Who Are We Maybe Overlooking?

You could say we already have done so much “beyond church walls” efforts to help our community, and you would be right. Our church has always been very “missional minded” in serving the community, helping people in need, the poor and homeless, both locally and around the world. The need is urgent and ongoing and important.

As we reach out to these various groups “out there” in serving the community, let’s remember there are others who don’t fit that demographic of people impacted by our traditional missions work. These “other people” in our community are important too.

Who are they? They are our neighbors, the people in the community all around us. They are the people next door or down the street. They are the people who drive by our church every day. They are the people we encounter as we go about our daily lives. They are the barista at a coffee shop. They are the people in the grocery store. They are our boss or our employees. They are people at your fitness center or in your Yoga class. They are our friends or they may be people we dislike. They may be our parents, our grandparents, our children, or our grandchildren. They are everyone else, not served by our traditional missions work. They are the huge community around us who we don’t know by name. They are just out there. They are also our mission field beyond the walls of our church.

They are diverse. They are single, married, divorced. They are living with their partner. They are boomers, Gen X, millenials, Gen Z, and kids. They are Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, independents, or totally disgusted with politics. They may not all look the same, some with tattoos. Some are straight or members of the diverse LGBTQIA+ community. They are wealthy, middle income, and many are low income. They are of other faiths, or are agnostics, atheists, spiritual, non-spiritual, people who have never attended a church, former and current Christians who just haven’t been to a church in a while, people with doubts, people with questions. Some are the people who have been hurt by a church or have been treated as outcasts.

They are people like us, people not like us, anyone, everyone.  These are the people we sometimes unintentionally overlook. These are our neighbors.

These people are loved by God. We can do a better job of loving them too.

It is for these people that this Bethany Beyond Walls effort exists.

Also, it’s worth considering the bigger picture beyond just our church. Consider Christianity in a post-Christian era.

Our Agenda is Simple – Love Them