There Is A Need | Insight from Mark Newman

If there is one thing I have learned about community development since moving to Memphis, it is that there is a need. I know that sounds like an obvious answer, but for me, I have lived a very comfortable lifestyle, in comfortable places, with nothing to bring the need for community development to my awareness.  

Before moving here to Memphis and starting my job at SOS, if someone asked me what community development meant, aside from context clues of the actual words I wouldn't have been able to tell you what that looks like or how to go about developing a community at all.

I was raised in a Christian home with two loving parents. I was taught the importance of loving your neighbor and our call to serve. However, I have always seen that as more of a one on one, person to person situation with no big picture in mind.

Now I am working at SOS where community development is the base on which we use to glorify God and further His Kingdom.  My job also allows me to see and work side by side with other community development groups with the same goal and mindset as SOS. Through this, I am really able to see both the need and some of the results of that mission.

My wife and I are also able to live in Binghampton, one of our target communities at SOS. In doing so, we are given the opportunity to invest even more into our community and neighbors and serve them in a more personal relational way. God has been opening door after door, bringing me to where I am now. He blessed me with this job at SOS and gave my wife and I the opportunity to live in a house in Binghampton. He has placed me in this community of people, all with the same heart for developing these communities. Through all of this He has opened my eyes to see the real need for community development here and I am beyond grateful for His plan and that I am a part of it.