From guest blogger, Holly Clark. Holly serves on the Leadership Team at Immanuel Church.
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The Message version of John 1 puts it this way, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” Literally Jesus became flesh and blood and starting living with us in our neighborhoods, in our villages, in our places of worship. He was not a God somewhere in the heavens, He was on earth, living in the flesh – eating fish for breakfast and teaching his disciples what it meant to live abundant life. He healed the sick and interacted with “the undesirables” of society and gave those who had no hope a reason to live. He struggled alongside people, he lived in community and he interacted with those who were right around him.
Now what does that mean for us today? What does it look like for us to “move into the neighborhood” as the church? Well, for Immanuel, we are doing just that. We are trusting in the movement of the Holy Spirit over our community. We prayed together and we moving together.
Our community is embarking on a journey of living out intentional ministry in the West Central neighborhood. Starting this week, our Sunday morning services will be held in the West Central Youth for Christ building.
Our hope for this change include:
Partnership: We believe that God has been moving us toward West Central for a while now. Our church is made up of many YFC volunteers, employees and students giving us the opportunity to build relationships in the neighborhood even before our official building change. We believe supporting this ministry, that is effectively creating indigenous leaders in the neighborhood, is a crucial part of our work as the church.
Service focused: We believe the church is twofold: worshipping together as a community and serving those around us. Being a part of the West Central neighborhood provides us with a tangible opportunity to reach out beyond our own community. We hope to continue to meet new students and eventually provide a place that the entire family can come to build community and worship.
Diversity: The body of Christ is made of a diverse group of people. We have felt called to be with people who can teach us a part of Christ that we wouldn’t know without them. We need to be with people who are different than us and be open to learning what God is doing through us even when we live differently, when we disagree, when we need to work through messy situations.
We are excited to see where God takes us on this new season of our community. We are fully aware that God is going to blow our expectations out of the water. Let us begin this journey together and continue to learn what it means to be Jesus in our neighborhood.
Holly Clark