What’s in this Episode?

Join us today in conversation with Wisconsin pastor Walter Harvey. The Lord has led Pastor Walter to unleash the Big C church from the small c church. And in doing so, their church has seen community transformation and engagement. We clearly understand that Sundays keep coming at us every week.  We know of our need to care for the Body. This podcast helps us broaden our perspective of “who is our neighbor?” and see community and life change!

 

Read the Transcript:

Dick Hardy 0:06
Hey, friends, it’s great to be with you on this episode of The Church Tips podcast. And I’m privileged today to have my buddy, Walter Harvey from the great city of Milwaukee. Walter, say hi to the Church Tips audience.

It’s great to be with you, Dick. It’s great to be with the Church Tips audience as well.

Well, we’re gonna jump in today to the topic of community engagement. You and I chatted here, oh, a week or so ago about what has gone on with your church up in Milwaukee over these last number of what of years as you’ve begun to really step up community engagement. And I said, Hey, this is exactly what pastors, board members, leaders need to hear. So I’m just going to drop a quarter in you man, and just have you go after it.

Walter Harvey 0:57
Thank you, Dick. You know, churches die, not because of old age. Our church has been around for 114 years. It’s in our fellowship, the Assemblies of God, but it predates the assemblies and churches don’t die because of age. They die because of the loss of influence and impact in a community, and sadly, the pastor and the church themselves are often the last ones to know they’re dead.

If you want to know whether or not your church is alive, ask your community, ask the people who are not coming into the doors of the church, because we’re called not just to minister and serve those who are members, who are coming in, and really that’s probably 10, 20% of a community, but we’re also called to reach the community.

I came to the sad realization in summer of 2016 that our church had died to our community. Now nobody would have known our parking lot was full. On Sunday, we seated 1100 people in the sanctuary. We were doing two services. We’re probably one of the largest urban African American pastored churches in our fellowship, but when a young African American male was shotand killed by a police officer three blocks from the doors of our church, and several nights of unrest, of burnings, of looting had occurred, and I was called as a leader to either lead, follow or get out of the way.

That was a call from the community, but was also a call from the Holy Spirit. And so we engaged our community, and I was asked some very filtering and heart-searching questions. Number one, why are you here? It’s a question of motive. So in terms of community engagement, you show up. The community wants to know, why are you here? Are you here for a, you know, 15 second sound bite on the local news that makes you look good. Another question was, where have you been? In fact, they didn’t just say where have you been, they used H, E, double hockey stick in the middle. Where has the church been? Now that you’re here, where have you been?

And acknowledging we see your church parking lot full on Sunday, but Sunday afternoon, it’s empty.And so I had to come to the honest conclusion, you know, you’re right, but we’re here now. And the question was, will you be here tomorrow? So it’s a question of sustainability and consistency and longevity and methodology, and so we began to to retool as a church. But then we also gave birth to a organization, a movement called the With Movement, which is designed to transform every community’s pain point through disciple making, but also using business as a tool of justice.

There is a there’s an African proverb. Many people, when they hear African Proverbs, they often think it takes a village to raise a child. No, that’s not the one I’m talking about, but it does have the village in and it does relate to children. And this is the proverb, The children of the village will burn it down to feel the warmth of its love.

I think that’s literally what happens in a lot of urban, inner city communities, where we see rioting and looting often after you know some crisis or tragedy occurs, it’s a cry for relevance. It’s a cry for connection and compassion and for human flourishing. And so I began listening to our community. We did community listening sessions after the death of this young man, and some of the things that we heard were opportunities for entrepreneurship. So we responded by creating an Economic Development Corporation, a separate 501c3 from the church an EDC that gave birth to this… Upstart Kitchen, Milwaukee’s first…

Walter Harvey 5:10
It’s Milwaukee’s first culinary kitchen for food entrepreneurs. So today we have a waiting list of 100 food culinary artists and food truck owners and caterers who want to, who want to get into this kitchen, not only to prepare their products, but also because we offer wraparound services, but we have 30 currently cooking out of that kitchen today, and each one is employing between one and 10 employees. Wow, wow. So it’s raising the economic water level of our neighborhood and of our community. It’s a beautiful space as well. So we’re in terms of real estate, you know, it’s improving the quality of life in the neighborhood. Next door to this kitchen, we, along with one of our board members, started a grocery store.

