Later that day, I was at Kinship Cafe, meeting with a board member. TJ Roberts, the owner, is making a real impact in our community with his shop. His creativity, his excellence, and his engagement in the community are all part of what makes his small business an important part of the fabric of our neighborhood. We always talk a little whenever I visit. When I sat down for my meeting I noticed my auto mechanic, Danery at the corner table talking with someone on the phone. We didn’t get much chance to converse, but he stopped by my table as he was leaving and said hello.
I love our neighborhood— the small businesses and family-owned restaurants, taco trucks, the organizations helping to make it a better place to live, the little parks, and especially the people from all places. It’s diverse, it’s robust, and it’s thriving in beautiful ways. Some see the older homes, restless youth, the areas of blight, and the challenging schools, but at Mission Adelante, we see beauty and potential.
We believe that God cares about the places where people live, because those places have a lot to do with how people flourish. Remember, He took pains to describe Eden, the beautiful, fertile place where He put the first humans in Genesis 2. And in Revelation 21-22, He describes the New Jerusalem— a beautiful place, Eden restored. Of course, we won’t be able to restore “Eden” ourselves, but as Christians, we do exist as salt and light in a broken world. This means that we are part of God’s plan for bringing restoration and wholeness everywhere we go— spiritually of course, and physically as well. Christian community development is an important part of the testimony we give of the healing power of Jesus Christ and the future promise of His restoration of all things!
8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
An important part of our ministry has always been our personal engagement and investment in our neighborhood, not as outsiders helping from afar, but as insiders, serving, sharing life, and sharing Jesus from within. To be clear, our neighborhood has a lot of challenges, but we have chosen to make these challenges OUR challenges and work together, with our community, toward solutions. This means that we not only offer our programs and services to our community, but that we also collaborate with local government, businesses, schools, and other non-profits and churches in our neighborhood to make the place we live a better environment for all of us to flourish in. Our vision statement captures this dream for our community:
We envision a growing multicultural community of disciples making disciples, where people from all places are thriving and using our gifts together to transform our neighborhood and the world for the glory of Jesus Christ.
