Leadership Journal

Our inner-city church in Indianapolis offered many ministries to the poor: a soup kitchen, a sports ministry, free Thanksgiving turkey dinners. A back-to-school program gave out shoes, coats, and book bags.

We were proud of our reputation as "the church that stayed" instead of fleeing to the suburbs. Nevertheless, something was wrong. None of our outreach programs was leading people to faith in Jesus Christ. Residents we touched were not entering into the life of the church. We remained an enclave for affluent, educated whites.

What was wrong? While wrestling with this question, I happened to read Luke 5, the story of Simon Peter, who spent all night fishing without catching any fish. As he sat frustrated on shore, Christ told him, "Put out into deeper water and let down your nets." I was struck by our church's similar situation. Where was the "deeper water" we needed to go? I identified four places.

Many of our outreach ministries were impersonal, treating people like clients rather than friends. For 12 years, for instance, we operated our soup kitchen as a take-out window. People lined up for bowls of soup but couldn't enter the building. The doors were locked. What message did that send?

So we unlocked the doors and invited people to eat inside the church. Some of our members began coming each day to sit and eat lunch with the guests. Before long, some of the neighborhood residents were helping out in the soup kitchen. One of our key volunteers, a retired professor of social work, told me: "All my life I taught classes about the poor. Now, they're my friends!"

Jesus calls us to fish, not to be ichthyologists. We weren't catching any fish.

For years our church had a recreation ministry where children learned to play football, basketball, and baseball. But we didn't try to share the gospel in a deliberate way. A leader of the community told me: "My son grew up playing sports at your church. He wanted to join the church, but no one ever invited him." If the goal is leading people to Christ and transformation, we'd missed it.

So we made changes. Leaders of the program committed themselves to evangelism and discipleship. We took a group of neighborhood kids to a summer camp run by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes where some made commitments to Christ. We prepared devotional materials for teams to use before practice. We began offering a midweek "huddle" time to disciple youngsters who had become Christians.

It is not a bad thing to hand out Christmas baskets, but lifting people out of poverty requires deeper investment. Studying our neighborhood, we realized the greatest need was for education: many children near our church were illiterate. Unable to read or write, they soon dropped out of school and were lost to the street culture. Giving them book bags wasn't enough; they needed a school that would equip and protect them.

After much planning, we purchased an abandoned school building, ...