Abstract:
Since religious organizations are considered to be responsible both for the Creator and the
creature, they are expected to work to address both the spiritual and physical aspects of
people. Having this in mind, the main objective of study was to assess the practices in
mobilizing local resources for sustainable local community development, in Evangelical
Churches in mobilizing local resources, focusing on Addis Ababa Full Gospel local churches.
Both primary and secondary data collection instruments were used to collect data. Open ended questionnaires along with interviews and focus group discussions were employed for
data collection. The respondents were selected by using simple random sampling for target
population and purposive sampling method for concerned church officials and community
development professionals. Primary data were collected through questionnaires from 76
leaders, interviewees & focus group discussion participants; whereas, secondary data were
gathered from different sources like reports, books, journals, proclamations, and websites.
Although there are about 122 Full Gospel local churches in the study area, and have been
there for many years with different resource bases, they were found to be inactive in giving
integrated services in coordination with other local actors. The main focus of the targets was
found to be spiritual or religious lives of people and no significant contribution in addressing
the socio-economic life aspects of people both in their religious circles and beyond. Their
major reasons for these were found to be lack of awareness about holistic mission, absence of
system for local resource mobilization, and absence of readiness to create linkage with others
for common purpose. Thus, unless they give due attention and work to fill these gaps, sooner
or later, their mission may inevitably be challenged. That means, they are recommended to
enlarge their views towards church mission, and, create a strong system that works with
others for sustainable local community development.
