"No Hungry Child" - Hector's Dream 
One of the uniquenesses of the Cathedral of Joy is our deep compassion for the poorest of the poor.
If you visit the Cathedral of Joy on any weekend of a month, any month of the year, you will almost certainly hear our excitement about the work in Honduras that our church is privileged to be involved in. We have built several schools, multiple homes, and an entire water system for one village. The Cathedral of Joy, working with the Honduran organization, Proyecto Aldea Global (Project Global Village), is helping the poorest of the poor help themselves. We have adopted five impoverished villages and are looking to soon adopt our sixth! Check out Tom Muhlbeier's Honduras blog for ongoing coverage of our work in Honduras.
Our slogan is "No Hungry Child". This is not just some religious idea. It's who we are. We are passionate about making missions the priority of the local church.
For over 12 years, our church operated a school, clinic, and feeding station for children who live in the Guatemala City Dump. We over that time, saw dramatic changes take place. We were blessed to build relationships with local and national government officials in Guatemala and consider ourselves honored to have encouraged them in helping their own people.
The Cathedral of Joy has spent decades discovering the best ways for us to be the hands and feet of Jesus in service of the poor. We have a specific strategy that comes directly from God's Word.
Geography: Local, U.S. and foreign. "But you will receive power when the Holy Sprit comes on you. You will be my witnessed in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8)
Target: Reach the world for Christ. Reaching out to people who don't know Christ and carrying out the mandate of Matthew 25.
A. Spiritual Responsibility: Reach the lost with the Good News. them with the Gospel. We help the churches there spiritually reach them. Preach and Disciples Matthew 28:19-20, Acts 1:8
B. Humanitarian Responsibility. Hungry, thirsty, stranger, need clothes, sick, imprisoned "little ones." These are weak ones...anyone that cannot help themselves, we are called to help them in the name of Christ. Matthew 25:35-40
Strategy: The local church is God's strategy.
Bill Hybels is correct when he says, "The local church is the hope of the world!" God's plan is to bring His followers together in families, or teams called the church, so we are convinced that the local church is God's primary strategy for missions. Para-church missions organizations should exist to help the local church accomplish its God-given call.
Model: We are clearly convinced that God has led the Cathedral of Joy to develop a model of missions that allows the local church to become "the hands of Christ". A real church cannot exist simply to bless encourage itself and grow stronger and stronger spiritually. In fact, spiritual strength will be measured by its passion and ability to reach out to a lost and hurting world.
Galatians 6:6b refuses to accept any kind of faith that does not express itself in acts of love. "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." Galatians 5:6b "...more blessed to give than receive." Acts 20:35 "Do unto others as you would have them do to you." Luke 6:31,
The Cathedral mission model is based on two fundamental Biblical directives:
(1) Spiritual Responsibility: It's our mandate, according to the priority of Acts 1:8, and Matthew 28:19-20, to present the Gospel to everyone who hasn't heard its message.
(2) Humanitarian Responsibility: That is, God cares for every human being, but especially those mandated in Matthew 25: 35-40...hungry, thirsty, need clothes, strangers, sick, imprisoned and all little ones (obviously the weak ones or any that cannot help themselves.)
It is extremely important to not let the church get lost in some vague model of missions. The Bible is clear, this whole issue of missions is a military matter. It is a war of good against evil. We believe that God has given us very specific strategies and models.
Essential to the Cathedral model is the circle of love. We believe that God has and will assign us to very specific areas. Our model, then, is to literally draw a circle around a community and be able to clearly commit ourselves to very specific and sacred goals.
For instance, our method in Honduras is what we call, "Adopt a Village", where God can help us to come alongside a village (especially the Christians in that village and working as much as possible with that local church to accomplish certain., precise goals.
These goals might include:
1) Building a school,
2) Building and upgrading homes,
3) Building or upgrading their water systems,
4) Upgrading their food supply through new farming and gardening methods, food storage methods, etc.
5) Developing a plan to help them upgrade their health and healthcare systems. Etc.
The Cathedral Plan
I. Visiting Mission Teams
A. Teen Teams mostly used to sensitize and educate our young people
B. Adult Teams
C. Building Teams
D. Medical Teams
E. Evangelistic Teams
F. Agriculture Teams
II. Ambassador Teams
Conspiracy of Hope For Children
Cathedral Missions
I. We can't do everything, but we can do something!
We actually believe that God can and does give a local church a specific, clear, workable and sustainable vision in missions. It desperately needs to be understood that this is a very unpopular belief in the evangelical Christian world today.
We are not against huge para-church mission organizations or any individual that comes along and wants to get a group of people together and make some kind of a mission trip. Such a mentality of missions can be a good thing even though the stewardship of how the money is spent and what long-term effects it might really have on helping people help themselves should be open to serious question.
What we are concerned about is the highly popular modern concept of missions can discourage and severely drain a local church of its possibilities of great impact for God.
II. The vision and strategy of the Cathedral of Joy is precisely about extremely poor children.
A. We would like to be able to help poor children but God has called us to target extremely poor children and this is a profound difference that must be grasp to understand our vision.
B. The God-given strategy of the Cathedral has a priority centered around Matthew 25 and requires us to feed the desperately hungry child. Secondly, to take care of the sick child with a huge emphasis on prevention...especially of malnutrition.
C. Our clear and precise vision and strategy quickly mandates that we accept responsibility over an area where we can be very accountable as to what we do and the effect it will have into the future.
D. Our current strategy involves "adopting a village" where we can step-by-step carry out a strategy to "help people help themselves."
III. Our most difficult challenge is to get good people to understand our mandatory focus to carry out our vision and not influence the church to divide and dissipate our clear and accountable goals.
For instance, anyone involved in the Cathedral mission team needs to understand that even slight new ideas or directions can not only be counter productive to our God-given church goals, but they can actually be devastating to the enthusiasm and investment of our church in accomplishing our precise calling.
If anyone has a new or different idea about direction of procedure of what our church does in missions, we will always be open to discussing and praying about anything to see if it may be God's new direction. The timing and the people approaching this matter can be used extremely divisive manner and so require a deep trust in our leadership teams.
It must be understood that it is extremely important that our local church accepts our calling to missions as a team. Please forgive us as we are not trying to question anyone's sincerity, but it is imperative to understand that any real team has leadership. In the middle of a game or a battle it's not the right of anyone to make decisions that might divert or discourage the team. Such individuals will quickly find themselves sitting on the bench at best.
We cannot over-emphasize how crucial it is to understand the Biblical models of church and leadership. We do not wish to judge, but there is a strong human tendency that Satan takes advantage of to cause division in any good and great dream.
Perhaps the hardest difficulty is for sincere individuals to understand that what seems to be minor new directions can become very divisive. Nothing is more important in this critical issue of following and accomplishing a team strategy then the flow of money.
It is our observation and experience that individuals must give up their sense of personal satisfaction and be certain that all giving is being done in the name of Christ and His church and carefully overseen and protected by the church leadership. If one feels that the strategy of the church/team leadership the most divisive thing possible is to suggest this to others instead of trusting the heart of church leadership with suggested changes.
Before anyone complains or tries to change the church strategies in missions, it seems only fair that they carefully consider what God is accomplishing through our local church. It also seems honest to consider what divisive and discouraging things have happened to churches that cannot carry out and effective missions strategy.