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A Partnership with the Community
Common Ground
Many congregations aspire to be an “externally focused church.” Capital
Area Christian Church (Mechanics-burg, Pennsylvania) is creating an externally focused campus.
After a move to 53 acres, Capital Area decided to transform much of its property into a community park that includes soccer and softball fields, hiking trails, an amphitheater, and a playground.
The church hired Leathers and Associates, a professional community playground builder, and worked with a local elementary school to ask kids about their dreams for the new space.
“One of the kids was just determined there needed to be a big shark,” laughs senior pastor Don Hamilton. “So Leathers designed a shark swing!”
After completing these initial plans, the team formed a steering committee of church members and community leaders, including the school principal, a professional grant writer, and representatives from the United Cerebral Palsy foundation.
“We wanted this project to be a partnership with the community from the very beginning,” Hamilton says, “and we wanted every area of the new playground to be 100 percent accessible to children with disabilities.”
The community involvement paid off; today more than 120 businesses and clubs have donated money, gifts in kind, or time to the Adventure Zone playground. Local Applebee’s restaurants organized an in-store fund-raiser and highlighted the project when accepting the Restaurant Association’s National Community Involvement Award in September. Twelve hundred volunteers worked in the rain during “build week” in May. The local vocational school designed a pavilion, a Rotary club donated the money to build it, and the high school’s landscape design class designed and planted the area.
“It’s one story after another,” Hamilton says. “Now we’re trying to continue partnerships with these organizations.”
Future plans include a snow-tubing hill, an ice hockey rink, and a corporate retreat center, all especially designed for the special needs community.
“We had planned on a nice little playground, and it’s exploded into this huge project,” Hamilton says. “Businesses, government officials, and nonprofit organizations have contributed. Our new campus is not just for the community—it’s by the community.”
www.capitalareachurch.com
www.adventurezoneplayground.com
God-casting
Like many churches, University Heights Christian Church (Indiana-polis, Indiana)—a church with a long history and faithful members—is in transition as it strives to build a new generation of leaders.
To facilitate this spiritual growth, University Heights now produces podcasts and Scripture CDs, a “My Spiritual Journey” quarterly publication, and weekly study guides.
“The CDs and MP3s simply feature a reading of the coming weekend’s key Scripture in NIV, NASB, and The Message versions,” says senior pastor Chris Little. “We encourage people to listen to the readings several times during the week.”
The quarterly piece includes tips on prayer, Bible study, and fasting, while the weekly “Dig Deeper” and “Prepare for Sunday” bulletin inserts suggest options for additional study. UHCC also offers the full written text of each week’s message online, in addition to podcasts of the weekly sermons.
www.uhccindy.org
Peace Together
The Austin (Texas) Forum on Christian Unity, held this July at Brentwood Oaks Church of Christ, attracted attendees from Restoration Movement churches throughout central Texas. Bruce Shields, professor emeritus at Emmanuel School of Religion (Johnson City, Tennessee), shared details of the event in a recent update for Emmanuel’s Envoy magazine.
The forum invited six presenters, two from each of the three main streams of the movement, to speak about the nature of the church and the nature and function of Scripture. The meeting also included a question-and-answer panel discussion and a joint Communion service.
About 200 people participated, some of whom shared stories “of congregations worshiping and serving in ways most of us would have considered impossible 20 years ago,” Shields writes. “We are beginning to realize that the actions, institutions, and attitudes that have divided us are not nearly so important as the faith that unites us.”
Forum planners hope to make this an annual event.
www.unity-christian.com
Jennifer Taylor, one of CHRISTIAN STANDARD's contributing editors, lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
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