Community Outreach

Community Outreach helps churches and believers love their neighbors with practical compassion and gospel clarity. Explore Bible-based articles on serving local needs, building relationships, partnering with community organizations, and creating outreach ministries that are sustainable and effective. You’ll find guidance on evangelism, mercy ministry, hospitality, and engaging your city with wisdom—so outreach is more than an event and becomes a way of life. Whether your church is starting new initiatives or strengthening existing ones, these resources equip you to serve your community in Jesus’ name.

February 27, 2019

Christian Standard

Develop These 4 Habits to Increase Your Outreach

By Emily Drayne  I’m a missionary . . . and you are too. Missionaries look to make a difference in a community. It’s simply not true that a missionary must relocate to a new country. There are more “home”-based ministry efforts than ever before working in local communities, in inner cities, in children’s homes, on Native American reservations, and elsewhere. Where can you and the people you lead get involved? This year I’ve personally committed to being a “missionary” where God has placed me. I’ve written out some foundational steps I’m pursuing along this journey that I want to share

February 2, 2019

Christian Standard

Rewritable

By Brian Jennings “Man, I don’t have any rewritable CDs. I don’t think anyone still has rewritable CDs.” My words failed to calm him down. De-escalation seemed impossible. He got louder and angrier. He took a step forward and I was thinking, It’s about to go down—right here, right now. Twenty minutes earlier I’d asked my friend, José, if he wanted to walk from our office to my favorite lunch spot in the neighborhood. I was in the mood for Korean food—I’m always in the mood for Korean food. About a half-mile of worn-out parking lots and side streets separated

February 2, 2019

Christian Standard

Eyes on the Community: Bayside Church

By Mel McGowan  We serve a God of purpose and strategy, and we are called by him to be strategic with our resources and the stories we tell the world. The leadership of Bayside Church in Northern California found itself in a property predicament. The church owned three types of land: property that needed developing, property it was leasing, and property it didn’t make sense to sell. These properties all required strategic money management and planning to transform them into spaces that honored God and were inviting to the community. So pastor Ray Johnston created an ambitious master plan designed

December 7, 2018

Christian Standard

New Vintage Church Restores Historic Theater for Church and Community

By Mel McGowan   How’s this for a metaphor? An old movie theater sits abandoned and crumbling on a street corner. It was originally built to bring joy and entertainment to the people of a town. But the years haven’t been kind. Fire and poor upkeep stole its luster. Big cinemas down the street killed its business. For a while, it survived as an adult movie house. Thirty years passed, and apart from the rats, nobody wanted anything to do with The Ritz. Sound familiar? This story could be the illustration for any sinner’s life. Yours? Mine? But it’s also

November 28, 2018

Christian Standard

Discovery Church Provides Land for Low-Income Housing

By Jim Nieman Discovery Christian Church in Broomfield, Colo., is playing a role in helping to solve a low-income housing problem in its well-to-do region north of Denver and east of Boulder. The church is providing a zero-cost lease of about 1.25 acres to Flatirons Habitat for Humanity to build four triplexes for 12 low-income families. The homes will be affordable and energy-efficient, according to an article in the Broomfield Enterprise. “[Lead pastor] Steve Cuss is the catalyst for this,” said Tom Morris, executive pastor of Discovery. “He has worked extensively with the [local] government asking, ‘What are some problems

August 12, 2018

Christian Standard

StoneBridge Christian Church: Building Bridges to God and the Omaha Community

By Mel McGowan StoneBridge Christian Church in Omaha, Nebraska, strives to serve as a metaphorical bridge to God, one another, and the community. Omaha is a vibrant, thriving community situated between prairies and mountains. StoneBridge’s visionary leadership team wanted to capture Omaha’s uniqueness as part of their story and reflect that energy through their facilities. StoneBridge’s team is dedicated to social compassion, relevance, authenticity, friendliness, and approachability; they desired to bring their facilities into alignment with their philosophy. They wanted to create a space that was inviting, comfortable, and fun. My journey with StoneBridge began in 2009 while I was

