May 15, 2000
HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN attend Good News Bible Club at Citychurch each Thursday evening and are served a meal before the study begins. (Photos by Toby Druin)
Citychurch: 'It's like VBS every week'
___By Toby Druin
___Regional Correspondent
___AMARILLO--Don Lane has a simple solution for every person who has felt called to be pastor of a church but doesn't have a congregation to serve: Minister to disadvantaged or overlooked children.
___"There are instant congregations of 100 or more almost anywhere, if a man really is interested in ministry," Lane explained. "It's a lot like Vacation Bible School every week, but it's ministry to people who really need the Lord."
TUTORING by volunteers every Thursday night is one of many services offered at Amarillo's Citychurch, a unique outreach to the Panhandle city's children. (Photo by Toby Druin)
___Lane and Citychurch in Amarillo are testimony to the success of that plan. His congregation, begun in January 1997 in a former auto dealership building in downtown Amarillo, is approaching 900--about 150 middle school youths and more than 650 infants through the fifth grade.
___On a recent Thursday night, 57 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds were there for the evening meal and Bible study. The only adults in the program are Lane and his family--wife Diane, daughter Anna Lea and sons James and Donnie and their spouses--and others who teach or help manage the facilities.
___The church never has tried to have a conventional ministry; children always have beenthe ministry focus.
CITYCHURCH also has its own silkscreen press and produces T-shirts with Christian message.
___A native of Amarillo, Lane returned to the city after serving a pastorate in Burleson and learning he was near death. He had hepatitis C and needed a liver transplant, and when he received one in March 1996 committed his life to serving where he could find the most need--reaching disadvantaged children.
___The need was obvious from the start, Lane recalled.
___"All the kids were lost," he said. "They didn't know what a pastor was; they called me 'the church man.' They didn't know how to come or what to do when they got here.
___"It was wild. It would have made a good movie. Some Sundays, we would spend all our worship time just getting them quiet and then send them all home."
___One woman came to the worship service for a couple of weeks and observed, "What's wrong here is that you have all these kids," Lane said. "I told her that's why we were there--for all those kids.
___"Now the kids bring Bibles, read Scripture, and many have been saved. During the message time on most Sundays, you can hear a pin drop. They are learning to worship, and now we are using the older boys to usher and pray."
___In the 39 months the church had been functioning through March, at least 450 professions of faith had been registered and 389 converts had been baptized.
___"We start where faith is to be found," he said. "Children are willing to listen and besaved. Our strategy is long-term. Some of them will take 10 years to come to the Lord, and during that time they will be getting an education and jobs and many will become young adults and help us build the church."
GENE DAVIS (left), lead carpenter on My Father's House, checks the plans with Pastor Don Lane, Wayne Pogue and Jack Tennison, special projects director for Texas Baptist Men.
___Some of the first children the church reached are now in high school, Lane noted, and the church will assist them in attending college or help give them direction in career choices, he said.
___The program has remained much the same since it started. Worship is held each Sunday morning, Bible study on Sunday evening and Good News Bible Clubs on Thursday evenings. Children are brought to the church building at 205 S. Polk Street by Citychurch vans, which scour neighborhoods all over the city.
___The children are given a meal each time they attend church. Lane said workers learned early that many of them came hungry and couldn't learn on an empty stomach.
___The ministry is expanding, having acquired the property of the old West Amarillo Church of Christ, where it will operate San Jacinto Community Church. Donnie Lane will be the pastor.
___With the help of $400,000 worth of volunteer labor from Texas Baptist Men, Citychurch is renovating the former nurses' quarters of Northwest Texas Hospital on West 7th Street. When completed, it will be known as "My Father's House" and will have 34 apartments for unwed mothers, single women or young girls expecting babies.
AFTER the children go through the volunteer-staffed serving line, they often get individual attention from workers like Jennifer Leonhart.
___"It is intended to be a transitional home," Lane said. "The women can live there for up to two years if they are in school or have a job. It will be a safe place for them to keep their baby or to place it for adoption."
___Potter County, he noted, ranks second among Texas counties in the number of unwed teenage pregnancies. Texas ranks first among states.
___The church has used a unique funding program to provide the $1 million needed to purchase the building, using a tax credit plan from the Texas Housing Commission and funds provided by Bank One Corp.
___The projected completion date for My Father's House is December, but many more volunteers are needed if the goal is to be reached, Lane said. "We need lead carpenters, helpers and plumbers and can provide housing and meals while they are here." Churches or individuals who can help should contact him at (806) 371-0089.
___Another innovation being implemented is CityKid Corps, a job-finding and job-training ministry for the children who attend and grow up at Citychurch. The program will teach them to develop micro-businesses, to work and to learn job skills, including how to market on e-Bay items that have been given to the ministry.
___"We are teaching them to make candy and to develop sales routes and to develop a rag business out of the unusable clothing given to us," Lane said. "We will also form work crews for tree trimming and will ask landscapers to take them on as apprentices. One of the best things my father did for me was to teach me to work."
___"The harvest truly is to be reached in the inner cities," Lane said. "We have to redirect our eyes from the suburbs and financially viable churches to the other side. The church growth movement has led us to go after the cream of the crop.
___"Here in the inner city, we don't look for tithers, we look for souls, and the field is white unto harvest."
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