Change comes into our lives whether we like it or not. Life is all about change. Look at our lives and the lives of our children. As children grow, parents must adapt to each new stage of their children’s lives. As we get older, we encounter challenges that are not always pleasant. Life is changing from the moment we are born to the day we die.
The same is true of churches. We call the church a living organism, a body. Our congregations face challenges with the culture and community around them. The church is challenged to adapt to the surrounding environment. And the environment around us and the church is ever changing. Yet, we must remain firm and faithful to the message of Jesus Christ.
I grew up in Dinuba (Calif.) MB Church. My family has a long history with this congregation, dating back to the founding of the church on May 10, 1921. My husband and I were sent to the mission field when the church was thriving, with an attendance of 500-plus.
When we returned 33 years later, the church was struggling. Attendance was around 100 and church leadership was pushing to reach our community that had also transformed in the last 50 years.
Coming back to Dinuba in 2022, I felt strange in my own church. Is this my church? Do I belong? The building was the same and some people were the same, but there were so many people I didn’t know.
Going back in time
We left the United States in 1980, to serve with Good News Corp, a short-term mission program with MB Missions/Services, now Multiply. When we arrived in a German-speaking colony in southern Brazil, I felt like I had stepped back in history 50 years. A few women were still baking bread outdoors in brick ovens. At church, men sat on one side of the church and women on the other, with a few brave families sitting in the middle.
Change and adapting to these different cultures was not easy for me. The Lord and I had many sad, crying sessions in both Brazil and Portugal.
The church was losing the next generation, and our assignment was to work with the youth. The leadership of the church had come to us and was willing to listen to ideas and approaches that may help them. The church was willing to adapt to the realities around them. When we left two and a half years later, there was a thriving youth program with many changed lives.
Seven years later in 1989, the MB mission agency sent our young family to Lisbon, Portugal, to do pioneer church planting. Again, we adapted to a new culture and learned another new language.
Over the next three decades, Portugal experienced major migrations from Africa, Brazil and Slavic countries. This brought more new cultures and languages into our churches and even onto our missionary team. Thirty-three years later, churches are growing.
Change and adapting to these different cultures was not easy for me. The Lord and I had many sad, crying sessions in both Brazil and Portugal. But as I yielded my will to his and accepted the challenge of learning about another culture and learning to love others for who they were, God grew in me a bigger love and appreciation for others. I give glory to God for his ability to work in the lives of my husband and me, two normal, willing people.
Back home
We have now been back on U.S. soil for three years. We have returned to Dinuba and our home church, now called New Life Community. Our church and community have a very different look and feel than when we left in 1989.
Those feelings I had of not belonging are gone now, but it took time. It took me making a conscience effort to introduce myself to someone I did not know and asking their name. Then the following week asking the same person again if I had forgotten their name. With some people it became comical when I would ask for the fourth time. But now we know each other’s names; we talk and laugh together.
Meals at church gave a good opportunity to sit with someone I did not know and ask what their story was or what brought them to the church.
Feeling at home in my “home” church for me meant making a conscience effort week after week to walk up to someone I did not know, ask for their name and give them my name. In time, I could ask questions that took the budding friendship a little deeper. It also helped to get involved in the women’s Bible study and to help in other areas of the church.
A willing heart
Our church has worked hard at reaching into the community. NLC began this process some years before we returned from Portugal. We see by the people not here, that it has been a difficult transition. But it is a transition that church leaders felt God was asking them to make.
Jesus commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:31). He commands us to go into our neighborhoods and bring the gospel, heal and help (Luke 10:9). Jesus promises that he will go with us and give us everything we need to accomplish this task.
I had a conversation with a person from NLC who said, “I know we have for years prayed for change, for getting into our community. But when it happened, I never thought it would feel this way. I thought community people would come and fit right into the church I have always known. I feel lost in my own church.”
I answered with a question: “Take away the faces of all the people in the church, even the pastor, and ask yourself if the church is doing what Jesus has asked the church to do. Ask if our church is being true to the Bible? If the answer is yes, then get your eyes off people and onto Jesus.”
The bottom line is: Are we willing to be the hands and feet of Jesus in our churches and communities? This takes a conscious and deliberate act on our part. Jesus just wants willing hearts.
It is hard to say if this or that program works in attracting people to the church. Every culture is different, every community is different, every church is different. I will say from working on three different continents and with many different cultures that people notice when we are doing something “for them” to attract them to our church.
People want to see authenticity in our friendships and our programs. They want to see that they are truly welcome with the questions and issues that come with them.
At a recent women’s retreat I shared a room with eight women from our church. Over half of the women were new to our church and from a different cultural background. When asked what brought them to NLC, they answered that initially it was the friendliness of the people in the church and then the teaching.
Transformed by Jesus
Our church has struggled and experienced hard times, but growth and change are happening. We see it in the baptisms and new members. We hear it in their testimonies of broken lives being transformed by the love of Jesus and the love they have felt through the lives of the people in the church.
Our church has used programs. For example, we mapped out our town and members walked through town praying for each home. Our Home Resource Center accepts donations of furniture and household items. We then work with local organizations to supply furniture and other items for families that have nothing for the homes they are given. NLC volunteers deliver the items, set up the household for the family and pray for the family in their new home. We see this as our church’s first contact with the love of Jesus for these people.
Our children and youth programs are growing through leaders who focus on churched and unchurched children. NLC offers Celebrate Recovery, GriefShare, men’s and women’s Bible studies, faith and finance classes and Healing Room Ministries, a place where a person can receive one-on-one prayer for an issue they feel needs healing, and other programs open to all persons from church and the community.
Programs help to disciple and grow new people, but the biggest asset in the church are its members. Members who have a heart and mindset open to learn, love and accept another person, their background and their culture. John 15:35 says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Marjorie Ekk and her husband, Otto, have served for 36 years as missionaries in both Brazil and Portugal. They attend New Life Community in Dinuba, Calif
