One of our main objectives in Hey Neighbour is that it is a grassroots campaign. We see the churches and organisations we partner with as contributors rather than consumers and view you as a key part of the conversation and growth of this project. There are different levels you're church can contribute to Hey Neighbour.
Our goal is that Hey Neighbour would be a tool for local churches across the Illawarra to help reach their surrounding community in a simple yet effective way, we hope that Hey Neighbour would be a practical asset as we continue our transition from the building to the people.
Here is how you can get involved:
Be sure to fill out our sign up form: If you are a church who is interested in joining Hey Neighbour, we would love to have you on board (click here). If you are an individual looking to help out in some capacity there are still a number of roles open for volunteers (click here).
You'll nominate a person from your church that can liaison. This person will be our Hey Neighbour ambassador to your church and carry out all the logistics for your congregation. We will provide the protocol, training and a model structure to make this process as easy as possible. Your liaison will also be updating the Hey Neighbour project coordinator on their process. Their role will include at a minimum can be to partner with us in prayer. In addition to this there's an option for:
Prayer coordinator: be the contact person for all prayer requests and;
Connection Coordinator: oversee your local community engagement and look after individuals looking to get connected into your congregation. You can decide within your own team whether or not to have one liaison or divide the roles amongst a number of volunteers.
We will display your church logo on our website Illawarra.community so that when members of the community come to our page they can connect the dots. We also ask that you display our logo on your website for this same reason.
We have created this blog as an information-sharing portal which will be our "knowledge base" for all information, resources, sign-ups and directories. We are also working on making a restricted blog, specifically for members to download materials such as the call script and volunteer processes. This website will be what we later will direct members of the community as well.
IT'S FREE: yep no hidden traps here, Hey Neighbour is Together For The Illawarra's gift to you. We are passionate about seeing the church work together in unity for the betterment of our region. Each church involved will receive the following t-shirts and personalised flyers as a gift:
This is what Hey Neighbour is going to look like when we're up and running:
As the church moves from the building to the people we saw this time as an excellent opportunity to engage the everyday believer to be an answer to the needs in their local neighbourhood.
Each support group will adopt a suburb, wearing their t-shirts and distribute flyers. These groups will direct people to either illawarra.church, if they are looking for fellowship or illawarra.community if they are in need of any assistance.
Support groups will be committed to at least one area need: prayer, connection or community assistance.
For more information or resources click this link.