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10-8-06 -- Community Building
Giving at Thanksgiving
Last February, Buzz featured Earl Kinney and his unique ministry repairing bicycles and donating them to children in his community. In a few weeks, Kinney and more than 100 volunteers will lead another significant outreach of First Christian Church (Derby, Kansas)—a free Thanksgiving dinner for hundreds of senior adults.
Kinney and a small team began the annual dinner more than 25 years ago; he served as a deacon at First Christian and observed many older people receiving help through the church’s benevolence ministry. He placed an advertisement in the local paper, opening the dinner to every senior adult in the school district, and 75 people attended. As attendance grew, the event moved to the Derby Civic Center and then onto FCC’s campus. This November the church plans to host more than 250 people at the special holiday meal.
Many church members participate to make the occasion a success. Deacons cook, provide transportation, and take plates of food to shut-ins after the event. Musicians provide entertainment during the meal, and the kids serve food and clean up afterwards. Middle school and high school girls create decorations, including table settings, centerpieces, and one-of-a-kind placemats to provide a personal touch; one person at each table receives the centerpiece as a gift.
Kinney hopes to organize even more community awareness of the event this year. "It just keeps growing," he says. "We love to celebrate Thanksgiving together."
www.derbyfcc.org
Business of Urban Ministry
Almost 10 years ago, Englewood Christian Church, located near downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, created weekly opportunities for extended dialogue between church members on a variety of issues related to church life, Scripture, and mission. Through those discussions, Englewood members realized the church was not ministering effectively to its increasingly urban community.
"We believe many churches struggle with ministry in urban areas because of an incomplete theology," says Michael Bowling, preaching minister at Englewood. "The Bible plainly teaches that churches should be communities sharing life at deep levels. Without that, it’s difficult."
Together, the congregation developed a new philosophy of Englewood as a biblical community within Indianapolis—and started new initiatives to make that philosophy a reality.
"We asked ourselves, ‘What do community members do?’" Bowling says. "They live in houses, they work, they eat. Communities have activity and economies, so we began businesses to increase our capacity to help people with real issues like housing, employment, and having enough food."
The church created the Englewood Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit organization which today operates a lawn care service that mows many of the city’s parks, a bookkeeping service, a bookstore and publishing company that prints both original and classic books about Restoration history and its leaders, and more.
"Housing has been our largest enterprise," says Bowling. ECDC finds transitional housing for single parents, buys and rehabs existing properties, and helps neighborhood residents work through credit issues and often-confusing processes to become first-time home buyers in the neighborhood. In a paper about the initiative Bowling writes, "Those assisted range from the elderly to young newlyweds, from the healthy to the handicapped, from those who are upper middle class to the economically disadvantaged, and from lifelong city residents to a Guatemalan preacher."
Currently the corporation is administering federal grant money for Indianapolis and working with homeless shelters to find rental housing for needy families; the team also plans to buy its first commercial building in a redeveloping neighborhood. "We’ll rent out the space, and create the first ‘green roof’ building in the city," says Bowling. (Green roof buildings grow plants for food or other use on rooftops.)
Englewood uses similar community gardens to grow food and initially operated a food pantry as part of its community efforts. Today, the church works more intentionally with those needing food, partnering with a smaller percentage of families who are willing to discover the issues contributing to the need and chart long-term plans to solve the problem.
"Inner-city churches often operate food pantries or give away clothes, often to the detriment of that community because it’s not a long-term solution," says Bowling. "We don’t think it’s the wrong tactic in every case, but for us it proved ineffective."
Approximately 75 percent of Englewood’s members live downtown near the church building and ECDC’s activities. "We encourage people to live close, although it’s certainly not a requirement for participation in church life," says Bowling. "But with closer proximity comes more opportunities to care for each other."
www.englewoodcc.com
Jennifer Taylor, one of CHRISTIAN STANDARD's contributing editors, lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
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