One Hope Tulsa is committed to creating flourishing neighborhoods by building resilience and sharing hope, and we are passionate about replicating our heart and mission in others. An essential part of spreading our mission happens through the summer internships we host. Because of the pandemic, we felt like there were too many uncertainties to go forward with our internship as normal. However, the need for resilience in our community is greater than ever, and we believe that doing community development work in the midst of current challenges will be a transformative experience for college students who want to learn about trauma-responsive ministry.
Please consider joining us for Giving Sunday, this May 17th, as we raise funds to support the Community Response Team. These funds are to cover the expenses of our Community Response Team, both the stipends of the team members and the outreaches the team will run, as well as the overhead of hosting the team.
We hope to bring in a smaller number of college students to join our staff for what we are calling the Community Response Team (CRT). The CRT will work together to innovatively meet the needs of our neighbors during this challenging time, creatively pursuing One Hope’s mission of helping our neighbors on the margins flourish by building resilience and sharing hope in our community. The CRT will be learning about the unique needs facing our community and being trained in One Hope’s trauma-responsive, local church-based, and community-focused approach to ministry. The team will have the opportunity to listen to our neighbors about their needs and will work through the challenge of developing relationally dense programming in the middle of a pandemic. We’re excited about responding to our community’s needs and serving alongside college students who we hope will be shaped by this experience of servant leadership.
We had 25 applicants for our internship this summer and had planned to accept around 20 or so of these incredible students. Because of COVID-19, our programs and outreaches for the summer need to be innovative and highly adaptable so we are bringing in a smaller team to join our staff in this work. We have 13 applicants for our CRT that we want to have join us this summer if we can. For the last 15 years or so, we have sought to raise funds to cover the special expenses of additional summer outreaches and hosting college students for a summer urban ministry leadership development internship. Normally that happens in late March or April. With the pandemic and the uncertainty around it, we postponed that and did not make the decision to go forward with the CRT until a couple of weeks ago. While we are bringing in a smaller team, we have increased expenses for housing the team and supporting them this summer.
Please pray with us that God would provide what we need for the summer. We think the need is at least $35,000 and may actually be more than that. We hope people will give willingly and joyfully and secretly as each one is led by the Lord. The $35,000 plus is in addition to our normal budget needs at One Hope, and we understand that this might seem like a staggering amount, especially in a time when the economy is so uncertain. But we believe the Lord has placed these ministries before us and it seems right to pursue Him to supply the means to carry them out.
