It is expected that the fastest-growing churches are externally focused, but the variety of creative ways in which they serve their local communities might surprise you.
In our research, we found a Nevada church helping a public school in a community with a trailer park many consider to be the largest in the world, an Arizona church that meets people when they are released from prison, a Colorado church that operates a yard care trailer and a church that loans medical equipment to those in need in Northwest Arkansas.
Of course, fast-growing churches may have significant resources to dedicate to specific outreaches, but most of their approaches can be adopted by churches of any size, or may inspire a new service idea that fits your community. Read on to discover how these churches are making an eternal impact as they act as the hands and feet of Jesus.
Developing Partnerships
When we asked how churches serve their neighbors, the most common way we heard was “partnerships.”
The idea of collaborating is one of the six core values of The Crossing, A Christian Church (No. 19, fastest-growing) in Las Vegas, Nevada. They believe effective partnerships promote unity and impact.
“The two main things that local nonprofits are always in need of are money and people,” says REACH Missions Director Michelle White.
The church’s 11 local partnerships address needs such as homelessness, food insecurity, after-school programs, sex trafficking, domestic abuse and foster care. Typically, the church makes a two-year commitment with a partner and then considers renewal.
Lou Pizzichillo, lead pastor at Community Church (No. 47, fastest-growing) in Babylon, New York, says key to their approach to serving the community is “recognizing there are some things we are uniquely equipped to do well, and other things other groups are already doing well. We don’t need to be good at those things. We could just get behind people who are already doing it. For example, we don’t have a food pantry, but we do support a food pantry.”
The church also partners with a pregnancy resource center and an organization that is dedicated to ending human trafficking.
“We try to be the help, not the hero,” explains Pizzichillo. “If somebody else is doing it, we just get behind them and try to help them do it better.”
Cross Church (No. 64, fastest-growing; No. 73, largest) in Northwest Arkansas runs their own extensive feeding ministry called Feed 479 (the local area code), which serves 265,000 people and averages almost 70 professions of faith per month; but supporting local organizations is also a pivotal element of the church’s strategy.
As they investigated some local ministries and even toured some national examples of the same work, Cross Church leaders decided to support a pregnancy resource center, an outreach to abortion-wounded people, a ministry to the incarcerated and those transitioning back into the community, foster care and adoption help, and a VA hospital food pantry.
“[The experts] are already doing it,” observes Feed 479 Executive Director Jeff Pearson. “Let’s not dilute the resources that we have got [in order] to do other things. Let’s focus on things that other people are not doing and support the things that other people are doing.”
Tracking Effectiveness
How do these churches measure whether a service idea is working?
“If we are making decisions according to our values, then it’s an effective decision,” says Pizzichillo. “I don’t know what the outcome’s going to be—if people are going to come to church, or if they are going to believe. If this is a values-based decision based ultimately on our theology, [then] if nothing else, it is effective in teaching what we as followers of Jesus value.”
One of those decisions was to have a Church Has Left the Building event on a Sunday in September. Their village hosts an annual craft fair that attracts 30,000 people, so the church turned to the fair organizers and offered a team of several hundred volunteers. The organizers were overwhelmed with gratitude.
“This has helped reinforce the message that we want something for the community, not from the community,” emphasizes Pizzichillo.
“The ultimate need for everybody, of course, is to know Jesus,” says Clay Willis, community engagement pastor at Crosspoint City Church (No. 13, fastest-growing) in Cartersville, Georgia, “[but] I think a lot of times, we are quick to try to solve a problem before we actually engage a person. It’s really important for us to engage the person first to find out what the problem is before we try to solve it.”
Mobilizing Volunteers
We also spoke with fast-growing churches to learn how they mobilize their people to serve. The Crossing features a partner of the month who is present in the church lobby, mentioned in the church’s social media, and highlighted for the church’s small groups. Partners have reported they get a lot of momentum with potential volunteers by being present at the church.
In addition, each small group in the church is challenged to have a service project. Group leaders are presented with information on the partners and the opportunities available.
“It’s honestly just a lot of trickling of information in many different areas and then being willing to take the time with an individual if they email wanting to volunteer,” White underscores.
One of the ways Community Church tracks effectiveness and mobilizes people to serve is “to be extremely intentional about telling and collecting stories,” Pizzichillo details. Many staff members keep a folder on their phones of stories they have recorded when someone shares about serving experiences. In addition, the church’s entire volunteer team is on Slack, with a dedicated channel where anyone can share stories of the impact they are seeing in the community.
The mission of Pantano Christian Church (No. 76, fastest-growing) in Tucson, Arizona, is “loving people to Jesus” and launching passionate difference makers, which is what they call their volunteers. Attendees are not surprised when they are encouraged to serve.
One weekend a year, instead of having church services, Pantano joins with other churches and local organizations for Serve Our City, an outreach-focused, collaborative opportunity where members of church congregations participate in various service projects around Tucson. These projects often reveal to people areas of interest where they can begin to serve regularly.
Like The Crossing, Pantano encourages people to find a place to serve by challenging small groups to do a project together. The church did a fair last year to promote opportunities with a dozen organizations with which they partner. One of their criteria for these partnerships is that there is a good system in place for working with volunteers. When people sign up, that organization needs to follow up.
“We want our volunteers to have a good experience so that they want to come back, because it’s all about relationships. Relationships make the difference with those experiencing homelessness or who are in foster care. It’s about the relationships where hope and healing really happens,” notes Robin Blumenthal, Pantano’s outreach pastor.
Fostering Community Involvement
In addition to local partnerships, The Crossing has two churchwide serve events each year where they organize 1,500 volunteers to get connected in helping the community, and people are encouraged to invite their friends.
