These organizations provide as many services as they can, depending on their funding, and can range from food, shelter, clothing, and counseling, to referral services only. These organizations require at a minimum a director and office administrator. Large organizations will offer a greater breadth of jobs from counselors and social workers to communications, accounting, and customer service representatives. Most of these operations depend on a large number of volunteers to assist in carrying out their missions, and so need a volunteer manager to recruit, train, and manage the volunteers.
Large organizations function like any business. The only differences are that the organization’s mission is not to make money, but to serve the community, and all monies the organization receives must be put back into the organization in some form.
All of these organizations can be a branch or part of a denomination. For example, Catholic Social Services and Lutheran Social Services offer financial assistance to low income residents. Churches may have homeless shelters, after school tutoring programs for youth, and job search assistance for the unemployed. While a great many of the workers of these programs are volunteers, they do hire full- and part-time employees for various professional, leadership, and administrative roles. If you feel drawn to a certain population of people and wish to improve their situations or living conditions, acquiring a position at a mission, ministry, or non-profit faith-based organization may be a good decision for you.
The overall outlook for jobs at missions, ministries, and non-profit Christian organizations is very good. The U.S. Department of Labor Statistics says that by 2018 the number of jobs at non-profit organizations is expected to increase by 40 percent over 2008 levels. The segments with the highest growth are those performing social services