After this Faith created a two-year plan where they listed goals and objectives that would help guide them in loving their community. One of the discussions that arose at their Community Conversation held in November, was the benefit of re-establishing a strong business association that could work together in serving the community. Over the past few years, Faith has been partnering with a local grocery store named Oxendale’s to put on a neighborhood block party. This has been a huge success and has shown that churches and businesses can partner to help bring the community together. So when the discussion arose about re-starting a neighborhood business association, Faith was on board to be a part of it.

Through their partnership with the business association, this year Faith setup cardboard boxes at local businesses in order to collect coats for MN Teen Challenge. Their work with the community is starting to cause others to take notice. Other churches, businesses and community leaders they meet have begun to hear of the work that they are doing and are interested in being a partner in it. Faith is continuing to look for the voices in its community that haven’t yet been heard. A large part of their two-year plan was to continue to meet and partner with areas of their community that are sometimes isolated or ignored.

Motivated by God’s love for them, Faith continues to reach out in love to their community, knowing that there are still people that they haven’t met. Churches who participate in Neighborhood Connections with LINC know that we are never really done discovering, listening to, gathering or developing the community we live in. It is an on-going process of transformation.

If your church is interested in learning more about LINC’s Neighborhood Connections process, please contact Jordan Ray. 

I personally do not think so. I personally think there is bridge between the two, and that bridge is holistic ministry. LINC-TC’s incarnational and holistic ministry model is Neighborhood Connections. It is my purpose here to give you a broad overview of this ministry process. In my next blog I will thoroughly unpack how missional mindset, holistic ministry, and transformational impact fit work together to promote the joy and peace of Christ in your neighborhood.

Neighborhood Connections is a process approach to facilitating incarnational ministry in the neighborhoods of Christian churches. It is not intended to be a program, but rather a tool by which a believing community can be radically transformed into an incarnational presence, loving their neighbors in practical contextual ways.

Through biblically founded, Christ-centered activities, it equips congregations to discover their community’s assets, strengths, and capacity for development, as well as its felt needs. Neighborhood Connections accomplishes this through community discovery, community interaction, and community development. Utilizing the principles of Christian Community Development, Neighborhood Connections seeks opportunities for congregations to partner with their communities for sustainable change, restoring dignity to individuals and developing them into Jesus-following community leaders.

The overall desired outcome for a church is for people to be transformed into incarnational ministers with a missional mindset, called and equipped to engage their community with the love of Christ. Consequently, it is hoped the church’s neighborhood will be impacted by Kingdom love, brought under the reign of Christ and transformed by his healing reconciliatory power.

Three important outcomes will result from the Neighborhood Connections process. First, your church will learn to connect with your community. Throughout this process, individuals in your congregation connect with residents, local businesses, spiritual leaders, and other community leaders. This process of community listening is necessary to gather information about the community and to forge relationships that will become partnerships as you work together for sustainable change.

Second, Neighborhood Connections will mobilize your congregation, involving everyone–pastors and lay people alike. This honors the biblical call for believers to live in community and to serve in the mission to which God has called your church.

Third, after gathering information, making connections with community leaders and researching community services, your congregation will construct a two-year Neighborhood Connections Plan. This plan will be a road map for your congregation to step up and take its place in the community, working together with your neighbors to address community needs by focusing on its strengths. In this way, your congregation will move from purely “betterment” activities to “development” activities, empowering community residents to act in favor of their personal and communal well-being. Incarnational ministry is the “what” of Neighborhood Connections, biblical mandate is the “why”, and Christian Community Development principles are the “how.”  Our goal: shalom in the neighborhood and every resident knowing the joy and peace of Christ’s Kingdom.

If you would like more information about how you can implement Neighborhood Connections in your neighborhood, send me an email and let’s have coffee.

Gary Roberts is Executive Director of LINC-Twin Cities.

Community Connections Coordinator, Jordan Ray, speaking on Neighborhood Connections at a recent Faith Lutheran Voters Meeting.

These last few months, Faith Lutheran has been working through the Neighborhood Connections process with LINC-Twin Cities. The team has been putting forth a lot of time and energy in order to build relationships with residents, businesses and leaders in their community. Since hosting the Community Conversation a few weeks ago, Faith has laid out a strategy for further partnering and development of the community over the next 2 years.

The 2-Year Plan is a vital part of the Neighborhood Connections process. The plan is a road map for a church to continue to connect with and build up their neighbors. While the plan is generated by and for the church, it is only prepared after input from the community is heard on existing assets and challenges present in the neighborhood. The plan also involves individuals and organizations in the process of developing and loving the community.

Here are a few objectives from Faith Lutheran’s 2-Year Plan:

1. Represent Faith Lutheran on the Neighborhood Business Association – Faith will work with the newly forming Nokomis East Business Association to create opportunities for businesses and residents to come together and serve to the community. Faith has partnered with local businesses in the past with a neighborhood block party which saw over 500 attendees last year and laid the groundwork for new community partnerships.

2. Host Educational Development Opportunities at Faith – Faith is hoping to hold educational development classes with topics such as parenting, financial literacy, ESL, and internet safety. These classes would be offered to the community as a way to develop people’s skills and equip them for life.