August 11, 2018

Christian Standard

Next-Door Urban Ministry

By Lancelot Schaubert “I understand that Haiti is hurting: It’s the whipping boy of the world.” My friend winced, and I immediately knew I’d used a poor metaphor. “It’s that,” he said, “but it’s all of these people”—he pointed to fellow Christians leaving a church—“going to Haiti on extravagant mission trips and doing nothing for the Haitian next-door.” We were standing on a street in Manhattan while eating pastrami sandwiches and kettle chips. He offered me the final piece of a puzzle that has slowly formed over the last few years of our bizarre ministry in New York City. It

August 11, 2018

Jerry Harris

Reaching Out to the Homeless and Hurting in Hollywood, Florida

God pulled a neighborhood kid with a rough upbringing out of that life into a new one at Hope Church of Christ By Jerry Harris “Jehovah-jireh means, ‘in the mountain it shall be seen.’ You have to climb the mountain first,” says Alvin Daniels, senior minister of Hope Church of Christ in Hollywood, Florida. “It will take power, effort, and strength to get to the top. But once you’re up there, God will provide the vision for which you had to go up there in the first place. You can’t see it from the foot of the mountain.” Daniels wasn’t

July 4, 2018

Christian Standard

Serving Ice Cream to Serve the Community (plus News Briefs)

By Chris Moon Momentum Christian Church in Georgia has found that ice cream is a good way to reach the community. The church takes its ice cream truck into the community to serve various events and found it’s an easy way to meet and serve its neighbors. “It is a fun way for us to serve our community,” the church’s website says. “It is a great way for children to participate in transforming our families as well.” In March, for example, the ice cream truck was on site at a local Easter egg hunt that served special-needs children and their

June 20, 2018

Christian Standard

Members Use Homes for One-Another Ministry (plus News Briefs)

By Chris Moon After studying the book of Acts, members of East Win Christian Church in Memphis, TN, were challenged to put what they learned into action. The church hosted a campaign to encourage church members to use their homes in the same manner as the earliest Christians—for meeting together, eating together, and encouraging one another. As a means of measuring progress, the church placed a container in its lobby and asked members to drop a seashell into it for every person they invited into their homes. This was to symbolize that church members had “broken out of their shells”

March 14, 2018

Christian Standard

Worn-Out Boots and Real-Life Ministry

By Mel McGowan   Real Life Ministries in Post Falls, Idaho, strives to meet people where they are and then walk a mile or even a lifetime alongside them. This church does not attempt to impress its community but, rather, exposes its own raw, real character to draw in “messy, ordinary people.” My company learned this firsthand when we presented a storyboard to them that included a photo of nice, new work boots, and the church leaders’ immediate pushback was that the boots wouldn’t be theirs. That’s because the shoes they walk in would be a pair of boots borrowed

February 14, 2018

Christian Standard

A Night for “Kings and Queens” to Shine

By Justin Horey On the evening of Friday, February 9, limousines will line up in front of Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena in coastal Florida. As guests in tuxedos and gowns make their way down the red carpet toward the entrance, cameras will flash and onlookers will yell, “You look great!” “We love you!” Some of the honored guests will be in wheelchairs. Some will use walkers. Others will struggle to speak. On this night, the occasion is not an award show or a celebrity gala; it’s “Night to Shine,” a prom-style formal event for people with special needs created by

August 31, 2017

Christian Standard

Free Indeed: Crossroads Christian Church, Joliet, Illinois

By Justin Horey Joliet, Illinois, is a prison town. The Joliet Correctional Center opened in 1858 and housed inmates for nearly 150 years until it was closed in 2002. The prison shaped Joliet”s culture for a century and a half, even bringing fame and notoriety; it served as the setting of the opening scene in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers and the site of the first season of the Fox television drama Prison Break. Even though that prison has been closed for 15 years, the Statesville Correctional Center remains open just outside of town, so the prison influence continues.

