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Circle Urban Ministries began at an unlikely moment in history. In 1973, while Chicago marveled at the brand new Sears Tower, just eight miles to the west, Chicago's Austin neighborhood was in precipitous social and economic decline. More than 20,000 whites were moving out every year. Nearly all of the 138,000 whites residing there at the end of the '60s would be gone by the end of the '70s. Doctors, lawyers, businesses, and churches moved out to the suburbs.

With few institutions left to support its social structure, Austin collapsed. Unemployment hit 40 percent; the high school dropout rate reached 70 percent.

That's when Circle Urban Ministries moved in.

"This was a throw-away community when we got here," remembers Glen Kehrein, the ministry's executive director. Today Austin is a community in recovery. Partial credit for this recovery is due to a unique partnership between a church and a social service agency that has worked for nearly three decades.

Convinced of a call to plant a church in Austin, Raleigh Washington faced an uphill battle: many churches in the community had bi-vocational pastors who had little time or energy for outreach; others tailored ministries and programs to the middle class, a decreasing minority in Austin. The recent white flight (including 27 evangelical congregations that left the neighborhood) suggested that Austin didn't need a church like the ones it knew. It needed a church strong in its commitment to the community.

Dedication to the neighborhood took concrete, and a historic, form.

"One of my mentors, John Perkins, gave me the drive for a parish concept of ministry. And he believes in planting yourself in the midst of the poor and the needy," explains Washington.

Rock of Our Salvation Evangelical Free Church found its first home when Pastor Washington began holding services in the facilities of Circle Urban Ministries.

Rock Church's leaders applied the parish concept in practical ways. They identified the immediate neighborhood as their mission field.

They began praying for the surrounding streets, and Washington went door-to-door inviting residents to church.

The neighborhood presented numerous challenges. At first, Rock Church had little credibility, even in its target area. There were too many other churches with no meaningful ways of addressing neighborhood problems. This stunted the church's ability to grow through evangelism and discipleship. On the other hand, Circle had standing in the community through medical and legal aid clinics and after-school programs, but few lives were being transformed through its work.

Washington admired the doctors, lawyers, and youth workers at Circle, but he quickly pinpointed the limitation of the agency: their efforts in evangelism and discipleship—changing lives for the long term—were at a standstill.

"The center's ministry slogan expressed it well," Washington once wrote, "'God's love made visible in the city'—not to be confused with 'verbal.'"

"Circle was great at meeting the physical needs of the people, but in order to win them to faith and provide a platform for helping people mature, they needed the church," states Washington. "Proclaiming the full gospel—reaching the spiritual and physical needs of the whole person—was going to be done most effectively through a partnership between our two organizations."

Circle's Kehrein agrees: "Holistic ministry requires evangelism, discipleship, preaching, and teaching. Until Circle Urban Ministries partnered with Rock Church, we could not hold on to the people we reached out to. Even if a person accepted Christ, which was rare in the early days, there was nothing to nurture spiritual growth."

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