3. Continue to Build Relationships with their Community - Faith has made a lot of new friends in their community over the last few months, but they know that there are many people they have yet to meet. They will continue seeking out new partnerships with local businesses, community leaders and residents in all areas of their neighborhood.

If your church is interested in or has questions about LINC-TC’s Neighborhood Connections, please contact Jordan Ray.

Community residents and business owners discuss the assets of the neighborhood.

Faith Lutheran Church in south Minneapolis has been engaged in LINC’s Neighborhood Connections process since August. Over the last few months, Faith has begun to connect with its community in some exciting ways.

In fact, earlier this month Faith convened a Community Conversation at their local library. They invited local leaders, residents and businesses to join them in a conversation centered on developing their community. The 35 attendees were asked what they felt the assets and challenges of their community are. Then they were asked how we can all partner together to affect positive changes on the neighborhood. They received some great responses and made plans to move forward in loving the community around Faith.

One of the opportunities raised was starting a neighborhood business association that would work to bring the community together through events and service. Pastor Michael Middaugh of Faith Lutheran is working with the local business to schedule their first business association meeting. Another thought was for Faith and local business to work together in preparing welcome bags that Faith could distribute to the neighborhood when new people move in.

Throughout the Neighborhood Connections process Faith Lutheran has built relationships in their community that they hope to partner with to holistically develop their community. They are committed to continuing to build new relationships in their neighborhood and seek out ways to love their community.

I think the practical application of missional living is a useful corrective for the Church. I am concerned, however, that we do not lose sight of our desired communal outcome – shalom in the neighborhood or, stated another way, community transformation. Missional communities can lose sight of this just as easily as traditional churches if they are not intentional about developing their communities to this end. Missional communities will have more success being agents of transformation if they…

… become good community listeners. Too often, people who are on mission exclude the voice of others around them. However, a missional lifestyle is a listening lifestyle. You cannot offer hope to people whose story you do not know.

… regard themselves as one of many stakeholders (groups, individuals, other faith-based communities, associations, government agencies, etc.) in the neighborhood (Christian and not yet Christian), partnering toward the neighborhoods holistic well-being.

… take the initiative to organize the communities’ stakeholders to facilitate a shared community vision, remembering that all the assets in a community are Kingdom assets and should be used for God’s Kingdom glory. Missional leaders are a catalyst for connecting people and resources of all kinds to the neighborhood’s needs.

… have a well-formed theology of justice that has real-time application in their community. By promoting the cause of the under-served (poor, oppressed, disadvantaged), missional leaders teach Kingdom values.

For missional Christians to have a transforming influence, it is necessary to consider our neighborhoods not just in light of the interpersonal relationships we develop with our immediate neighbors, though these are of extreme importance, but through the potential community-wide partnerships that can be developed that will facilitate holistic community development.

What does a transformed community look like? Jay Van Groningen names several characteristics:

• The community will have a shared vision that includes relationships with God, each other, and the environment.
• Residents will have a sense of community – a sense of unity and togetherness that enables people live and work together in a healthy and sustainable way.
• People have a stake in their community – a sense of ownership. Problems belong to community dwellers and so must the solutions. Everyone has a voice and must have freedom and influence to change things.
• In the community there are people who are leaders working hard to see that all voices are heard and people have the resources they need to tackle difficult issues. These leaders come from within the community and have the knowledge and influence to makes things happen.
• Community residents are learners, becoming increasingly more self-aware of what is happening in the community so they can take action to be more effective at addressing issues.
• The community is living out the reality that God reigns and shalom resides there. There is joy and peace in the neighborhood because the community aims toward living out the biblical vision of the Kingdom of Jesus.

So, if I may, I will coin the phrase “Missional Community Development.” The phrase combines all that is positive in missional living with the community-transforming biblical principles and practical activities of Christian community development ministry. A winning combination for “Kingdom come.”

Gary Roberts is Executive Director of LINC-Twin Cities.

Simply comment below to get the conversation started. What are your thoughts on what was presented at the MOVEMENT conference? What did you learn? What new ideas came out of it?

The conference kicks off today at 4pm. We’ll go through 7 tonight and tomorrow 9-3. We ordered extra food so feel free to drop in: only $15.

If you can’t make it, keep updated by following us on Twitter @LINCtc. If you’re at the conference and Tweeting from sessions, use our #movement hashtag.

Text: John 1:1-14

Wow! There is a lot of theology in today’s text.  Christology, soteriology, missiology, and, I would argue, anthropology and ecclesiology as well. So in the next eight minutes … No, I will let your theology professors help you sort all of that out.

I really have just one main point that I would like to share and then a few options regarding how we can respond to this text.  Here is the point I would like to share: God who created everything became like you and me, a human, cultural being, and he lived here, among us, in our human context.

I wish we were in a cross-cultural ministry class or a class on missiology because I would love to have the time to really unpack this with you, because what a bizarre thing for Jesus to do.  To leave the heavenly realm, not considering equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, making himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant (Phil 2:6-7).  The Greek word interpreted “made himself nothing” in the Philippian passage literally means an emptying out!  Jesus gave it all up, emptied himself completely, being made in human likeness!

