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In Fresno (as in 120 other U.S. communities) a network of congregations has organized under the auspices of Love INC. Based in Minneapolis, Love INC has been in existence for 27 years.

The idea is almost too obvious. The local church works with the Love INC staff to identify what gifts and talents are available in the congregation to help others. People in need contact Love INC. If someone needs clothes for school, or groceries, or car repair, or tutoring after school, Love INC's trained volunteers make sure the need is valid. They then locate the church that's nearest the person and best able to help. Love INC connects the right church volunteers to meet those needs. Local church members go to work, getting involved in the needs of their neighbors.

James 1:27 is interesting. If you asked most people what true religion is, they would not give this answer. It says, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

If we're not caring for widows and orphans, we're already polluted by the world, because the world doesn't care either. The church's very nature, however, is to care. The church has demonstrated this many times over.

The vital role of the church is to love our neighbors in the way Jesus loved them. We are doing it; we can't help it. My prayer is that through a network of churches like Love INC, and through any other method we can arrive at, we will mobilize to do what only we can do.

The chuch is indestructible. We have the resources. We care. We have a spiritual and practical balance. We have the gifts and the opportunities. The church is life and death in its community. Our vital role is not realized, however, until we are mobilized.

Alan Doswald is executive director of Evangelicals for Social Action/Love INC in Fresno, California. For more information, see www.loveinc.org, or call 800.777.5277.

Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Our December cover story, New York's New Hope, showed churches developing run-down neighborhoods and becoming integral to life in New York City.

Recent Christianity Today articles about needing the Body of Christ include:

The Church—Why Bother? | There is no healthy relationship with Jesus without a relationship to the church. (Jan. 06, 2005)

Why I Return to the Pews | The church has often left me bemused, bored, or mystified, but I can no more abandon it than I can myself. (Dec. 16, 2004)

Editor's Bookshelf: Survival Through Community | An interview with Charles Colson, author of Being the Body. (May 19, 2003)

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January 2005, Vol. 49, No. 1