It’s called Sherman Park Grocery Store. That’s the neighborhood they were in, Sherman Park. For years this has been a community that has been a food desert. You have to go a mile in either direction to find fresh fruits and vegetables. Well, now the community can walk to this grocery store. So we’re using business as a tool of justice, and we’re also developing relationships with business people and people in ordinary walks of life, because discipleship should not just take place in a class on Sunday in the church. It should cover every area of our life, where we pray, but also where we play, where we work, where we live and even where we learn. And so that gave birth to the With Movement, and that’s our model for community engagement.

Dick Hardy 6:41
Wow, that is so good, you know, I remember, and I don’t know, I don’t know how much you could share of this, but we were just talking about one of the gentlemen you were, you were engaging with, and he, he came to the church, but just kind of, he was just there, and all sudden, when you started this community engagement, he began to see and understand how his gifts and talents as a businessman could be utilized in this way.

Walter Harvey 7:11
Absolutely.

Dick Hardy 7:11
Press that out a little bit for us?

Walter Harvey 7:13
Absolutely, you know, the church may employ 5-10, people, you know, say, if a congregation has 500 people, the those who are employed by the church might be 5, 10, 15, 20, people, right? So 98% of the people who come are, you know, they’re coming on Sundays, sitting on a gift in the marketplace. Well, this, this gentleman in our church.

His name is Maurice. We call him Mo was one such person, his wife, she flourished on Sunday, directing the praise dance ministry. It’s choreographed praise team of children and youth and adults. But he came and he just wrote checks every, you know, every Sunday as his tithe, because he’s a businessman.

Well, Mo was with me on the streets of the nights of unrest, and he asked me the question. He says, Bishop, what is your vision? I said, My vision is that we unleash the big C church, because the church is a body. It’s people. We unleash the big C church from the small c church, and we begin to buy properties. And he told me, he says, I can do that. I’m a real estate developer.

Dick. I had no idea prior to that, that that was his, that’s his wheelhouse, that’s his sweet spot. So he bought the building and is running the grocery store. He bought a building next door to the church that for years I wanted to purchase as the pastor of the church, but we didn’t have the resources, nor did our board have the will and the vision to do it, and so it just, you know, remained in, you know, another person’s hands.

Well, he bought that building and has converted into a laundromat, a cashless, coinless, you know, high speed, stainless steel, clean laundry. It’s a franchise that’s part of another Christian business in in Iowa that we’re partnering with to put these laundromats in inner cities across across the country.

Dick Hardy 9:20
Wow.

Walter Harvey 9:20
So when we unleash the big C church from the small c church, where they live, work, play and pray and learn, then we’ll begin to see community transformation and community engagement.

Dick Hardy 9:33
Well, I, you know, one of the things I really enjoyed even was because I’m trying, I was trying to connect the dots, you know, over breakfast when we were meeting and connecting the dots all the way to salvation, because this is a model so different than our Sunday morning preach the word altar call, which no dissing of that man.

We’re all in for that. Yes, but you talked about how the doors that open up for people of faith like Mo, to be able to communicate faith to employees and others that are sitting there and realizing, wow, the church big C really is here, and you’ve said great, great opportunity has been for discipleship and the spreading of the Word through these community engagement endeavors.

Walter Harvey 10:32
It certainly has. Here’s an here’s an example of what you just spoke about. Every Friday morning at 6am until 7:15 in the morning, Mo and myself and three other businessmen right along this main street strip of our church. It’s a busy freeway. We meet at one of the local businesses for discipleship, prayer, Bible study.

The goal is not so much Bible study, where we’re getting more head knowledge. The goal is to, you know, be a obedient follower of Jesus Christ, one who hears his voice, who obeys Him, who lives out the values of Christ, that’s discipleship. With the goal of disciples who make disciples, who make disciples. So these guys are not coming because of me. I’m not the Guru, the teacher, the spiritual leader.

I’m a leader amongst followers and a follower amongst leaders. We’re all there to learn and then begin our own disciple group. One of the places that we meet in is a local art gallery. The owner of the art gallery is not a member of our church. In fact, he was not a member of anybody’s church.

When we first had conversation, I invited him into this relationship by asking him if he would be interested in meeting with me and another other businessman and reading the biography of Jesus, right? We’re reading the gospels of Jesus, not the gospel, because it means different things to different people.

And so Fred, which is his name, said, Sure, I’d be willing to do that. Fred opened up the doors of his art gallery. We meet there Friday morning, hour and 15 minutes, everybody brings their own coffee. Occasionally, we’ll have donuts or whatever. And we’re reading the words of Jesus, and we’re learning to hear His voice. Fred has gone from a person who was resisting the gospel to now who has embraced Christ.

Dick Hardy 11:30
Wow.

