CONGREGATIONAL ENGAGEMENT
Rooted in our experience as Englewood Christian Church and Englewood CDC, we work with congregations across our city and across North America who desire to cultivate a deeper life together that overflows into tangible love for the communities in which they are embedded.
This work flows from the conviction that congregations do not exist for their own end; rather, they exist to share civic responsibility and be a gift to those they live among. Our work with congregations is therefore centered on three practices that have been transformational for us as we have sought to embody this conviction:
- dialogue,
- discernment, and
- demonstration of the commitment to community health.
Cultivating Communities
Cultivating Communities, is a product of two Lilly Endowment grants that builds off decades of work by Englewood CDC and provides an opportunity for us to have an impact on faith communities across our city and across North America.
Comprehensive Community Development Cohort
This 5-year initiative focuses on under-resourced and under-connected areas which have “catalyst congregations” who desire a greater impact on their surrounding neighborhood in partnership with other organizations around them for the betterment of their neighbors. Catalyst congregations and partner organizations will help to build out a plan for their neighborhood and learn how to leverage resources to accomplish that plan. This initiative will give priority to communities and congregations of color.
Congregational Formation Cohorts
We have partnered with Missio Alliance to launch a growing network of cohorts, each composed of congregations that are conversant with the way of Jesus in their respective places. In these cohorts, congregations learn to ask questions of themselves and to practice discernment, through the presence of the Holy Spirit; to identify their unique contexts and gifts; and to cultivate habits, skills, and capacities for their rich formation as a congregation, even in the midst of disagreements. Through cultivating these practices of commitment, patience, conversation, and forgiveness, congregations build trust and unity, in order to mature into the way and likeness of Jesus.
Click to learn more and get involved:
Englewood Review of Books
Launched in 2008, The Englewood Review of Books is a weekly online book review published by Englewood Christian Church on the Near Eastside of Indianapolis. The ERB offers book news and reviews guided by the themes of community, mission, imagination, and reconciliation. Through the ERB, we aim to cultivate a vision of Reading for the Common Good, a way of reading that is driven primarily not by one’s personal desires but by an attentiveness to the communities in which we are embedded: including church, family, neighborhood, and workplace.