Is Restoration Life on the Leading Edge?

Restoration Life has always pushed to find new ways to go into the community and show them God is alive. From Park Days to Halloween on T Street to Love Inc to Convoy of Hope and the East Sac Project we have found success in serving. We were recently asked by the organizers of Lois Palau to help with the season of service initiative in 2012. The article below is further evidence that churches need to be working together in the community.

11 for 11: Ideas That Work • Fast Forwarding Your Church’s Community Engagement 2
The Austin Stone Community Church,
Austin, TX (www.austinstone.org),
bought a defunct building in an underresourced part of its city, established
a counseling center and other social
services in the building—and over
50 church members moved into the
declining neighborhood.
Peninsula Covenant Church, Redwood
City, CA (www.peninsulacovenant.
com), one of the largest Protestant
churches in the Palo Alto area, is
blending its upper-end neighborhood
with a poor community just across
the street. The church has become so
involved in the community with its
Serve the Peninsula Collaboration of
government and city leaders that pastor
John Siebert was elected to the City
Council.
A Methodist church in Hattiesburg,
Mississippi, moved its Vacation Bible
School to a public school that it has
been serving—with the full blessing
of the school system. Church leaders
told the parents of church kids, “Our
VBS is at the school this year—in the
poorest part of town.”
These churches and others like them
are pioneering a shift in leaders who
are truly engaging their communities
in mission. These churches are not
only deploying their own members for
service; they are engaging with people
who aren’t part of their church, but
who are attracted to rolling up their
sleeves to bless the community.
These on-mission churches look
not only to their own resources
and ideas for the community; they
are strategically engaging with
other churches and non-church
organizations. These churches
are moving from ministry for the
community and in the community, to
ministry with the community.
We know how to do ministry for
the community: we’re doing this for
you. The missional conversation the
past few years has moved church
leaders more into ministry in the
community—outside our church
walls. This new movement is a rise in
churches that are working shoulderto-shoulder in partnership with the
community—across multiple domains
of business, education, health care,
social service and government—to
transform a city.
Metrics
• More Americans are pursuing
spirituality outside of traditional,
organized contexts.
11 for 11: Ideas That Work
by Reggie McNeal
Fast Forwarding Your Church’s
Community Engagement11 for 11: Ideas That Work • Fast Forwarding Your Church’s Community Engagement 3
More than one in i ve Americans who
say they are absolutely sure about
believing in God virtually never attend
church, according to the massive
research Robert Putnam published
in his recent book, American Grace
(page 473).
1
Further, Gallup polls see
near record high in the percentage of
people who say that religion is losing
its inl uence in America.
2
Also notice
the dramatic rise in recent years of the
“nones”
3
– the now 14% of Americans
who say they have no religious
afi liation, yet half of whom believe in
God and the Bible. To me, studies like
this afi rm why missional engagement
beyond the walls of traditional church
real estate and programming is the path
to the future. We’ve got to i gure out
how to help people “be church” who
cannot or will not go to church as it
exists now.
• Participation in service is increasing.
While we’re losing ground when it
comes to attracting people to our
worship services, what I call an
altruism economy is attracting our
friends to works of service. Just look
around. American Idol can raise
millions for a good cause in one night.
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are
giving away billions and encouraging
their mega-rich colleagues to do the
same. Charitable giving in the U.S. now
tops $300 billion a year.
So invite your neighbors or co-workers
to church, and they may say “no”—no
matter how sexy your sax player or
how cool your smoke machine. But
invite them to serve alongside you at the
local school next Saturday, and they’re
more likely to say “yes,” and to ask if
the whole family can come too!
Trends
• Missional churches are engaging
non-believers as part of their labor
force.
I was encouraging the staff at Cathedral
of Joy, Richland, WA (www.cojchurch.
com), to market beyond church insiders
for their community and global
engagement efforts, and their youth
pastor backed me up with a great story.
He had just met his neighbor, who was
sort of intrigued that he was a youth
pastor. But when the pastor talked
about an upcoming church trip to
Central America to dig water wells,
the neighbor really perked up: “That
sounds like something I’d like to do.
Can I go?” Little did the youth pastor
know, the guy volunteering for this
Christian mission trip is an Egyptian
Muslim. Wouldn’t it be just like God
to hijack an Egyptian Muslim with a
tender heart, and throw him in with a
bunch of Christians for 10 days? The
neighbor came back later and said, “I
just called my sister in Chicago and
she’d like to go on that trip, too.” He is
already an evangelist.
Helping people have abundant lives
motivates people. I tell church leaders
to think beyond their members for
their service corps. Every one of your
folks who participates in that weekend
of service could easily bring three
neighbors or co-workers and get them
engaged in the community; they’re
often wide open to this.
• Missional churches are increasingly
working in cross-domain collaboration.
Churches on the move in their
communities realize that true city
transformation is too big for one
church, or even a conglomerate of
churches, to tackle. Real change
around deep problems takes
partnership and collaboration across
multiple domains: churches and other
ministries, social services, businesses,
schools, hospitals, and governments.
