Changing Signs and Signs of Change in a Tulsa Congregation

By Greg Taylor

In a little corner of Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the Garnett Church of Christ, we”re trying to be a sign of the kingdom of God in a way we never would have imagined three years ago.

Many churches in the past two decades have changed their names, removed the denominational “brand,” and called themselves community churches or “The River” or hundreds of other names.

We made a change to our sign, but for different reasons and with a much different approach. The efforts that go along with that change, and the results, have blown our minds. We”ve changed our approach to outreach in our community, so our sign now reads, “Green Country Event Center” (GCEC) on the top where our church name used to be. Farther down it says, “Home of Garnett Church of Christ.”

 

TRADING PLACES

The GCEC is not only our church meeting place but also home to dozens of organizations, businesses, and churches that rent and share our space. The event center is a redemptive business owned by Garnett Church of Christ. Through the center we”re practicing hospitality, making room for strangers, and inviting our neighbors to use our space.

Meanwhile, we”re calling Garnett Church members to minister not only “at church” but in their lives, jobs, and neighborhoods. And so we are “trading places” with our community.

We want to interact with our community and fellow Christians in a revolutionary way, perhaps in ways our nondenominational forebears would be proud to see. So we”ve welcomed many Christian groups to worship in our facility.

For example, the Worldwide Pen-tecostal Fellowship not only has meetings in our place, but also now rents office space.

Another church that wants to “love Tulsa” and reach young adults for Christ is planting a church and is using our high school room that our students are very proud of””but are also willing to share. So “Doxachurch” comes in after our students are finished with class; it is reaching a 20- to 30-somethings crowd that we are not reaching very well in our church.

We”re all learning to share and be friends with and learn from our neighbors who are joining us. We”re trying to accept that God has given us a great gift of a facility that has rental space, and we believe it”s not just a business but a mission, a new reality that we are living out in our own way. We believe this is a new restoration lived out in a 21st-century way. As we approach other Christians and our community, we are expanding our view of the kingdom of God and the breadth of how God is working in people all around us.

No, we don”t express our faith in the same way as Pentecostals or Catholics, but we reject the notion that we ought to spend energies to “correct” them. We believe they are intelligent enough to read the Bible and come to faithful conclusions just as we believe we can.

 

PEOPLE NOT LIKE US

But our welcome is not limited to professed believers and definitely not just “people like us.” We host Hindu weddings and Hmong New Year”s parties as well as dozens of Quinceañera (the Mexican 15th birthday celebration) each year. In this way, we find ourselves rubbing shoulders with people much different from us. We rejoice that for the first time ever, some Hindu people are getting to know Christians, and while we host them, many of our congregation are getting acquainted with the Hindu people for the first time.

This year we”ll host more than 100 civic and religious groups, businesses, and schools, and nearly 20 of those groups have some kind of long-term or weekly presence in our facility. We”re opening up to the community”s agenda and welcoming them into our space, rather than simply using our space for our own agenda.

Most of these organizations pay rent to use our facility. They do not expect a free place and we are glad to share expenses for our facility with them! Tulsa”s Union School District GED and ESL programs rent our entire adult classroom space Monday through Friday.

One GED teacher told our church about four pregnant women in her classroom. Together with this public school, we hosted a shower, and the women and teachers were “overwhelmed,” in the words of one of the recipients of the shower. Marilyn Sparks, a school official, said she saw in this shower a version of the church she”d never seen before and was amazed.

 

HANDS AND FEET OF JESUS

We have not set out to twist arms of our tenants to come to worship. But many do visit, and we”re very happy they do. On the other hand, we share freely the mission of our church, to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world, and people are excited to understand what would cause a church to take this unique approach.

A church-sponsored bilingual school is helping us partner in service with a large Hispanic population in our vicinity. The fire station across the street sends over firefighters for Spanish classes taught by one of our bilingual teachers from Peru.

Some people ask us, what is your goal with all this? Our goal is to be hospitable and invite our neighbors into our place. By allowing space for other agendas from our own, our view of the kingdom of God and God”s activity is expanding like the universe, without limits and in ways that seem random but that we see God”s hand in daily.

Alcoholics Anonymous has monthly regional meetings at our place. They have a “Big Book” we can learn from. Hindu people can teach us much about community. Our Hispanic friends teach us much about what it”s like to be “aliens in a foreign land” and work hard to survive in a new country.

We don”t exactly know what”s around the corner for us, but we”re trying to walk faithfully and as good stewards of what God has given us. When a group comes to us and says they want to plant a church, we”re thankful people with vision and energy and faith come to our place, because we”ve been talking for several years about planting churches. We just didn”t know it would be others helping plant those churches in our own facility.

We”re amazed every day at what God is doing through our Green Country Event Center. We set out to bring change in our community, but our church body has been transformed by our community partners who have joined us in this amazing crossroads of God”s activity in our little corner of the world.

Perhaps for you, the context and community is much different, but the question is the same: Is your church a welcome sign of the kingdom of God? If not, are you willing to change your sign?

 

 

 

Greg Taylor is associate minister with Garnett Church of Christ in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and managing editor of New Wineskins magazine (www.wineskins.org).