New Creation Lutheran Church / Iglesia Luterana Nueva Creación: Networking as a Foundation for Outreach

New Creation Lutheran Church / Iglesia Luterana Nueva Creación: Networking as a Foundation for Outreach

Half a block from New Creation Lutheran Church is an elementary school with 1,100 children. Weekday afternoons, Rev. Patrick Cabello Hansel often walks over from the church to make contact with the children and their parents as school gets out. The low curbside wall around the school yard boasts a colorful mural of cheerful pictures and positive slogans, painted through New Creation Community Center's youth employment program. Tulips blossom in the school yard, thanks to another church-sponsored project.

Rev. Hansel initiated contact with the school during the church-planting process. For six months, before starting regular church services, Rev. Hansel networked with area residents and institutions. "I was looking to build allies in relationship with potential members, and also with leaders in the community," he explains.

The first thing we did was to go out and knock on doors and go to as many community meetings as possible, and to meet many of the players in the community. . . . I would go to people and ask them what they wanted to see in their community, what they would like a new church to do. . . . Out of that came the focuses of our ministry since then.

One of the first people Rev. Hansel met was the principal of the elementary school. She invited him to speak at a parents' meeting, where he shared his hopes that the new church could support the school. New Creation has fulfilled that promise by providing space for parents' advisory meetings, by serving on the school improvement team, by sponsoring special events for students around holidays, and by hosting a thank-you breakfast for the staff and teachers of the school each spring. When parents ask for academic help, school staff refer them without hesitation to the after school program at the church's community center.

New Creation's openness to the community makes it stand out. "Some churches are just there for Sunday," says the principal, "but New Creation glorifies God through its activities Monday through Saturday."

[Adapted from Churches That Make a Difference, chapter 7].