Walter Harvey 11:33
And tells people about his relationship with Christ, and this is in less than a year. So he’s being discipled to to follow Christ and then to create disciples of his own as well. So there’s multiplication that’s occurring in the marketplace.

Dick Hardy 12:48
So when did this start? Was it 2016 when the 15 or 16 during when that incident occurred?

Walter Harvey 12:54
Yeah, the the With Movement it, it gave birth in 2016 out of the pain and crisis of a tragic death.

Dick Hardy 13:01
I think, for pastors who are watching this right now, I want you to really zero in on this. This was an active… Walter was an active pastor of a church that he was pouring himself into.

And there certainly were times along the way where he could have said, you haven’t said this to me, but I’m only guessing. I don’t have time for this. I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I got this church that I’m trying and I and guess what? Sunday’s coming. I gotta have a message ready.

Walter Harvey 13:35
Yeah.

Dick Hardy 13:36
So there are all these excuses that can pop into our mind, but Walter responded to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. You know, where are you and and so, pastor, if don’t, don’t do anything because Dick and Walter said, to do it.

That’s that’s not going to last. But if this podcast allows the Holy Spirit, or sets up the Holy Spirit to speak to you in your community, rural, urban, suburban, wherever you’re at. I really pray that that will be the case for you.

Are there any other salient points that we should just be aware of as we’re thinking about that for our own communities?

Walter Harvey 14:20
Yeah, I’ll maybe close with with this salient thought that most of what we do as pastors and churches is focused inwardly. Sundays are coming. We spend most of our time in sermon prep for the people who are coming, our choirs rehearsing praise teams rehearsing for those who are coming in. We’re getting the building ready, the parking lot, whatever, right it’s it’s for that day inward.

If that church ever ceases to exist or relocates or dies, the community won’t care or won’t even notice, because they haven’t been engaged. They haven’t been impacted. Occasionally, we do things we call outreach, and those are a two and a four model. We think do things to and for our community. I’m hoping that they will come in. But outreach is not sustainable. It’s often transactional.

Sometimes, if it lacks compassion, it can be demeaning, and we feel better about it than the people that we’re giving stuff to and doing things for, but being with them is the model that Jesus lived. He was incarnate. He came and lived amongst the people. And transformation occurs through disciple making, through doing life. And so the Lord is inviting us.

You don’t have to shut down the sanctuary, but God’s doing more outside the sanctuary than He is in the sanctuary. In fact, many of our churches don’t need him there, right? We got enough smog machines and lights and, you know, amplifiers and great worship that we would never even notice if he didn’t show up. God’s inviting us to the dark and the dangerous places. He inviting us into the community because that’s where he’s dancing.

The Greek word perichoresis, peri, which means perimeter or around, and choresis, which means dance choreography, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Divine Trinity.

They are dancing in the community. They are dancing outside the doors of our church, and they’re inviting the big C church, come on, be unleashed. Come and join me in the dance. It’s going to be all right. You’re going to meet some wonderful people there and do life with them, and you’ll bring community and faith together.

Dick Hardy 16:35
Wow, wow, that is beautiful. So well said, I can’t thank you enough. Walter, you’ve been a great friend over these years, and just the content over these last number of moments for pastors to think about being with the community and truly doing community engagement that impacts the lives of men and women and boys and girls. Thanks so much for being with us.

Walter Harvey 16:58
Thanks for having me, Dick.

Dick Hardy 16:59
You know, I know pastors are constantly looking for things that would help them in their own leadership, and I certainly would encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to guide you in the sense of community engagement. Lots of pastors are saying, just in my own leadership, I need help. I want to be able to step to the next levels.

And one of the things that Leaders.Church has been privileged to provide for pastors is what’s called the Four Secrets Masterclass. It’s about an hour long Masterclass, and if you just go to Leaders.Church/secrets, you can click in and pick a time. There’s generally two or three times that you can pick to make it fit your schedule and and grow as a leader. We certainly would be privileged to partner with you in this way.

So for Walter and myself again today, thank you very much for hanging out with the Church Tips podcast. We’ll look forward to seeing you next time. Be blessed.

Jonathan Hardy 17:49
Hey, Jonathan, here real quick before you go, everything in your ministry rises and falls on your leadership. So investing in your leadership is essential to staying healthy and growing the ministry, and that’s why I want to invite you to join us inside the Leaders.Church membership, this online streaming service for pastors gives you access to more than 300 videos plus training material to level up your leadership and improve your ministry skills.

If you’d like to do that, I want to invite you to go to Leaders.Church/boost. Again, that’s Leaders.Church/boost. Well, thanks again for joining us on the Church Tips podcast. We’ll look forward to seeing you next time

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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