By Chris Moon
The Englewood Community Development Corporation—founded by Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis—has launched a major initiative aimed at bolstering churches in its own backyard and beyond.
The ECDC’s “Cultivating Communities” hopes to help churches discover who they are, where they are, and how they can contribute to the common good in the location God has placed them.
The effort has both local and national components and is funded by a pair of Lilly Endowment Inc. grants totaling $2.5 million.
The ECDC, which has worked extensively in anti-poverty initiatives in the Near Eastside of Indianapolis during the past 25 years, sees the effort as critical in what’s been a difficult season for the church in the United States.
“Churches everywhere are struggling,” said Josh Livingston, ECDC’s director of congregational engagement. “Churches everywhere are asking themselves what’s going on.”
He noted church attendance has declined across the country and that churches and their members have developed new “habits” because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many churches have real questions about what it means to be a church today.
Locally, the ECDC is collaborating with Indianapolis congregations committed to anti-poverty work in their neighborhoods. It will connect those congregations to community groups already doing anti-poverty work and teach congregations about the best ways to serve people seeking to get out of poverty.
Nationally, the ECDC is seeking to help churches discern how they’ve been shaped historically, culturally, and theologically. It will engage cohorts of churches in a formational process to revitalize the inner life of each congregation and enable them to bring a more faithful public witness to the outside community—all while making room for the Holy Spirit’s work.
“We believe God is up to something profound here, not just with us, but with the church,” Livingston said. “And we are simply trying to be faithful by fanning the flame of God’s Spirit.”
BUILDING THE CHURCH AND COMMUNITY
The aim isn’t far off from what Englewood Christian Church did 25 years ago when it founded the ECDC.
Back then, the church was seeking to repopulate an inner-city area of Indianapolis following a period of urban flight.
The church originally hoped to bring its members back to the neighborhood. Only about 10 percent lived near the church building.
The effort accomplished its mission. Today, about 80 percent of the church’s membership lives in the neighborhood.
“We really recognized we needed a change internally,” said Joe Bowling, executive director of the ECDC and a member of Englewood Christian Church. “We needed to more closely become a family and community and economy as a congregation—to first be a family together, to be a real community together.”
The ECDC discovered a church is never isolated from its surrounding community. And in the process of digging into ways to serve the community, the ECDC has flourished.
The organization now owns and operates about 175 housing units at apartment buildings and rental homes in the Near Eastside of Indianapolis. It also has a community development arm that bolsters job creation efforts in the area.
The nonprofit ECDC, which is independent from the church, now has 19 employees. It is housed on the second floor of the Englewood Christian Church building.
CONNECTING WITH CONGREGATIONS LOCALLY
The newly launched Cultivating Communities initiative is expanding the scope of the ECDC.
In its local component, the initiative has gathered support from 20 community development and faith-based organizations as the ECDC connects with Indianapolis faith communities to discuss how to create economic mobility in their neighborhoods.
Churches are the main emphasis, but other faith organizations are invited to participate as well.
“I see our role as assisting congregations in understanding the importance of being rooted in place and being connected in reciprocal and life-giving ways to their low-income neighbors,” Bowling said.
He said the initiative will connect congregations to trusted community economic development partners. It also will teach them about existing “economic mobility strategies” already in place and encourage them to design their own.
“This can take an infinite number of forms,” Bowling said.
A congregation, he said, might want to support local entrepreneurs through micro loans. Or it might seek to start or expand a childcare center for working families.
Later this year, Bowling said, the ECDC will identify “six to eight congregations and their neighborhood partners and work toward creating and then implementing neighborhood-based strategies over a multi-year period.”
HELPING CHURCHES NATIONALLY
Nationally, the Cultivating Communities initiative is focused exclusively on Christian congregations.
It will identify two cohorts of three to five congregations—one in a densely populated area of Chicago and one in a more rural setting in eastern Tennessee. Those two cohorts of churches will embark on a three-year congregational formation process.
“They’ll be going through a process of continuing practicing conversations together and learning how to talk as a body,” said Katy Lines, a pastor at Englewood Christian Church, who is helping with the ECDC initiative.
Lines said the purpose of the cohorts is to help lead churches to become genuine faith communities, where members don’t attend simply to obtain the traditional “religious goods and services” but instead see themselves as part of the church and larger community.
In this, the churches will look for the various “assets” they have—from people to real estate to expertise to experience. From that, they can develop plans to reach into their communities with those assets.
The point is not to duplicate what Englewood Christian Church did 25 years ago when it founded the ECDC. Instead, the churches’ own contexts will define their mission for them—telling them who they are and what makes their place unique.
“They’ll be going through a variety of different practices to hone what that looks like,” Lines said.
New cohorts will be started as the project continues, and the hope is the initiative can be sustained indefinitely.
Mike Bowling, a pastor of Englewood Christian Church, said the effort goes beyond simply finding a “technique” that works in revitalizing a church and reaching out to a community. What’s really needed, he said, is a recognition of the need for “radical discipleship.”
“I think that’s the hope of the work,” he said.
Chris Moon is a pastor and writer living in Redstone, Colorado.
0 Comments