It is a problem that though the example of Christ is that of emptying oneself out for the sake of another, Christians tend to fill themselves up to the exclusion of others.  We fill ourselves with material possessions and buildings that cost so much, and burden us so, that we have nothing left to help “the least of these.” We fill ourselves up with self-righteousness, pride over our buildings, programs, number of members in our churches, and rituals that often make us inaccessible to others.  The walls of these containers within us must be thick to hold all of this and they act as a barrier to loving our neighbor.  But Jesus, praise God, made himself nothing that we may have life!  But why? And how does the incarnation of Jesus affect us as Jesus followers?  And then, what is our response?  How shall we live?

First the “why–or least a piece of the “why.”  To have all of the “why,” we would need to consider the fullness of God in all his glory, having understanding of his attributes as we know them from Scripture.  And then we would need to know how people of other cultures understand God and contrast our understanding to theirs so that we may see the things that our own culture may blind us to.  Lest we become overly dogmatic about what we think we know, we should realize that what we know of God is limited by our own epistemology, a way of knowing based on Western philosophical thought and enlightenment thinking.  In my own western mind and intellect I have God so categorized and systematized that I very often corral him in a box of my own making.  So let’s look at a piece of the why–and it’s a very important piece–God wants to live in relationship with us!

In the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God made it personal.  That is why it is not useful to relegate the incarnation of Christ to a doctrine we acknowledge is true intellectually, and then file away in our mind somewhere only to be dusted off when we feel we need to apply our apologetics.  In the incarnation we are talking about the reality of God’s presence, Immanuel, God with us, intimate to each one of us as we trust him for everything.  Jesus loves, he heals, he saves, he rescues, he comforts, he overcomes loneliness, he provides for our spiritual, emotional and physical needs, he guides, he protects, and he intercedes.  In short, he knows us!

As the psalmist said in Ps 139, “he hems you in from behind and before, he lays his hand on you.”  His love is too wonderful for us to attain!  He created our innermost being; he knit us together in our mother’s womb.

And Jesus, who knows us this well, who came and gave his life for us, prays in John 17:3 that we would have life through relationship with God.  So, as we live in relationship with God made possible by the incarnation of Jesus, what is our response –how shall we live?  Answer: We live in relationship with others, being incarnational in our contexts, just as Jesus lived among us in our human context.  Just as Jesus loves, we love our neighbor. Maybe not perfectly, but the teaching and example of Jesus, as well as empowerment of the Holy Spirit give us plenty to go on–we are equipped to love our neighbor.

To be sure, our North American culture is not going to help us live in relationship with others.  Our culture’s strong emphasis on individualism manifested in self-centeredness to the exclusion of others’ makes it all to easy to isolate ourselves from our neighbors rather than love our neighbors – engaging them in God-honoring relationships.  You see, our culture is impersonal.  It actually celebrates the triumph of one person over the other, rather than celebrating the love one person has for the other.  Our culture promotes power over people rather than empowerment of people.  There is little in our North American cultural paradigm that helps us live in relationship with one another.

So, as I see it, we can live out one of three different paradigms.  First, we can simply live “in” the community. By community, I mean not only the groups you belong to, but the physical space in which you live.  Loving “in” the community means that we don’t love others and we don’t value others loving us.  We choose not to be people of influence, and will not allow others to influence us.  We are just there, isolated.  In the paradigm of living “in” the community, the Good News is corralled; it has no outlet and therefore it has no impact.  This is a very sad way to live my friends –but there is a lot of cultural pressure to do so.

Second, we can live as Christians who are “to” the community.  “To-the-community” Christians contribute to the welfare of others, but on their own terms.  Like “in-the-community” Christians, these Christians do not allow others to influence them. Consequently, whatever they do for others is based purely on their own perception of others’ needs.  In other words, “to-the-community” Christians dictate the interaction they have with others, and that interaction is usually event-oriented and transactional.  This is a very shallow form of relationship and it is no surprise that “to-the-community” Christians are often perceived as self-righteous.  They come across as having all the answers and are perceived as passing judgment without knowing who they are judging.

The third response, and the one that is incarnational, is living “with” the community.  Not in a way that compromises your morals and ethics, but in a way that ascribes unsurpassable worth to people in your community, valuing them as God values them.  “With-the-community” Christians have significant impact for the Gospel because they can contextualize its message effectively.  Remember, a person’s context can only be known through genuine relationship.  “With-the-community” Jesus followers open themselves to the needs, difficulties, and downright ugliness of others, hearing from people themselves their concerns, fears, foibles, and needs.  Then, if we follow Christ’s example –being vulnerable, emptying ourselves out, and serving in humility, BEING INCARNATIONAL–the good news of God’s love can heal people and set them free.

Being “with-the-community” Christians, incarnational Jesus followers, is participating in Mission Dei, the “mission of God.”  In today’s Christian vernacular we call this missional.  Missional is a lifestyle, all the actions included in our day to day that reflect the nature of God who is on mission to redeem the world and every person in it.

May we be incarnational and missional and may we go on and be well in Jesus’ name.