A church, a part of the community

Story by Louise Traynor 
October 31, 2005

We were out in the community handing out candy and hot cider on a pleasant Hallow-een night. I had been at the church less than one year and had suggested this activity as a way to meet some of our neighbors.

I admit that I was shocked to learn that although I could see our church building from the corner we were standing on, none of the parents we chatted with knew the name of our church or even where it was. A few could picture it after we explained where it was, but I got the sense that even those people were just trying to be polite. Our church was invisible to our community. 


Summer 2006 

I worked at the church during the summer of 2006. During the previous school year I had assessed the community surrounding our church. I encountered an interesting phenomenon. The church believed that their immediate community was not interested and they believed it was actually hostile to-wards them. The church was afraid to reach out because they assumed the community would react nega-tively. In contrast, the community was almost completely unaware of the church and had no idea what it had to offer. I also discovered that the demographics of the church and that of the surrounding community were very close in terms of stage of life, socio-economic status and ethnicity. In short, other than the reti-cence of the church itself causing invisibility, there was no reason why the church could not effectively con-nect to the surrounding community and thereby reach them with the gospel of Jesus Christ. However, reaching our community would mean that we would have to step out in order to be visible and valuable to our neighbors who were not, and were not likely to come, knocking at our door. 

Since I had assessed the community, I knew that it contained a mixture of young families and retired people. It is both a “starter” community and one that is ex-periencing resident changeover as seniors downsize and new families move in. There is a strong community group that initiates holiday celebrations and at-tempts to build connectivity within the residents. We decided to begin our out-reach with kids. We saw that although there were many children in the commu-nity, the city refused their request to have Supies (Park Supervisors) in either of the two neighborhood parks. The church recognized that although we had put resources into a VBS program for the past several years, it had been ineffective (neighborhood children did not attend). We reassigned those resources to park ministry in the community. By the end of the summer, when we went through the neighborhood to invite people to a community barbeque, almost every person recognized our church name and identified us as “the ones who do great stuff for kids.” 

November 16, 2007 

The value of the community assessment has grown from that initial test. We have been able to continue offering programs and resources that our community is looking for. For example, the summer park program for kids. We have been able to avoid duplicating programs and events that are provided by others. We opened our eyes to notice things happening within our community and joined them in order to invest in people; for example, we attended the local Early Years Centre and community holiday celebrations. Knowing the character and characteristics of our surrounding community helped to dispel some of the fear our congregation felt and gave us all opportunities to rejoice in the connections we made with our neighbors. 

Assessing our community helped me to be able to more effectively evaluate ministry ideas and suggest ways that our church could develop a voice in the community. For instance, our next steps will be in making natural entry points to church life and to the Gospel more obvious to the community. There are several points in a person’s life at which it is more natural to seek out the church. Those specific transition points in our community occur when people are making the move from home own-ership to retirement living, become parents for the first time, become parents of teenagers and begin to care for aging parents. Each of these areas provides the church with a natural point to speak into the lives of people and walk with them as they discover more about their own needs. Since we know that these are issues people in our community are facing, we can offer services that address those needs in a way that also reveals the light of Christ. 

This story was found in a PDF about Transforming Churches