TAKES THE TOWN

What Going On In Other Communities?

One of the important things we have learned this past year is that sharing the Takes the Town (TTT) strategy with community leaders has proven to be helpful because they are able to put what they want to accomplish in perspective, even if they are not able to do everything in the model at once.

For example, when leaders at New Birth Church in Atlanta (Dekalb County) saw the strategy, they didn’t think they could embrace the entire scope of the TTT strategy, but seeing the entire strategy enabled them to choose one area to impact—education. They said after they have conquered that area, they would try for another. Their second choice was media. Their next move is to meet with leading churches and share the educational goal.

Green Forest is another large church in Dekalb. They do a major TLW rally every year with about 3,500 students and parents. They want to advertise their TLW conference even more locally and next year combine with more churches.

We are encouraging these two large churches to work together to support what each wants to do. New Birth will send some of their leadership to Green Forest’s TLW event and Green Forest will help New Birth to get abstinence education in Dekalb County schools. Also, both churches are interested in youth, parent, and youth leader leadership training. In the leadership training, all of the above groups will receive basic leadership and media training, as well as other skills that will inspire other people and/or congregations to take on other aspects of the TTT strategy.

If over the next year there is abstinence education in Dekalb schools, a media campaign, more cooperation between the large congregations and hundreds of youth, parents, and workers trained, we believe some very positive things will happen. These churches all have national networks in practically every inner-city area in America.

In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, we have seen some major breakthroughs. Fifteen churches are on board for six youth, parent and youth leadership training events. The cooperating churches are committing to have leaders from their churches attend all six leadership events. Six of the churches will host one event each. The purpose of the trainings is:

1. To provide a sense of unity between the churches. Each church will ask that a group from that church commit to the entire process... to attend each of the monthly training meetings and take a role in the kick-off event and/or community strategy to follow beginning in August, 2007, and lasting the entire year.
2. To build a spiritual bond through worship that will be prepared by the host church.
3. To keep the vision of Takes the Town firm in the hearts and minds of those involved.
4. To give updates about the building of a coalition and the August, 2007, kick-off event.
5. To build the community coalition.
6. And of course, training. We are currently working with a small group of youth ministers in developing the training section of each of the rallies.

In Dillon, Montana, the directors of the Clark Canyon Bible Camp near Dillon are spearheading a TTT strategy by building a youth and parent leadership team. With Dillon being such a small town, they are working toward each church electing a team of parents, youth, and workers to go on a retreat at the camp. The purpose of the retreat is to get a feel from those present about the problems the kids are facing in Dillon and begin to pray about how God can use them to change the town through promoting purity in the church and abstinence from sex, drugs, and alcohol in the community. Dillon will follow the retreat with monthly meetings similar to those in Tuscaloosa.

Through the local Pregnancy Center, the community in Valdosta, Georgia, has one of the best purity rallies anywhere. Leaders in Valdosta are expecting the number of parents to double to 600 this year. We have been talking with them about developing a strategy and they have begun to make plans. They also want to assist other smaller South Georgia towns.

Tampa Bay, Florida, is in the process of building a Web site for communication between youth organizations that want to publicize their abstinence programs.

We Want to Hear from You!
If your community is involved in some aspect of TTT but is not on this list, we would love to hear from you! Please send us a summary of what is happening in your area and we will add it to our growing list of communities involved in Takes the Town.