Loving Our Neighbors, Building Relationships in Kansas City, Missouri

 

by Patirck O’Connell

At Restore Community Church, Kansas City, Missouri, we call the intentional, outward-focused love of people “Reachout.” Through Reachout, we help align people with our mission of “Helping people find their way back to God” and mobilize them to become difference makers in their neighborhoods, cities, and world.

Reachout is not an agenda or a program; rather, it”s our response to God”s command to love others. Being intentional about carrying out Jesus” command to love our neighbors has helped us forge new relationships and provided us the opportunity to be more like Jesus.

We want to be like the God we worship who is relational at his core. We want to help people at Restore respond to the love of God by reaching out to others and entering into meaningful relationships with them.

It comes down to this: We want to challenge people to do more than just talk about the gospel; we want people to live it out.

Acts 1:8 gives us a model. It says, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” We are to be witnesses of the gospel in our neighborhood (Jerusalem), in our city (Judea), and internationally (the ends of the earth).

In Jerusalem . . . Serving in Our Neighborhoods

We began serving in our neighborhoods long before Restore launched.

In November 2007″”four months before launch””lead pastor Troy McMahon challenged our staff team to conduct 24 community service events. At our staff meeting, Troy went around the room and asked each of us to organize and lead four projects.

We invited members of our launch team to participate. In the weeks that followed, teams from Restore raked leaves, handed out hot chocolate at a local run, helped serve at a local food pantry””anything that was fun and might lead to relationships.

Since we are a fun-loving team, we agreed to begin holding block parties in our neighborhoods. These block parties have helped us connect with our neighbors. Arts director Tommy Bowman and his wife, Jessica, director of Kids City (our children”s ministry), have fostered deep relationships with their neighbors””people they now call friends””through block parties. These people now attend Restore, are part of our small groups, and contribute to the mission.

We also wanted to encourage people to pass along God”s love through random acts of kindness. We encouraged them to practice simple, kind acts, such as purchasing a cup of coffee for the person behind them in line at the coffee shop or helping load someone”s car with groceries at the market.

We created a way to help people serve called Servefest. Every third Saturday of the month we gather and do such things as hand out free sodas, sort clothes at a clothing closet, clean trash in a park, or serve lunch to the homeless. And we have a blast while doing it. Servefest has given many people their first opportunity to serve others, and it is creating among us a culture of serving.

In Judea and All Samaria . . . Impact Through Partnerships

We learned the power of partnerships long before launch.

We knew we couldn”t truly make a difference in the Northland (the community where we live) without finding and cultivating partnerships with other community agencies that shared our passion to change the world.

But we didn”t want to wait until launch.

After talking to some of our friends in the community, we learned that the Kansas City Rescue Mission needed donations of food for the homeless it serves.

We knew we”d need help. So we decided to ask our community to partner with us. We called the project Replenish.

We gathered our launch team and invited people from other churches to partner with us. On a blustery evening in November we went to 2,500 homes in the Northland with door-hangers and bags and asked people to fill them with food.

Wow””the community was generous. We gathered 300 bags of food. The director of the rescue mission was amazed when we unloaded all the food, which was much more than our church members alone could have donated.

We knew partnerships would become a key to our Reachout strategy. But we still had lots of questions. It was about this time we began receiving coaching from David Mills of Compassion by Design (www.compassionbydesign.com). He helped us take some key next steps in Reachout.

Mills challenged us to conduct a needs assessment of southern Platte County, so we did. Learning about and listening to the needs of our community immediately began to open doors for us. It helped us become more effective servants in our community.

In the assessment we interviewed key community leaders, educators, and business people. We also conducted surveys during community events. This strategy afforded us a presence at places the community was already gathered.

The assessment revealed that youth services, marriage, and family issues were areas of great need””the other issues are related to single mothers and environmental concerns. This inspired us to start talking about how we can partner with other organizations to make a difference in these areas. We”re not sure where this is headed but at least we know where we might be able to help most.

One partnership led to my encounter with Ruby.

I first met Ruby and her three kids at a block party our church was throwing with other community organizations in Kansas City, Missouri. She is African-American, a single mother, and grew up on the south side of Chicago. I am also from Chicago but that was about all we had in common. She shared some of the struggles in her life with me and asked about our church.

A couple of weeks later, Ruby visited Restore and soon she started attending a small group. After a few months, she was baptized, and now she”s on this journey with the rest of us.

Sue Ann, a teacher at Southeast Elementary and also a Restore attendee, was inspired by our efforts to serve the community. She told us about her school and some of the challenges it faces, given that it had the highest percentage of free and reduced-price lunches in the district. We asked school administrators if Restore could help gather school supplies for the upcoming year, and they said yes.

In July 2008 we conducted another Replenish event and again asked the community for help. We gathered 125 bags of supplies”“more than the school had room to store! Restore received a Community Partnership Award from the Park Hill School District for our help.

The school recognized Restore was serious about helping and invited us to be part of a community action group forming to help the hurting Northwood neighborhood adjacent to the school. The parents of kids who attended Southeast weren”t getting along, and this was having a negative effect at the school. Things were bad enough that the Kansas City Police Department classified the neighborhood as “high needs” and was often called to mediate disputes.

We proposed hosting a block party in the neighborhood with the goal of helping the parents get to know each other and offer them resources to resolve some of the conflicts.

Seventy people from Restore served food, played games with the kids, and helped distribute information to the residents. About 150 residents participated. During the event, one Restore attendee told our lead pastor, “I could literally see the darkness being lifted from the community.”

The block party had a real impact.

In the months that followed, police said service calls to the area dropped 35 percent. At a meeting in May, the police informed us they no longer consider the neighborhood “high needs.”

 

And to the Ends of the Earth . . . A Church in Haiti

Our partnership with C3 Missions International afforded us the opportunity to serve globally and plant a church in Haiti.

During the summer of 2008, several of our staff and Restore attendees traveled with C3 Missions International to Haiti to see their work with orphans. The experience was life altering. We began talking about building a church in Haiti.

On paper this seemed crazy””really crazy. After all, we were less than six months old. It was going to cost $50,000 to buy the land, build the facility, and plant the church.

But after several weeks of prayer, fasting, and dialogue, it became clear this is exactly what God wanted us to do. We simply had to take the risk.

So we decided to collect an offering in November 2008 and dedicate it to planting a church in Cavaillon, Haiti. We asked the people of Restore to partner with us.

That Sunday we collected $65,000, and an outside supporter gave $25,000, for a total of $90,000.

Our “campus” in Haiti is already having an impact. Fourteen people from Restore were present at the church dedication in April. That day our team witnessed the marriage of a young couple inspired by the church plant. They explained to the pastor that they had been living together but now wanted to get married and live life God”s way.

And we raised enough money over and above our goal to build three orphanages. Now 120 formerly homeless kids have hope.

 

Reachout Reverberates

Now that we”ve completed the needs assessment and have served our community in more than 60 events, touched more than 12,000 people with service projects, planted a church in Haiti, baptized 61 people, and helped a community reconcile its differences, God continues to open opportunities to make a difference through relationships generated by Reachout. We are planning our next campus launch in a nearby community in the spring of 2010. We know Reachout will continue to evolve as a catalyst for us to build relationships.

Reachout is really a series of events inspired by relationships. Had Sue Ann not told us about the needs of Southeast, we would not have done the school supply drive, and we wouldn”t have joined the community action group and hosted the block party, and I would not have met Ruby, and she might have never attended Restore and encountered Jesus.

 

 

Patrick O”Connell serves as church planter and director of Reachout for Restore Community Church, Kansas City, Missouri.