Apartment Life Cares Teams are an interesting ministry more churches and apartment management firms should know about!
According to the Apartment Life, churches tend to focus their ministry on homeowners, not apartment dwellers. While outreach programs may target homes and subdivisions, apartment dwellers often go uncontacted by churches.
In response to this need, Apartment Life recruits teams to live in these complexes, sponsor events and do lifestyle evangelism and direct participants to Jesus Christ and the local church.
The complex benefits because they have two people who are tasked to minister to th complex and boost the complex’s sense of community and improve the overall quality of life in the complex. Cares Team volunteers receive a reduced cost apartment and volunteer 70 hours per month (35 each) to service inside the complex. Cares Teams members can receive financial incentives to complete an 18 month assignment and serving a longer term to reduce turnover.
It’s a great opportunity for ministry, it’s a great opportunity for the apartment complex, and it could be a good opportunity for a church to consciously reach out to a nearby apartment community.
Presently, Cares Teams are limited to large apartment complexes in the Southwest. But if your church is situated near a large complex, it may be possible to arrange to support a team.
If that’s not possible, but a church has decided to reach a nearby community of apartment dwellers, some churches may want to use a service used by local businesses who target apartment dwellers… a company that sells Apartment Complex mailing lists.
Many churches spend money every month to mail to “new movers”. Apartment mailing lists involved a one time fee. While the residents change, the addresses themselves don’t change. Churches who reach out by mail can purchase the list once and mail repeatedly. This works best when there are one or more large complexes near the church. The mailing should be part of a larger plan of systematic outreach.
If it’s a small complex a church could simply go to the mailboxes and write down the street, complex name, and box numbers.
Cares Teams are a great idea and remind us of a need to reach “unreached” people groups all around us - in apartment complexes, trailer parks, and other easily overlooked places filled with people who may not be wealthy enough to register otherwise. On the flip side, missionaries in many places report that it’s the more “economically challenged” who respond more favorably to the Gospel. Why? They have no money to idolize and need God’s help!
Churches near an Apartment Life Cares Team may be able to “adopt” a Cares Team or provide volunteers for a Cares Team and, in return, reach into that Apartment Complex.
Apartment Management firms who want to increase renter satisfaction, increase the complex’s sense of “community”, provide an inexpensive form of community care, and provide activities and other programming for their residents should contact the Apartment Life to sponsor one of their own Cares Teams.
All churches should ask themselves if there are overlooked people near them who need the Good News?
