He’s using all of us –– regardless of how we got here.
God has deliberately tasked the Church with bringing hope to the world, our cities, and our neighborhoods.
Only Christ offers a radical hope that restores the brokenness infiltrating our homes and communities. And the Church is a community of people united to declare and demonstrate Christ to their neighbors.
When we engage our neighborhoods, we’re following Christ’s lead. He came to us:
“The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” – John 1:14, The Message.
In Ephesians 2, Paul uses hospitable language to describe the Church:
“You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a Home. He’s using us all- irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building.”
God’s church is a living, breathing Home.
When the church moves into the neighborhood, our neighbors identify us by our hospitable actions, not our street address.
God’s redemptive work in each of us, from poverty to prosperity, is the work of Home. We depend on each other to teach and learn the Homework, trusting that God keeps us on the same page.
We’re unified in a community committed to sticking around through life’s trials and errors. We’re in it for the long haul because God’s redemptive work will captivate us for a lifetime.
What does it look like when the church moves into the neighborhood?
We reached out to several local urban Christian leaders to learn how they’re meeting the needs of their communities.
What does a neighborhood church look like?
“Our job as the local church is to be this sacred space where heaven meets earth and to carry out his mission,” says Juan Carlos Morarie, Senior VP of Programming at World Impact. We “have to be prepared to meet people where they are, 24/7,” Bishop Bro Reams explains.
The church is in the mix, getting to know the neighbors.
“As a culture, we make assumptions quickly… I don’t know how we minister, empathize, and come alongside folks we don’t understand. We haven’t even spent a moment walking with them and understanding who they are. I want to be curious about what’s going on in my city, what’s going on around us,” Mr. Morarie says.
Neighborhoods are complex and nuanced.
Hope, life, pain, and struggle are all infused in its history.
When facing this reality, Megan Williams, a church planter in Detroit, offers her perspective: “We look at the negative and say, okay, how can I love you in this? And Jesus can heal you, and we can come to a place of revival here.”
When the church moves in, God transforms neighborhoods from neglect to restoration.
How do we meet the needs of our communities?
Practical Needs
Jesus moved into the neighborhood to tackle real needs.
We recognize Jesus in our marginalized neighbors who face seasons of hunger and homelessness (Matthew 25:35-40.) When we provide urgent necessities, our neighbors see Jesus in us.
Our leaders are creatively meeting the needs of their neighbors in impactful and winsome ways.
• Dr. Alvin Bernstein launched the first church-based vaccine clinic in Contra Costa County, California.
• Sabrina Saunders made healthcare information accessible through Q&A sessions with local doctors and therapists.
• Many churches get food to struggling neighbors through strategic partnerships with local not-for-profits, volunteers, food banks, and grocery stores.
• Pastor Shantell Owens developed Think Big, which offers tutoring, mentorship, trauma healing, and apprenticeships to learn practical job skills.
• Pastor Patricia Strong Vargas initiated Ghost Tires to raise awareness for safer streets. She worked with officials to install stop signs and enforce traffic laws.
• Pastor Chad Wooley coordinates secondhand swap meets to provide affordable resources.
• Pastor Will Vucurevich’s church hosts an annual car show for dads whose kids are involved in foster care so they can have supervised visits with their children.
Trauma Healing
Jesus moved into the neighborhood to set the burdened and battered free (Luke 4, The Message).
One of the most urgent needs is dealing with the fallout from trauma.
Our neighborhoods exist in a broken world. It’s only a matter of time before we experience trauma: brokenness in a relationship or life experience.
If we don’t properly heal, we get stuck. We stay burdened and battered. We’re lonely and isolated because of disconnected relationships.
“Often, the church is a space where the loneliness is most intensified, where people have experienced grief and trauma,” Dr. Bernstein notes.
But many of us have been taught to sweep things under the carpet instead of working through the brokenness. No wonder our neighbors are skeptical of our authenticity.
World Impact champions trauma healing. “Trauma healing gives a vocabulary to our shared experiences,” says Tyronne Pitre, grief and trauma specialist.
When the church moves in, God transforms the brokenhearted from hurting to wholeness.
Partnerships: Unity in Community
When the church moves into the neighborhood, it partners with other community members to work together and meet practical needs.
“If the church can figure out what it’s good at and do it well, and then link arms with other ministries, churches, government, whatever, that is the way to go about this,” says Daren Busenitz, SVP of Ministry Mobilization at World Impact.
We Partner With Other Churches
When we partner with churches in other zip codes, we’re living out our reality that we’re being built into God’s home. We reach a lost world together. Each of us is necessary to accomplish this glorious purpose.
“We’re so much more powerful when we’re together, and we’re so much more powerful when we’re clear about our vision and our agenda for our communities and congregations,” Ms. Saunders says.
We strategically pool our resources, pray for one another, and serve each other. Partnerships can thrive when we’re not afraid of cultural differences. Suburban churches have a lot to learn from urban churches.
We also come alongside our brothers and sisters who live in areas of the world where God is at work in communities with limited access to the gospel. God transforms restricted communities from subdued to spiritual awakening.
We Collaborate With Government Resources
We live alongside city council and school board members. They’re invested in empowering the neighborhood to thrive—we have this in common with them!
We can intentionally build relationships and networks so we’re aware of local resources and opportunities to serve. Government grants are often available to churches when they are well placed to meet community needs.
We Equip Local Leaders
Some leaders have already stepped out in faith.
They’re in our neighborhoods, trusting God with a vision. “A lot of them are bi-vocational, slugging it out; they’re doing as well as they can with very few resources. Our heartbeat is to get to them,” Mr. Busenitz says.
Other leaders are up and coming.
We’re raising leaders from unlikely places. We train marginalized neighbors and those incarcerated because we believe all things work together for good.
God uses each of us because of our experiences, not in spite of them. When we help these leaders find their fit, they’ll use their gifts to bring hope to their communities. They’ll have an outreach that is more powerful than anything we could have had without them.
“The Lord takes all of us,” Mr. Morarie says. “When we serve him, He doesn’t ask us to change. He just uses who we are.”
When the church moves in, God transforms leaders from excluded to equipped.
That’s hopeful news for us!
God graciously includes us in the home He is building, regardless of how we got here.
We are a part of the team that aims to eradicate the traumatic effects of sin in our urban neighborhoods and empower our cities to thrive.
Your prayers, donations, and encouragement allow leaders around the world to receive the training and resources they need to serve those in their communities.