Crossroads Community Church,
Cincinnati, OH (www.crossroads.net),
is leading four other churches and i ve
non-proi t agencies to build a one-stop
social service mall called CityLink
(www.citylinkcenter.org) that will offer
housing, job assistance, and health care
to needy families.
Fellowship Church, Dallas, TX
(www.fellowshipdallas.org), provides
a Refugee Empowerment Pathway
for dozens of refugees living nearby
the church—including helping them
enroll in college and paying for their
i rst semester. 3e, McKinney, TX
(www.3emckinney.com), is a group of
30 churches that delivers food every
weekend to more than 800 elementary
school children.
WoodsEdge Church, Houston, TX
(www.woodsedge.org), partners
with a secular organization that
runs an apartment complex for
women with HIV/AIDS. Momentum
A group of volunteers from Crossroads
Church working with other community
organizations on “Go Cincinnati” a oneday, service project designed to impact the
city.11 for 11: Ideas That Work • Fast Forwarding Your Church’s Community Engagement 4
Church, Cincinnati, OH (www.
momentumchurch.com), has chosen
a local elementary school to serve—
which, by the way, is one of the
most impactful and fail-proof ways
for any church to get engaged in the
community.
• Church leaders are gaining a
better understanding of community
development.
Political opponents made fun of
President Obama for his background
as a community developer. But I’m
telling pastors they need to become
community developers if they want
their church to make the difference it
should. The church is already deployed
across all the domains I mentioned
earlier. We already have people in
politics and education and health
care and in business. The church is
deployed across all domains, and is in
a unique position to call a party for
the city to focus on healing itself. No
one else is positioned like that.
Christ Church United Methodist,
Birmingham, AL (www.
christchurchtv.org), identii ed the
poorest part of the city and made a
25-year commitment to serve that
part of their community. That’s real
community development, not just a
drive-by event. When you commit to
25 years of efforts in a needy part of
town, you can develop some metrics
that measure long-term impact. You
can commit to raising graduation
rates and reducing hunger. Titus
County Cares (www.tituscountycares.
org), which distributes more than
1,000 backpacks of food to kids
every weekend, reports that school
attendance is up and visits to the
school nurse are down. They believe
that will eventually lead to higher
graduation rates and less prison time.
Questions
• What will the new scorecard look
like?
Missional ministry requires a different
scorecard than churches have used
in the past. This scorecard goes
beyond the traditional benchmarks
of buildings, budgets and butts in the
seats. In this new missional world,
there are dynamic metrics that can
measure a church’s effectiveness in the
community. Measures might include:
- How many backpacks were delivered
for a weekend supply of food?
- How much money is the church
giving away?
- How many life coaches are deployed
outside the church?
- How many volunteer hours are
church members logging outside the
walls?
- How many cross-domain
collaborations is the church engaged
with?
A revamped scorecard also means
resource reallocation—our prayer,
time, people, money, facilities and
technology. How would prayer, and
money and time be redirected for
community development? And once
you change the scorecard, you change
the game. What gets rewarded gets
done. Once you change what you’re
celebrating, you get more of that.
• How do we learn to collaborate
across domains?
Unfortunately, churches have a spotty
history of true collaboration across
multiple domains in a community.
We’re not very good at collaboration,
because we want to be the show. If
we want to drive the ideas and staff it
with our people and invite people into
the presence we’ve created, we may be
missing cross-domain collaboration in
the process.
Real collaboration goes beyond selling
a great idea to the city, and getting
them to give us resources. We need to
i gure out how to convene and create
cross-domain partners, not just targets
or functional users. We don’t need to
reinvent the wheel, or put our efforts
solely under our own label. Whatever
needs to get done in a community,
there are probably community agencies
already there. Why aren’t we i guring
out how to get behind the Salvation
Volunteering in schools and community centers is one of the most impactful and failproof ways for any church to get engaged in its community.11 for 11: Ideas That Work • Fast Forwarding Your Church’s Community Engagement 5
Army, for instance, to care for the
homeless? That’s the collaborative
mentality.
Predictions
• We will see the rise of city churches.
If churches get serious about truly
engaging their communities, thinking
outside their own membership for
their work force, collaborating across
multiple domains and banding together
to get the job done, we will see the rise
of city churches—churches of all shapes
and sizes networking together for city
transformation.
Christ Together (www.christ together.
com) is an emerging network of
churches in the Chicago area that
initially came together to pray for
the city. Currently, there are leaders
from more than 180 Chicagoland
churches that are interested in working
together, rather than view each other
as competitors. Scott Chapman, the
leader that helped spark this movement
in Chicago, says he has invitations
from leaders in 16 cities to explore
similar city church efforts.
I believe this is a movement of the
Spirit, like scales falling from people’s
eyes. God seems to be having a
different conversation with the church
about its role in the world. There is a
rise of Kingdom consciousness vs. mychurch-only awareness. Church leaders
are developing a non-church-centric
view of God’s Kingdom—where we
understand that Kingdom is about
street life and bringing abundant life
where people are. We are becoming
more willing to pitch our fortune and
future with the community.
This movement will convene the
church around service—not around
politics or around being a moral
watchdog for the community—but
around loving your neighbor. The
spirit is calling us out to be church
better, not do church bette