“So where is your church?” a neighbor asked at our free food truck event. When our volunteer replied that it was across the street, the neighbor replied “Oh, I’ve never noticed it.” The moment was deeply important for us as a new campus of the Linglestown Life multi-site congregation. This question has helped us remember how much work we have to do to gain trust, rapport, and friendship in our neighborhood. To many people in our neighborhood, we are just a brick building on the corner of two busy roads. In determining and witnessing the why of this Linglestown Life Campus, which is to have the “heartbeat for the community,” this neighbor’s question has pushed us to evaluate how to better be present with our community.
Over a year ago, Rockville UMC merged with Linglestown Life; we are now Linglestown Life at Linglestown and at Rockville. Since this merger, the Rockville Campus has been figuring out how to reach and partner with our community. We are in the process of making an educational and community center called Ray’s Place out of an old garage building; we will use it to create meaningful programs in partnership with the Susquehanna Township School District.
With the merger of new ideas and a sense that God is calling us to reach our neighborhood and the northern part of Harrisburg (sometimes called Rockville), Linglestown Life has been figuring out how to reach people, specifically through food. So, we hired a food truck for an evening in September and October to invite our neighbors to come for a free takeaway meal. Our hired food truck set up shop and we gave free food tickets to anyone who completed an information card. We also displayed our future education building to begin developing a connection with the space. The purpose of this event was for our launch team, who will start a new weeknight service next September, to make social connections to our neighbors and help them realize that we are indeed present and caring, and to bring some life into our community.
In the COVID-19 era, gathering indoors over a Bible study is not very appealing to neighbors without a connection to our faith community. The food truck model of gathering neighbors is non-invasive, very relaxed, and it allows people to socially distance themselves. As a pastor of a small rural community last year and now as an urban pastor, I think this model of the food truck is highly usable for any church, wherever you are. If you can invite people to your space and share free food with them, the connections are more meaningful and less transactional. We were intentional in using our volunteers to talk to people and ask them about their jobs and kids and lives. We didn’t have them over for a transactional yard sale or chicken barbeque to just say, ‘see you on Sunday.’ We gathered their information and had meaningful conversations with them to communicate that we’re here to partner in the betterment of our shared community. We spent time learning peoples’ names and stories so that we will be able to empower other ministries or create something together that will benefit our neighbors.
As a millennial pastor, I see that there are many people who are skeptical of churches and who may not know they are even present in the area. Like the reality of climate change, the reality of a post-church America is not far off down the road for our grandkids to deal with; it’s here, right now. We aren’t interested in preserving what was, but in being creative with the hand we’re dealt. Our former Methodist church was likely not the only one to be a building that the neighbors forgot about or that was more of a landmark on a road than an active community gathering space. Your church in a city, a rural town, or even the suburbs can always use more ways to reach your literal neighbors and spaces. Don’t start with the assumption that people know about your community and are waiting to arrive on a Sunday. Start with the assumption that God is working in your mission field already and that you just need to find a creative way to show up where people are already gathering. A food truck event like this can be helpful to help people know that your church is active in partnering with the community, not for the purpose of transactional evangelism, but for the purpose of loving your neighbor.
This model of using a food truck for gathering your neighbors and strangers to your faith community may be incredibly helpful in your ministry context. If you want help with such a missional outreach, feel free to contact me at tpfaff@susumc.org.
