Impact in a Changing Community:
Finding the People Who Need Good News the Most

Other churches face the same dilemma that Pastor Corey Jones found when he took his new assignment in Fort Worth, Texas. The community around their church had changed, and the congregation had not been able to connect with those living around their property. When Corey and Beth Ann became pastors of this church, they found they were just a few weeks away from shutting down with only 2 or 3 families left in the congregation. They couldn’t even meet in the sanctuary because they couldn’t afford the utility bills.

Meadowbrook Church of the Nazarene had been in the inner city, and in 1975 they moved to the suburbs to avoid all the inner city issues that were developing. The problem was they didn’t get far enough away from the urban challenges and soon were overwhelmed again.

Pastor Jones remembers, “Our initial attempt was really about a brokenness for the needs of people in general. Our real motivation was to reach lost people. I think there might be something suspect about just trying to be multi-cultural in some specific way. When we started, we just wanted to be a ‘Great Commission’ kind of church.

“Early on that was our slogan: ‘We are a church of people who’ve given up on church, and church has given up on them.’ Our motivating factor was to go after the people that nobody else wanted. We didn’t target the middle or upper class first, even though there were expensive homes all around our church. We knew we didn’t have any chance of reaching them at first. Our building was outdated and our resources were extremely limited in what we could offer in various ministries.”

Compassion led the new pastor and the congregation that was left to reach out to hurting people first: those struggling to make it in those apartments, and the single moms with several children. There was nothing offered there for those folk.

Pastor Corey says, “I just asked God to break my heart with the things that break His heart, and He did it. Fulfilling the Great Commission and reaching out with compassion to broken and hurting people is the heart of that vision.”

The church soon found the easiest group to reach in their community was the people living in apartments. Perhaps because many were new to the area, or had significant areas of need, these families in apartments were very open to door-to-door contacts and doing a kid’s club in their area.

The church created a new mobile ministry—PB & J Kid’s Clubs—and took them into these apartment complexes. What they discovered was even though single family homes in the area were more closed to any contacts from the church, the apartment families were very open. It just so happened that most of them were also African American. And so, the new ministry started with about 20 Anglo members reaching out to 40 to 50 African American children and youth of their community.

Then after several years of intensive outreach ministry, the ministry almost closed the church down. Pastor Corey and his team of volunteers were all reaching a burn-out stage. He looks back on that time and remembers, “The number of kids and teens that were coming became so overwhelming. And, we weren’t seeing the adults really break through, so our finances were in dismal shape.

“These inner city kids had typical inner city needs. We were breaking up fights and dealing with all kinds of issues from their everyday life situations. And, we found that can all become very overwhelming. I even had a gun pulled on me in those early days.

“About that time I got a wise word from one of our black leaders in the Church of the Nazarene. Dr. Larry Lott shared with me, ‘The black community will watch you and observe you for three to five years. If you demonstrate that you are trustworthy and genuine, then they will warm up to you.’”

Pastor Corey recalls, “That was actually a prophetic word to us, because it took about five years before we began to see the parents and grandparents of these children and youth respond to our church and the gospel message. After five years of outreach and intensive ministry, it was like a flood from every walk of life started to come to our church, because they saw the consistency.

“What also saved me and this church was moving away from the programbased kind of ministry. I went to Brooklyn Tabernacle and experienced their Tuesday night prayer meeting. It was there that I had another real encounter with God and heard God’s voice instruct me to lead our congregation to really cry out to Him in prayer. I went home and cancelled what we were doing and we began a Tuesday night prayer meeting. It wasn’t long after beginning that prayer meeting that real miracles and breakthroughs began to happen.

“It was like ‘Ichabod’ had been removed from our church and God’s Spirit returned. Under conviction people began to come and get saved, and many were set free from addictions. Through prayer we really felt that God had broken through. It was also during this time that we really began to see a large number of African American parents and families coming in and getting established.

“Why do we keep doing it? We’re not just after their children, we want to see restoration through the generations by doing this.”

Many of the black parents said when Pastor Corey showed up at their home after they visited the church, that sold them that this church and pastor were for real. In their previous church experiences, no pastor had ever done that.

And the holiness message became a very attractive feature of their congregation. One of the greatest things that helped break the barriers was compassion and a holiness message. When the church first did their ‘Fall Festivals’ for the community, they were averaging only around 100 in worship. Soon, there would be 2,000 people attending these outreach events of the church.

Even though there were several other festivals in the community, the reason people came to Crossroads Fall Festival was simple: everything was free! The games and food were all provided by the church so the families could have a good time, and have an opportunity to visit their church property. Over time, all these things began to have an impact in their community.

“Over the past ten years, where we’ve consistently gone into the areas with the most needs,” Pastor Corey has noticed, “many of our upwardly mobile families are attracted to Crossroads Tabernacle because of that outreach. We didn’t win those folks at first, and if they came for just their own comfort, they didn’t stay at our church. Unless they’re touched by the compassion and the way we do church, they don’t stick here.

“But over time, several began to catch the missional vision for our community. Some now are coming to our church from other Bible-teaching churches because they want to experience the presence of God when they worship.

“About 6 years ago we felt led by God to do a very unique and different outreach for Easter. God led my wife Beth and me to write an Easter drama and musical called ‘Miracles Still Happen.’ The drama is much like other Easter plays that reenact the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. What is different or unique is that we have the people in our church who are reenacting one of Jesus’ miracles step out of their character at some point in the scene and give their own real life testimony about how Jesus saved and set them free.

“It is really impacting to hear what God is still doing today in people’s lives—that miracles still happen! And the response has been amazing. It has grown every year and we have had to add extra services. Last year over 1,200 attended three services and anywhere from 50 to 100 people have come to faith in Christ each year.”

One of the teenagers whose life has been touched by the church is Francis, a second generation convert in our youth ministries. Her friends invited her to church and her new found faith in Christ. Her testimony from one of their recent Sunday services is a fitting way to close this story.

“I grew up in a drug house with two parents who were both drug addicts. We always had people at our house buying and using drugs. When I was five years old, my mom was sent to prison. One year later my dad went to prison too. My brothers, sisters and I had to move in with some of my parents friends until my mom was released from prison.

“When my mom was released she promised us she was going to do better and she would take care of us. But, just a few months later she was back in jail and we were left alone.

“A year after my mom went back to prison my dad was released. When he came home I didn’t even recognize him, because he had been gone so long. He got a job and was trying to live better. Then, one day he had a heart attack. I was there when it happened. I thought he was going to die. He went to the hospital and had to have quadruple by-pass surgery. It seemed like things would never be okay.

“We ended up moving into Sandy Oaks Apartments. It was there I met some friends, Codero and Dorothia, who come to Crossroads. They invited me to church, but at that time my mom had come home and I thought I didn’t need anything. I thought we were complete, but deep down I knew something was missing.

“It wasn’t long before my mom had left us again. My brothers and sisters were getting older and now they were relying on me to be their mom. I had to be more responsible because I was all they had. One summer day, about 4 years ago now, Codero and Dorothia came to my door and invited me to a Peanut Butter & Jelly Kids Club. It was then that my brother accepted Christ, but I wasn’t quite ready. But Dorothia and Codero kept coming back and one day we decided to come to church.

“That was when I learned about what was missing in my life. I needed Jesus. I went to the altar and asked Jesus into my heart. Since then I have had the strength to make it through all the things I have been through.

“God has provided for me when I didn’t know how we were going to make it. He’s loved me when I felt no one loved me. Best of all, he has given me a family. I have been blessed with many loving mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers here at Crossroads.”