Serving the Underserved

The final tally is in! We raised just a bit over $600 from Keeping Kids Safe Day for some underserved families. The K-8 school that is adjacent to our property buses kids in from a poor part of Phoenix. The school asked the parents to complete a survey identifying their greatest needs and the number one need is food.

So we are trying to be intentional about meeting this need which is a big challenge for a small church like ours. When we decided to host Keeping Kids Safe Day, we decided to charge vendors a $25 booth fee and ask for a donation for food purchase. Between the booths and food we raised over $600...and this is just the start.

We have plans to reach out to other churches in this school's boundary and ask them to partner with us to meet this need. We are still forming the plan, but the goal is to form an alliance of neighborhood churches to collective meet this need.

Most of these families rely on public transportation system, so when we get our food boxes ready we are going to work with the school to identify one family that we could "set up shop" at their house to pass out the food boxes. Our hope is that we will have a greater impact and serve more families by going to them, rather than asking them to come to us.

Keeping Kids Safe Day

Wow! What a day! Saturday the 22nd we hosted a Child Safety Event called "Keeping Kids Safe Day". We approached the city of Phoenix about this idea in late 2007 and they jumped on board with both feet. We were able to get Phoenix Police and Fire to teach the kids about general safety issues and they brought along a lot of cool stuff - like a big fire truck, a police motorcycle, police cars. Phoenix Fire also brought out their demonstration house where they teach kids house to get out of the house if it's on fire and what to do if there is an emergency. They also had kid sized fire coats that the kids could put on.

Phoenix Children's Hospital in partnership with Phoenix Fire sponsored a Car Seat Safety Check. They checked over 30 cars and if the seats were not properly installed, they taught the parents how to install them properly. Farmer's Insurance enrolled kids into the Amber Alert Network.

The Police also had free Vehicle Identification Number window etching available.

There was lots of food and drink available thanks to our good friends at the Rotaract Club and we had some fabulous live music from some local artists. One artist is part of a band called "Safety Patrol". They are a group of city employees who sing about safety to kids. He had some great original songs like "Stranger Danger" that really helps kids remember safety stuff!

We also had about 15 local vendors who sent up booths to be apart of the day. We asked them for a $25 booth fee and 100% of the proceeds will buy food for needy families whose kids attend the school that is adjacent to our property.

One of the benefits of hosting an event like this is working closely with the city government. So much is made about church and state, but it has been our experience that the city government will bend over backwards to work with churches on things that we share in common. We have also developed some solid personal relationships with the good folks in the Fire, Police, and Council's office that we hope will grow.

Our goal is to transform the city of Phoenix for Christ. We pray that God will honor our goal and that through events like this, we are able to develop relationships with key people within the community who will be able to influence public policy in a Christ honoring way.

This event is a small step in that direction, please pray that events like this please God and that He will bless and multiply His influence on the city government.

Progress on the Missional Front

Wow! We continue to make progress to impact our community. There have been about 15 kids from Camelback High who have showed up for our tutoring classes and we have identified a local family who has expressed an interest to possibly start a Young Life club at the high school.

We have also identified about 150 Somali political refugee kids attending Camelback and are trying to line up resources to help them with life skill stuff. Many of them are unable to function real well in our society.

We are hosting a huge Child/Home Safety Day in conjunction with the city of Phoenix in late March. The Fire and Police Dept. will be doing all sorts of safety things with the kids including a car seat safety check. We will be collecting food and clothing the which will benefit some underprivileged families in our community. More to come on that soon.

We are developing a relationship with Pinnacle Forum, a parachurch organization that focuses on bringing Christ into the Phoenix Business Community.

We also are working on developing an alliance with other local churches in the immediate community to help support our local K-8 school who has a number of underprivileged families. Remarkably, the kids of these families are bused to this school from another part of town. So we are going cast a wide net out with other local churches and see if we can come together to collectively impact the lives of these families.

Fulfilling the Needs of Our Community

We are on a relentless pursuit to uncover the needs our community. As we are digging, we are discovering that the community is quietly groaning for help meeting their needs. It seems like every conversation that I have multiple needs surface. Some needs are basic (like food and clothing for children) and others are bit more advanced (like developing a tight knit community). We now have many opportunities to serve our neighbors in tangible ways and are working to fill some of those needs. Below is just one way that we are doing that very thing.

There is a well-known retirement home a few blocks from our building and many of their residents do not drive, nor do they get out much. With Christmas around the corner, we decided meet a need by bringing Christmas shopping to them. Some of our folks spent a couple of months making wonderful hand-made clothing, painting beautiful landscapes and pictures, and baking homemade yummies in an effort to meet a need to an often neglected population. Our "boutique" was a great success as we sold lots of stuff with the proceeds going to a young man in our church body that needs a seeing eye dog. By setting up a "boutique" we raised awareness of our church and the fact that we love seniors. Most importantly, we met a need in our community and have further solidified our relationship with the home and their residents. (We already do a weekly Bible Study for the residents there.)

Getting Involved in the School System

A Bible believing church and public schools working side-by-side for the betterment of the students? C'mon you have got to be kidding!!! Well, it's happening in our neck of the woods. About mid summer I called the Principal of Camelback High School, Pete Garcia, and to my surprise he called me back and wanted to talk to me about how we could come along the side of them and help them.

