Faith E-News

An Interview with Steve Drake of Habitat for Humanity

September 9, 2020

Tell us what we need to know about your work at Habitat: some nuts and bolts and how you think we are doing good for the community. My title is Vice President of Homeowner Services and our department interacts with current and future homeowners on various levels. We coordinate our Habitat H… Read more

An Interview with Rev. Cameron Barr on Creation Care

February 7, 2020

Rev. Cameron Barr has been the Senior Pastor at United Church of Chapel Hill (UCCH) since March of 2018. I sat down to speak with him because his congregation has an enthusiastic and intentional approach to creation care. I am thankful for Rev. Barr’s time, UCCH’s support of Habitat, and UCCH’s presence and work on this issue in Chapel Hill. Below is an edited selection of the comments and questions.  Read more

The Nonprofit and the Congregation: Building Bridges and Putting Worship to Work

December 3, 2019

All humans, in their own way, sense the gaps in our social fabric, the places where people, even whole families, fall through the structure that societies build up to take care of those who live and work in a community. There are numerous powers and complex problems that lead to these gaps. Martin Buber said in 1930 that the person of faith “feels [these gaps] against his skin, he tastes it on his tongue, the burden of the unredeemed world lies on him.” This sensitivity to those being left behind has been a call to worshipping congregations and mission-minded organizations to fill in where society has lapsed. Congregations and nonprofits are guided by fundamentally different ways of thinking and working: one is driven by a vision of the world that comes out of faithful worship, and the other driven the idealism, efficiencies, practical needs, and virtues of a mission. Both of these engines, worship and mission, drive institutions into the community and sometimes into partnerships with one another. Indeed, the relationship between congregations and nonprofits is often assumed but not wholly considered. This article, then, is an attempt to take a fresh look at these relationships and how they come together on behalf of a community. Read more