August 21, 2017

Christian Standard

The Urgency of Sledgehammering Strongholds

(This is a sidebar to “LOVEtheLOU: Demonstrating and Declaring the Gospel in North St. Louis.”) By Walt Wilcoxson It”s not a tree you would pick to help beautify your yard. The bark on much of the trunk is gone, carved away, no doubt, by knives of North St. Louis neighborhood kids as a way to mourn the loss of a friend shot down in the street. On the bare wood are carved the initials of the victim of violence on Enright Avenue. After the shooting, the tree became a makeshift memorial, a place to remember. But over time, the gathering

August 20, 2017

Christian Standard

LOVEtheLOU: Demonstrating and Declaring the Gospel in North St. Louis

By Walt Wilcoxson North St. Louis, Missouri, is a place of contrasting realities: rich and poor, black and white, peaceful and violent, hopeful and hopeless. These distinctions are visible and well known. The term “Delmar Divide” neatly sums it up, as Delmar Boulevard divides this area”s poorer, larger African-American community to its north from the more affluent (and largely white) communities to the south. Families and young people who are among the “have-nots” of North St. Louis encounter desperation and despair every day. On this hot and humid morning just before lunchtime, Lucas Rouggly and I stood watching as a

August 9, 2017

Michael C. Mack

Why Our Church Worshipped on 31 School Campuses Last Sunday

By Michael C. Mack Last Sunday I worshipped with a steel rake and a pair of pruners. I was not alone. At my church, Northeast Christian in Louisville, Kentucky, 2,069 volunteers gathered Sunday morning at 31 local schools to help get them ready for a new school year. Church members showed up with gloves, wheelbarrows, yard tools, paintbrushes, and their various spiritual gifts to work together as the body of Christ. One guy, a farmer, brought his tractor to the school where my wife and I served. We pulled weeds and mulched garden areas, trimmed shrubs, painted lines on parking

May 1, 2017

Michael C. Mack

Ministering to Moms on Mother”s Day

By Michael C. Mack Mother”s Day, and the weeks surrounding it, is a prime time to minister to the needs of moms in the community. Here are six ideas you can use: “¢ Teen Moms: Partner with a local teen or crisis pregnancy center to provide basic necessities such as nursing and newborn supplies, a rose, and a signed Mother”s Day card. “¢ Refugee Families: Contact a local organization that serves refugees to discover their needs, especially for moms in these families. Assemble care packages of gift certificates, groceries, and housewares, for instance, as well as a Bible and Mother”s

April 6, 2017

Christian Standard

Changing the Solution for the Needy in Champaign

By Jennifer Johnson Like many organizations committed to helping people in need, Salt & Light Ministries in Champaign, IL, began by giving away food, clothing, and other items. Unlike many of those organizations, however, Salt & Light eventually changed its structure and its systems to empower people to meet their own needs””and the ministry is thriving. “For years we did the “˜free stuff” model,” says Lisa Sheltra, associate director. “In fact, we were the largest emergency food pantry in Champaign County, feeding hundreds of households each week. But we still ran out of food and had to turn people away,

December 9, 2016

Christian Standard

I Could Totally/Never Do That!

By Jennifer Johnson Two mistakes are easy to make when reading B.J. Leonard“s story. The first is to think you could never do what he did””give up your dream house in the suburbs to move into the inner city with your wife and three young kids. The second is to believe you could totally do what he did because you”ve romanticized it as a sequel to The Blind Side. B.J., his wife, Mary, and his daughters aren”t reaching out to urban Decatur, IL, because it”s easy, but they”re also not doing it to experience the warm fuzzy feelings of “saving”

November 25, 2016

Christian Standard

Serving to Be the Church

By James C. Jones These believers are working together to make a difference in their community.  Many houses where I live in Illinois are old. The house where I live, for example, was built in 1900. Since the population of many small towns in central Illinois has stayed roughly the same or decreased over the years, few homes are being built. Consequently, many people live in relatively old houses. Because so many houses are old and require continual maintenance, many people struggle to keep up with all that needs to be done. Many houses in our small town have fallen

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