Urban Light Community Church

We go to a great church.  Why is it so great?  Because we have a vision for people being reconciled to God and each other.  As Jesus Christ invites people to follow him, they must follow him together.  Our pastor recently got back from a sabbatical.  It is an honor to be with him in ministry because he is willing to see ministry as a team, and he is a humble leader.  We seek to be a place where reconciliation happens, where Jesus' prayer for us in John 17 is realized, "that they would be one, just as You are in Me and I am in You."

http://www.urbanlightmuncie.com/#!
Here is a part of our story:

Urban Light was started by a few adults and a bunch of kids who lived in the same neighorhood together.  In the beginning, we didnt really reflect the diversity of our community real well.  But we were moving toward the vision God had given us to reconcile people to God and to each other and to raise up leaders from within the community.  God was faithful and did what he said he would do  he raised up an unlikely group of people from all kinds of different backgrounds with all kinds of different issues to lead his church.

In the early days, we had just a small group of adults who met for Bible study and worship.  We bought some rough houses in the neighborhood, fixed them up, and lived in them.  We were starting small businesses such as window washing and house cleaning with the hope of hiring people who needed a second chance or who had been overlooked by the system.  We planted a community garden and infiltrated our neighborhoods with flowering fruit trees.  We had backyard Kids Bible Clubs and BBQs.  But stuff couldnt stay small for long.  The 10-15 people who breathed a bunch of Kerosene fumes in the drafty garage on Madison St. (the historic line of segregation in Muncie) grew into a group of worshippers who met together in some cabins in our nearby inner-city park.

Our gospel choir was formed, our childrens ministry grew, new people either moved in to our community or joined the church from the community.  People came out of drug addictions and prostitution.  Demons were cast out of people.  We did some serious community organizing and kicked off a huge annual block party that is more like a street fair with inflatable games, hip-hop, BBQ, B-ball tourneys, rock climbing wall, and more.  As residents, a bunch of us tracked through the county building and convinced the alcoholic beverage commission to revoke the liquor license of our local strip club, which was a haven for prostitution, drug dealing, and violence.  Afterward, we purchased the property and tore the rat-trap down.  We formed a partnership with another local urban church: Deliverance Temple, which has been ministering on the south side for years.  Together, we run two addiction-recovery and prisoner re-entry houses, the Conley House for men and the Urban Lighthouse for women.  Our ministries are a model of what it looks like when people come together across race and neighborhood barriers to love people with the love of Jesus.