as an outreach to the community. This help to churches comes mostly from the website where, by becoming a ministry partner, they can access a lot of helps in getting organized and have a place to ask & provide answers to questions from a national network of interested, mostly non-clergy, leaders. Also important in this movement is to encourage churches, that share salvation by grace through faith in Christ, to work together, demonstrating that what binds us together is far greater than many important but not essential things that divide us.

Let’s lock arms and be the Body of Christ as described by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4:

¹ . . . walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ² with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³ eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Want to join the movement or know more about starting your own ministry? Find out more

Welcome!
Harvey

LAUNCH DAY! March 16, 2012

It’s hard to believe that this day has actually arrived! It seems likely ages ago that we believe the Lord gave us a vision for uniting the church of Jesus Christ generally and home repairs ministries specifically in service to the hurting and vulnerable (see more about our organization and vision here – About HRM). And launch day is finally here! Praise be to our God!

We are excited to see what the Lord will do through you, the church and network of home repairs ministries.

One of the ways we want to provide help, value, and encouragement to you is through this blog. Here we plan to share ideas for how to serve and unite in ministry, thoughts about home repairs and stories of service. And links to other blogs that will show interesting content such as how to handle certain home repairs tasks.

We will also open up the blog from time-to-time to our Ministry Partner community. We want you to tell the network what’s on your mind and how God is moving through your ministry. We would especially value testimonies of God's faithfulness and goodness in working through your ministry.

If you aren’t yet a Partner, please consider joining us. We have a library of helpful content and that will only grow. More importantly, we hope to show Christ to the world by working on projects together. More information about Ministry Partnership and starting a home repairs ministry

This is an exciting time – we hope that you’ll join us!

Psalm 133:1 Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!

Psalm 127:1 Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

Supporters and friends of Home Repairs Ministries, we have some exciting news! We recently hired a new Director of Development who has been working behind the scenes on a new HRM website.

The site is now in development and we wanted to give you a quick update. We are designing the site to help other churches launch their own home repairs ministries or optimize an existing ministry. We are providing our future partners with a comprehensive repository of information from our years of experience. We realize that as an Atlanta-area ministry we can only serve so many people with our local teams. By helping other churches start ministries we can serve many more than we could ourselves.

And our dream is that the site will be the centerpiece of our mission to unite the body of Christ in service to communities across the nation to His glory.

We'd love to say more, but for now we wanted to let you know what's going on behind the scenes. 2012 is going to be a very exciting year! Stay tuned!