Christians Supporting
Community Organizing (CSCO) is a bold national attempt to
change the relationship between the theologically
conservative parts of the Protestant church and community
organizing.
from the report by USC's Center for Religion and Civic
Culture (Fall, '99). For entire report see CSCO website in
"About Us."
PURPOSE
The purpose of Christians
Supporting Community Organizing (CSCO) is to work for the
shalom of our society (Jeremiah 29:7) and of our churches by
engaging Evangelical, Holiness and Pentecostal churches in
congregation-based community organizations. To work for the
shalom is to work for systemic/ structural justice within
our communities and churches. By engaging in this work, we
are seeking to bring all of life under the Lordship of
Christ.
MISSION
The mission of CSCO is to
motivate, enable and support churches and pastors of
Evangelical, Holiness and Pentecostal traditions to become
active members of regionally- and nationally-networked
congregation-based community organizations in their city.
Christians
Supporting Community Organizing,
Christians Supporting Community
Organizing,
P. O. Box 60123
Dayton, OH 45406
www.cscoweb.org
Leadership
Dr.
Stephen Mott,
Dr. Dick Righter,
Dr. Wally Tilleman
Dr. Norman Wetterau
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Boston
Branch at CUME
The
Boston Branch again held all-day workshops as the conclusion
of a required seminary course on “Church and
Community” at the
Gordon-Conwell Center for Urban Ministerial Education (CUME).
The
workshop provides a biblical grounding for Faith Based
Community
Organizing (FBCO) and identifies its strategy. The
course was run in
both spring and fall this year with a total of 53 students
of whom 32
were African-American, Hispanic, or Asian-American.
Many of them are
already urban church leaders.
CSCO
Relates to Organizers
The
organizers of the InterValley Project in CT, MA, NH, and ME
received an introduction workshop by our Boston Branch.
It
demonstrated our approach in instructing EPH leaders in the
biblical
basis of FBCO. Several of the organizers were EPH or
came from that
background. They were pleased with the biblical
thoroughness of our
approach, rather than proof-texting. At least two will
have us do a
workshop in their organization.
Website
Progresses
www.cscoweb.org
In
the last four years we have had over 53,000 hits. We are
running about 15,000 hits per year now. Our largest
numbers come through our Google advertising – the
largest number (4.830) or 55% of Google hits came from our
ad , “Free Bible Studies on Social Justice.” “Free
Memory Verses on Social Justice” ad got 3,000 hits.
CSCO-Discuss
Are you aware of the CSCO-Discuss email list?
This list provides more regular updates about CSCO. You
can discuss your ideas with others. We encourage you to
join the list if you’ve not yet joined. To subscribe,
send an email message from the email address that you want
to use for the list to:
CSCODiscuss
- [email protected]
2006 Annual Meeting
The annual meeting was an
experiment in meeting in conjunction with another
organization. In this case it was the urban congress
of SCUPE (Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral
Education). It worked well. The pre-Congress
workshop by Bob Linthicum on empowering the poor that we
cosponsored with Partners in Urban Transformation was well
attended.
As result of our workshops and our exhibit
throughout the SCUPE
meeting, a couple of dozen names were added to our mailing
list and a dozen names to CSCODiscuss.
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