We set a meeting and during our 90 minutes together he briefed me on the challenges at Camelback High. We hit it off (helps that he is a man of strong faith) and was very encouraged that we wanted to help him complete his mission.

We bantered around a few ideas, but settled on creating a desperately needed tutoring program. (His church has had great success in tutoring junior and senior high kids.) We have something called an AIMS test which you must pass to graduate. 70% of the kids who fail the test do so because they haven't taken Geometry their sophomore year and the majority of kids at Camelback are taking Algebra their sophomore year. To throw even more kids behind the eight ball, many incoming freshman have the academic skills of a sixth grader. As you can see there is a great need to accelerate the learning of these kids.

During a meeting we had with staff of Senior Services of the City of Phoenix, I mentioned that we were working on getting a tutoring program off the ground and they became immediately interested in partnering with us. They thought that they could rally some retired teachers who patron the local Senior Center, they have ample space to host the program, and the Center is about four block from the high school. About 300 kids walk by the center on their way home as well as all the bus routes run by it. So, we decided to follow the number rule of real estate, "Location, location, location" and have them host our program.

Initially, we are inviting 10 kids to be a part of the program until we get the "hey we are new at this thing" kinks worked out, then hopefully expand it slowly to other students.

Ultimately our goal is to transform Camelback High School for Christ by helping launch a Young Life and a Fellowship of Christian Athletes club. This tutoring program is the first shot to making that vision a reality.

Getting Involved in the City Government

At the Coffee Talk we hosted for our city councilman, Greg Stanton, I expressed to him a sincere desire for our church to become part of the solution to the issues effecting the city. I told him that I didn't quite know what those issues were, but that I would like to visit with him at a later date to get some ideas from him.

To my surprise someone called from his office the very next day and we arranged a meeting. Over a 60 minute conversation Greg and I brainstormed how our church could come along aside the city and help them achieve their mission. We came up with about 15 ideas.

Our church eventually whittled those 15 ideas down to two, (working with the neighborhood senior center and hosting a child safety day) His office referred us to the person in charge of overseeing all 17 Senior Centers in Phoenix and we set a meeting with the staff of the center and a few of our people.

Over a 60 minute meeting six of us brainstormed how our church could come along the side of the Senior Center and help them. We came up with about 10 ideas and whittled them down to three: a tutoring program for high school, a sewing circle to make lap blankets for hospital patients, and sending birthday cards to the elderly who can't make it out of their houses.

The Tutoring Program
I had a prior meeting with the Principal at Camelback High School to discuss how we could become involved in helping them achieve their goals. Tutoring was the number one need so we decided to create a tutoring program. (We had a strong degree of confidence that we could pull this off because one of the members of our congregation taught at Camelback for 35 years and has been inducted into their Wall of Fame. She was also fired up to help out.) We threw this idea on the table and the staff at the Senior Center jumped all over it.

So we set up another meeting with Camelback, Morningside, and the Senior Center and mapped out how we were going to pull this off. (See Getting Involved in the School System post)

We are just beginning our relationship with the Senior Center and our church is very encouraged with the meetings and willingness of the staff from the center to allow us to partner with them. We will see where this goes as we seek to penetrate this city and transform it for Christ. Please pray for this relationship.

Getting Involved in the Neighborhood (G.A.I.N.)

We began praying about 9 months ago that God would open a door into the Phoenix City Government and a few short weeks later I received a call from our city councilman's office requesting space at our church for a Coffee Talk with the neighborhood. (This is a town hall meeting held in the morning.) We thought that this might be a good start, so we went for it.



Representatives for numerous city departments attended to be a resource and answer questions on specific issues along with our city councilman Greg Stanton. One of those representatives was Community Action Officer Monte Woods from the Phoenix P.D. Monte works with the neighborhood associations on various "crime suppression" initiatives and helps resolve conflict and diffuse tension in the community.

Monte and I hit it off immediately (he's a strong man of faith) and after a few weeks he suggested that we host a G.A.I.N. (Getting Arizonans Involved in Neighborhoods) event sponsored by the Police Department. (Think big block party of multiple neighborhood associations with vendors and city departments distributing information on all sorts of stuff.)



About 100 people attended including the Chief of Police and his chain of command and two city councilmen and their staff. We had the opportunity to get face time with all these folks and explain to them our desire become willing partners on issues we have in common. They were pleasantly surprised of our desire to get involved and encouraged us to continue to work with them. We also got a lot of face time with the leaders of the neighborhood associations around our church who work in conjunction with the Police Department to make the city safer.

Who knows where all this will lead, but we now have about 20 solid contacts to nurture over the coming months and we are well on our way of solidifying a relationship with the Phoenix P.D. We are hopeful that these relationships will bear fruit and begin to draw the people of our neighborhoods around the church into a closer relationship with Christ.

By hosting the event like this we also gained advertising that you just can't buy as we raised awareness of who we are and what we stand for. We had several fruitful "God" conversations with exploring or hurting souls. Others asked many questions about our church, service times, etc.

We are hopeful that this event will springboard us into deeper relationships with all we met as we penetrate the city and work to transform it for Christ.