California Pastors Search for Keys to Community
What is the role of the Church in the world? That’s a big question. A group of Northern California CRC pastors meet regularly to discuss an even tougher question: How do I make my church relevant in my own community and neighborhood...how can I help my congregation to show the love, mercy, and justice of God in my own city or town? |  |
| George Montoya, Northwest Regional Church and Community Consultant for the CRWRC, serves as facilitator, and guide for a group of pastors from the Bay Area and Merced that has no name. It “started with George and I, Dave Nederhood (Alameda), and Layne Kilbreath (Walnut Creek) getting together to talk about community development practices and how they can be used by churches,” says Dan Hutt, a pastor for a CRC congregation in Palo Alto. The group has grown to include Brad Smith (San Jose) and Andy Vanden Akker (Merced). Vanden Akker laughs over the nameless group, and takes a stab at it when he stated, “It’s an informal think tank of colleagues thinking about ministry in 21st century. How do we extend the love of Jesus to our communities in an age and world where evangelism has taken on a different meaning than loving our neighbors on the other side of town?” The central focus for the group is based around reading and discussing “Communities First,” a publication of the CRWRC. Montoya says, “We’re all asking the same kinds of questions about community. So we got together to share ideas relative to what each pastor is doing to implement community development concepts with their churchs.” Each pastor has been working on projects in their community. Kilbreath works in a food pantry in a poor, Hispanic neighborhood of Concord, CA. Nederhood’s congregation runs the Crossroads Coffee Shop in Alameda. Vanden Akker’s congregation works to help create community in some apartment buildings as well as work with parolees. The common thread each faces is the disconnect between the way we think about community engagement and the fact that our churches are in middle class communities. Unfortunately, most community-building models designed for helping under-resourced neighborhoods somehow do not scale to middle class communities and neighborhoods and to our middle class churches where “Missions” are in third world countries, not across the street. “How do we connect with neighbors in a deeper way,” that’s our main topic explained Montoya. “Being salt and light forces us to think more deeply about how we practice purity and live in proximity to a fallen world. If we don’t do both then we get stuck in pietism or separatism on the one hand, and potentially secular activism on the other. We need to find a way to live in proximity to a fallen world, to connect with our surrounding community, and yet be true to holy living.” “I’ve come to understand that I need to think more about the needs of the people around us,” said Hutt. “I don’t have to drive to the other side of the tracks to meet people who have needs. They live across the street. Frail elderly, frazzled two-job families with latchkey kids that don’t have a safe place to play are very prevalent in our neighborhoods.” Hutt sums up, “So how does our faith speak to our own communities where even neighborliness has collapsed.” “All of us are working in poor communities in need. Yet, we always come back to the dilemma that the denominational priority for working in poor neighborhoods does not translate because most CRC churches simply are located somewhere else,” explained Kilbreath. “What we’ve learned from Communities First and meeting with George is that it’s easier to reach down where it doesn’t require relationships than it is to reach across that requires neighbor-hooding, as well as working on personal and structural relationships.” According to Montoya, “Churches have become irrelevant to their surrounding communities. Most congregants commute to their churches and few live in the surrounding neighborhood. The church has become disconnected with the neighborhood and it would not notice if the church closed. There ought to be a way for churches to connect and work together with a middle-class neighborhood or community on a ‘parish’ vision that offers both salt and light.” | |