From storage space to community hub | Pastor for deaf Christians

An offering of the Forum for Congregational Life

Mack Avenue Community Church in Detroit, Michigan

The leaders at Mack Avenue Community Church had always wanted to start a nonprofit. “We can’t simply be a place that receives services as a neighborhood,” says lead pastor Leon Stevenson. “We have to be offering services as well, but what we did not want to do is have a nonprofit [where] we brought forth all the initiatives that the community needed. We wanted it to be birthed out of the community saying, ‘Here are our greatest problems. Now might you have some way to help us in that?’”

The result of their community listening: a coffee shop laundromat.

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Headlines are written by the source publication.

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Research and insights

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Featured resource: The Faithful Generosity Story Shelf

How should we repurpose our assets with faithful generosity? The Faithful Generosity Story Shelf is a collection of stories that highlights congregations and other religious groups who are using their assets and resources in creative ways as an expression of faithful giving.

“We want our problems to be the same problems as [those of] our neighborhoods and our neighbors — and that means being here for a long time, doing the work as long as we can, generation after generation.”

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— Jonathan Demers

Mack Avenue Community Church member and former executive director of Mack Avenue Community Church Development