What happens when you combine a desire to reach your community better with equipment you already have that is just sitting around unused most of the time? You get a newer, better serve team that uses a mobile kitchen, a mobile shower unit and a mobile laundry unit not just when literal storms hit, but when people in the community have been hit by the storms of life.
Oak Park Church in Mobile, Alabama, has had a long-standing disaster relief ministry, a critical outreach for a church located along the storm-ridden Gulf Coast. But today, church leaders decided to pivot slightly. Rather than solely coming alongside communities following major natural disasters, they decided to use the ministry’s life-saving—and life-giving—equipment year-round.
“We felt a need to be in the community more, especially after COVID-19,” explains Senior Pastor David Smith. “Everyone went through that season where it was hard to get people in the building, and so we backed up and approached everything as a church plant.”
The church has used its resources to live out its values—Love, Grow, Serve—in the community.
“We became really intentional about partnering with our city, partnering with the county, and doing intentional outreach events where we reach out to [unhoused people], partner with our school system, etc.,” Smith says. “I think that is the catalyst of what has happened in the last year. It has created a stir.”
The newcomers to Oak Park Church aren’t necessarily the same people who have been served by community outreaches. Rather, they are people from across all over the community who have learned about the church through its numerous partnerships with city and community organizations, and by its increasingly meaningful presence in Mobile.
Many of the new attendees are in Gen Z, Smith says. “I think that generation is attracted to the service model [that] is really a big focus for us, and I think they are big on humanitarian issues, outreach and compassion, and that’s what they expect the church to be. So, when they see a church doing that, it causes them to connect.”
Oak Park is not a new church; founded in the 1950s, it is an established part of Mobile. But what is new is a more focused emphasis on local outreach that was not present to the degree it is now.
Smith observes, “Sometimes you just walk into a God moment, you know? This is about being out in the city in practical ways. We’re not just recruiting people to church, but loving people where they are, serving them where they are, and people are showing up.”
So what has Oak Park done to retain these new people?
“People aren’t looking for a friendly church—they are looking for a friend,” Smith clarifies. “And so, we’re just very deliberate about connecting people.”
To that end, Oak Park hired a connections pastor whose job is to do just that: make one-on-one connections with and between members and attendees, to make church more personal.
Says Smith, “What we discovered as we are growing is that the larger we get, the more our people desire one-on-one connection. [It helps to have] someone who is very purposeful about sending a personal text, making a personal phone call, and then having teams that reach out to and follow up with newcomers. I think that has been a big key as well.”
The authenticity piece has been important not just in connection, but in biblical preaching. Young couples and young families—demographics that are growing in Oak Park—also seem to want authentic preaching, Smith explains. “What I have discovered, as someone who has been in ministry for 30 years, is that I am kind of going back to how I started out, just preaching biblically solid, expository messages, and it hits. I think that authenticity, that straightforward approach, seems to be working.”
The church’s growth has been so noticeable in the past year or so that Oak Park is launching its first multisite campus this year.
“My vision is to continue to create campuses and plant churches along the Gulf Coast over the next five years, especially in Mississippi and Louisiana, where post-Hurricane Katrina church attendance has been negatively impacted,” Smith shares,
And in each place, the church wants to be a valued presence in the community. “We’re trying to be intentional with everything. We want to be in our city, not just expecting our city to come to us.”
OAK PARK CHURCH
Mobile, Alabama
Pastor: David Smith
Website: OPCMobile.org
Denomination: Church of God Cleveland Group
Founded: 1956
Fastest-Growing: 38