Can you imagine the pain of a neighbourhood, when a 16 year old young man is found dead in a dumpster – probably a victim of gang retribution. Or a two-year-old toddler, trapped in a closed car on a fierce summer’s day. This was part of the sad picture in the vast low-cost housing complex next to Christian City Church, north of LA just a few years ago. This development was so bad that cops would not drive into its streets! Houses were totally dilapidated and unliveable – no grass, paths or gardens just dirt and wire fences and a huge crime rate. 
“The attitude of our little church, just on the edge of this tragedy, was to pray that we’d be kept safe!” said their pastor Jean Birch. “We were a small, aging African-American Baptist church, struggling to work out what God’s mission was for us. Being church has got to be more than just maintaining the regular programs.”We visited Jean at her church on Friday and heard about how God have her s strong conviction that as God’s people they could not ignore the plight of the people on their doorstep. She told us how she prayed that God would open that impossible door. Next Sunday (in good dramatic style) she preached about this. Sitting in church was a dude who was part of a community development corporation – who just happened to know that the whole housing estate was on the market and that ‘Affordable Housing Corp’ was interested in buying it if could partner with a church or something similar!
Long story short, the church has helped totally makeover “King’s Villages” - nearly 40 million dollars later! All the houses have been made over, there’s a community centre, a technology centre, after school tutorial program for the kids, family resourcing, playgrounds , green grass and gardens. Crime has totally plummeted, there’s a police info-station on site, and the congregation has become the church that interfaces with the 400+ residents. 
Over lunch we talked about the project and its significance. Till recently, churches were at the centre of society. Outreach meant running programs to attract, if they were game. The main task of the church was looking after its own, finding new and contemporary ways to keep their finicky followers content! Churches have gotten slicker, more professional, more entertaining, often creating emotional pep-ups rather than growing 24/7 Kingdom people.
This is all changing rapidly. Not only are we in a post-Christian world (most people don’t know or care!). BUT we are in a new global village. Trade counts; consumption counts; people have also become commodities – and are being held captive to a new empire. Here’s what one of our profs, Alan, says:
“We are in a place of such deep change. I have this great disquiet within me – there is a deep process of change happening all about us. These are not just external changes that will leave us as we are or require the church to make minor adjustments. Most of the things we’ve done to this point – better marketing, coffee when you get to church, a variety of options in terms of meeting personal taste in worship styles, using videos rather than sermons, candles in the place of who knows what – all of this is just window dressing in a world that is rapidly losing its way of life, that is perishing in the midst of a sea change none of us can begin to understand. There are questions about the shape of human life and place of the church in it all that can no longer be put off to tomorrow....” We need to change our whole picture... like what people at Christian Bible church and their feisty pastor Jean are modeling, or Ken Fong and the dudes at Evergreen Baptist Community ( Asian-amercian church – same sorta stuff)
- We don’t bring people to church – we go out amongst people and experience their life
- We don’t just preach formulae – we clothe the message in flesh and blood practical love
- We don’t do church on Sundays – we all are missionaries 24/7
- We live out practically Jesus values: simplicity, meditation, charity, generosity, risk-taking and so on – no cop outs!
- We don’t choose churches casually like we choose shoes – we commit to a community of unlikely types who together discover and create God’s impossible dreams
If we did this we would change our western world! And so many of our bored Christian young dudes who live for entertainment would find a far far more edgy life – with no safety protocols.
What do you reckon? In what ways would we do this at Eltham??