“It can be awkward sometimes, inviting people [to church] on a Sunday. It’s a lot easier to say, ‘Hey, I’m going to go do this food distribution, or this local barbecue event, serving the underprivileged. Want to come with me?’” explains White, adding they have found it is one of the easiest invitations of the year for their congregation.
Another big initiative for Pantano Christian Church has been hosting a mobile food packing event for Feed My Starving Children, an organization focused on ending childhood hunger and food waste. It requires about 2,000 volunteers over a few days. Their last event saw 27 different schools come to the church campus on a school day to pack food for those who are struggling with hunger around the world. Many kids say it is their favorite day of the school year.
Promoting Personal Growth
Because Summit Church (No. 31, fastest-growing) in Sparks, Nevada, encourages its people to serve in many ways with ministry partners and at churchwide events, they often see individuals grow from “just wanting to do an act of kindness, into building a relationship with someone,” notices Local Outreach Pastor Veronica Arredondo.
As the volunteers’ comfort level grows, they begin to ask people whom they are serving their names, listen to their stories, and build rapport. One volunteer recently told Arredondo, “I wanted to be behind a grill flipping burgers. You pushed me out of that comfort zone to build relationships.”
The unity that The Crossing is seeking to create not only occurs with partners across the city, but also impacts their own members.
“If you talk to people who attend regularly, who do these serve events, who participate with our partners locally, there is definitely a sense of camaraderie,” reflects White. “They are like a team.”
Meghan Smith, community and outreach director at Trace Church (No. 22, fastest-growing) in Colorado Springs, Colorado, describes the opportunity serving creates: “When we go out into the community, whether it’s picking up trash at the park, rebuilding a fence or mowing a lawn, people come and ask, ‘Wait a minute, what are you all doing? Why are you here?’ Then you can start conversations.
“It’s an easy transition to start evangelizing for those who aren’t used to it,” she continues. “Then, when you see how easy it is in these scenarios, starting the conversation with the lady checking you out at the grocery store becomes easier. It becomes more of a habit than a chore.”
Renewing the Church’s Reputation
Community Church in New York did a survey in the community before their launch and asked people to describe the “big C” church in one word—and they received no positive responses. Instead, the answers they heard were “judgmental,” “hypocritical” and “greedy.”
“We realized there was a lot of rebuilding that needed to be done in terms of the church’s reputation, and for us, that has come more than anything else through serving the community,” Pizzichillo shares. “We’re changing the narrative in Babylon about the church. I think one of the most profound things that’s happened is that people realize, OK, maybe the church isn’t so bad.”
Trace Church has a similar approach. “It’s very important to get out into the community to show the love of Christ,” stresses Smith. “Right now, with society and culture the way it is, ‘church’ has a bad name. People see it as judgy, [with] legalistic rules—all the negative things that society has [associated with] church. If we can work together as a church body and show the opposite of that, I feel like that’s our role: to rewrite the narrative of church based on serving.”
Crosspoint City Church shares this perspective: “The way our society is right now, it is almost like we have to prove ourselves—that we’re here for the right reason. We’re not here to get you into our church. We’re not here to get something from you. We’re actually here to provide something for you,” offers Willis.
“If we can provide a service like affordable counseling or help with [those experiencing] dyslexia or homelessness, then it gives us a platform to be able to share the gospel with people that are coming in,” he adds. “If we start with care, and we start with serving them, then it validates more of our message of the gospel of Christ, because we’re actually living out the mission of Christ.”
According to Blumenthal, when people in Tucson hear about Pantano Christian Church and the impact it is having on the community, they typically begin, “That is the church that …” He says that phrase usually is followed by a story of service, such as when the church provided a meal during teacher appreciation week, or delivered 50 backpacks to students in need, or brought food to the food pantry.
When people begin to see the way a church serves, “it brings more people into asking, ‘Who is this God that cares about the lost and the lonely and the hurting?’” says Blumenthal.
Reintroducing the Church
Steve Forrester, lead pastor at Life Church Calvert (No. 81, fastest-growing) in Huntingtown, Maryland, says when they help people with tangible needs, “the majority of those individuals are really happy, and they’re thankful, but they don’t ever darken the church door.
“As long as we can be a sweet fragrance, as long as they can taste and see that the Lord is good, then we’ve done our job,” he says. “We have honored the Lord, and that’s the most important thing. It’s up to him to give the increase.”
In Babylon on Long Island, an old church building had a flat roof out back that used to be a hot spot for skateboarders. Church members often would yell at the young people to leave.
In 2020, when Community Church moved into the building, they sought to flip that script. As they tried to discern the needs in their community, the church also sought to understand the area’s values.
“In a community that really enjoys shopping and values small businesses, the churches around here have the reputation for [being] on the ‘taking’ side of things rather than the ‘giving’ side of things,” laments Pizzichillo.
To introduce themselves to the community while also giving back, Community Church chose to bless the shops and the residents by putting on a “12 Days of Christmas Giveaway” at a different shop or deli each day. The church purchased merchandise or meals from the shops, then the first 25 people who came by received the free gift.
Alex, a young woman who grew up in the village, heard about the giveaway, and although she had no church background, she showed up for the church’s opening in January 2020.
Community Church had to shut down during COVID-19, but when they relaunched, Alex returned and began serving as a volunteer. Eventually, she was baptized, joined the church staff, and now plays a huge part in their guest services efforts.
Recently, Alex told Pizzichillo that when she was a teenager, she was one of the skateboarders who was told to leave the church roof. Now, running outreach events right next to where she used to skateboard, Alex isn’t yelling at people to go away; she’s inviting them to come be a part of the church that welcomed her.