Week 2: Putting the Community in Community Christian

As my observations and interviews at Good Shepherd drew to a close, so did my time inside my comfort zone. I played things safe the first week, I met with people I’ve known for most of my life and worshiped with friends and family. But for the next nine weeks, I will embark on a journey into the unknown.

The goal of my project is to foster intentionality in people searching for a new church and to irradiate the superficiality of church shopping, yet I can’t help but feel a bit like a superficial church shopper myself. Going to church, week after week, observing their worship, yet not fully engaging in the community.

Now, by no means am I judging churches on looks, on sound and light systems, or by the music they play. But at the end of the day, my time spent with each of these churches is a mere snapshot of what its like to worship with them on a given weekend. I am superficial not because I come wanting superficial things, but because I don’t engage in each church as a whole.

Indeed, churches are about more than what happens on Sunday mornings. They are about the small groups, the fellowship meals, the service projects. They are about coffee dates, people laughing together, crying together, praying together. Its about everything and all of the moments in between.

In full, the congregation is the heartbeat of the church.

Yes, people may come to churches for superficial reasons, or for very specific things I’ve observed on Sunday mornings, but they stay for authenticity and intentionality. Unfortunately, those are things that my research does not give me time to be apart of.

This past week I was reminded of just how important church community should be.

The church of the week was Community Christian (in which the Naperville location is also known as Yellow Box). At the corner of Ogden and Rickert drive, it is well beloved by many in the local community, and is regarded as a place that is more than just another church.

Community Christian is a church dedicated to “helping people find their way back to God.” Along with its modern facility, it offers multiple service times on Saturday and Sunday. But what makes it stand out is not the brightly colored building or its wonderful programming, but its dedication to serving both its congregants and the people of Naperville.

An “Impact Church,” Community Christian has ten different locations across the Chicagoland area, serving neighborhoods old and new and poor and rich alike. During my interviews with Yellow Box’s Community Pastor, Ian Simkins, I learned just what goes into managing all of those different locations while still serving each individual community for what it is.

Ian talked about how important it is to actually live in Naperville while being a Pastor there as the work that goes on in the community itself is often at the forefront of his congregants’ minds as they enter into Yellow Box’s space for worship. There is a strong value on the relationship between the culture of the church and the culture of its surrounding neighborhood and community.

The hope of Community Christian is that it be a place of impact in the surrounding community. This impact comes in many different forms. From hosting secular events in the auditorium, to events run by the Naperville Chamber of Commerce, to reaching out to local Policemen and Firefighters, Community Christian has certainly put its fingerprint on the City of Naperville. The hope and prayer is that, if nothing else, the physical place and spirit of the people who go and work at Yellow Box would be missed if ever absent, that even if people’s beliefs don’t theologically line up with the church, they still value Yellow Box’s place in the community of Naperville as a whole.

There are so many other amazing things going on at Yellow Box that I could choose to talk about in this blog post, but their love of community and of the city of Naperville is what remains central in my mind. To be a church is to be a loving and welcoming community, and Community Christian certainly is that. So I go into my third week of research with a full heart, expectant and excited to see what other amazing things the churches of Naperville have to offer!