I have been rehashing yesterday’s message in my mind thinking about the disciples’ ministry in their “neighborhood. Acts chapter 2 says they shared with those in need, worshipped together, shared their meals and enjoyed the good will of all the people. And each day it says that the Lord added to their number. In Acts 5 we find them all together again and the people held them in high regard. They were reluctant to join the disciples as followers but…yet more and more people believed and joined the “crowd” so to speak.
What is it that the neighborhood around MABC needs? What needs do we as a church need to meet in order that our neighbors know that we love them? It would be interesting to see how many of you who attend MABC actually live in the neighborhood boundaries. The Delano District’s boundaries are Meridian Ave on the west, the river to the north and the east and then Kellogg to the south. How many of us in the Sunday morning crowd live within that 1.6 square miles? I don’t ask that to be mean. My point is that we have to work that much harder to be a “neighborhood” church when we aren’t in the neighborhood! We really have to be intentional in what we want to see take place.
I have been looking at demographics this morning trying to get a picture of the neighborhood. In terms of age, the greatest population group looks to be 20-30 year olds followed by a smaller group of 35-45 year olds. The population appears to be 60% male to 40% female. Therein lies a little bit of a struggle for us as MABC. The neighborhood has an extremely small population of people from 65 on up whereas we are heavy in that age group. Again, not a bad thing but not representative of the neighborhood makeup. And, we are probably 60% female and 40% male. Again, not saying that is a bad thing but we do not look like our neighborhood.
We need to do some soul searching and pray for wisdom and guidance as to where we focus our energies in the future. I have always been a “let’s get the kids and mom and dad will follow” kind of guy. However, when we look at our neighborhood, only a quarter of the residents are married couple families. And out of those couples, only half of them have children. The average household size in the District is 2.5 people. That tells me there isn’t a lot of children in our neighborhood. Does that mean we don’t do children and youth? No, it means that we shouldn’t expect high numbers at this time. We take care of the kids we have been given. On Monday night, our Awana numbers will consist mainly of grandkids of members and those grandkids don’t live in our neighborhood. Grandma is bringing them. I love them to death and I try to bring my grands when they don’t have anything else to do. There just aren’t many in our neighborhood.
Would you please be in serious prayer about what God is asking us to do? He has placed us here in the Delano District and there has to be a reason for us to still be doing ministry after nearly 100 years. I recently read that there is 3 church closures in the US for every church plant. We aren’t in that statistic and I don’t believe we will be if we are earnestly seeking God’s will for MABC here in this neighborhood. Not our will but his.
Have a great week! Be blessed but by all means, be a blessing to a neighbor in some way.
P.R.