This past Monday night I attended a Wrightwood Neighbors Association meeting that was held at our Lincoln Park church location.  It’s been a great opportunity to attend these meetings to get to know some of the key leaders in the community and build a deeper church partnership in the community.  This relationship that the church has with WNA was an inherited relationship that had been established by Seminary Avenue Community Church many years ago.  New Life merged with SACC last year and as we’ve begun to attend meetings and get New Life plugged into Wrightwood Neighbor’s events we’ve had more opportunities as a church to help make a difference here in Lincoln Park. 

For a community organization WNA is doing a lot of things right.  Over these past 11 months I’ve had the opportunity to see how they are making Lincoln Park an even stronger community.  Through working closely with elected city officials WNA is finishing construction of a new playground that will very easily be considered one of the best in the city and has another park scheduled to be redone immediately afterwards.  They are the first neighborhood organization in the city to have two community parks being developed at the same time through the Park District.  WNA is a pioneer in other things as well.  Many years ago they helped to provide bikes to the police force through a partnership and developed the first city dog park in the nation called Wiggley Field.  Since then many other communities have opened dog parks across the nation.  Each summer WNA hosts the Taste of Lincoln and uses all the proceeds to pump money back into the community.  I had the opportunity to attend their last Grant Banquet when they distributed the funds and many worthy community organizations as well as the local schools are made stronger and have more resources because of these grants.  One recent project in the works is to create a history project that brings the community together in collaboration to gather all the information possible to create a history book and help the community to be more informed of the past.   I could easily continue to go on and on about the work WNA does for Lincoln Park and it’s great to be able to get New Life involved with them.

As a church I think it’s important to be involved in the community and to serve others.  In 1 Peter 4:10-11 the Bible says, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.” God calls us to serve others.  Often there’s opportunities to serve in a community through community organizations like WNA.  It’s been fun to help connect New Lifers into events that they are hosting and to try to help create new opportunities for the community to get involved with us.  Recently, I had a discussion with the person that oversees community partnerships about helping to organize opportunities to serve for people in the community outside of the church.  New Life is going to be serving in the community on a monthly basis why shouldn’t the community be notified and invited to join us?  Also, we can help organize WNA sponsored events to serve too.  We serve because Christ modeled how to serve.  Christ came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.  We as a church want to be a blessing for the community and want to help make a difference in Lincoln Park.  God calls all of us to serve others.  That means he’s also called you to step out and serve too.