April 16, 2001
Amarillo's CityChurch goes to the 'greatest need'
___By Ferrell Foster
___Texas Baptist Communications
___AMARILLO--The poorest children in Amarillo didn't notice when a Texas pastor moved home to die in their city. They probably didn't notice when two hospitals merged and a new foundation was born to start churches in the Panhandle.
___Both events, however, helped bring food and the gospel to their neighborhood.
___Don Lane didn't actually die. A liver transplant in 1996 saved his life and sent him and his family in search of a new way of ministering. CityChurch was born, and it became a church for the children.
AT CITYCHURCH, children and adults enjoy a morning snack in the church's cafe.
___At about the same time, two hospitals, one Baptist and one Catholic, died and a new hospital was launched. Baptist Community Services received money as part of the merger and created High Plains Christian Ministries Foundation for supporting Baptist and Christian causes. The foundation has poured about $150,000 into CityChurch, said President Tim Holloway.
___As a result, 750 to 1,000 of Amarillo's poorest children are now involved in weekly Bible study, 700 people have made professions of faith in Christ and 478 have been baptized at CityChurch and its three satellite congregations.
___The Baptist General Convention of Texas honored CityChurch recently with its annual Salt & Light Award for a "church transforming the community through ministry outside its walls." It was presented at the Servanthood Ministries Awards reception in Corpus Christi.
___"I pastored normal churches for 25 years," said Lane, who is now 49. But he wanted something besides a church with big debt, committees and a gymnasium. He believed too many churches spend a lot of money "doing church stuff" but not much doing missions. He and his wife, Diana, wanted to "go where there is the greatest need."
___They found that great need north of Interstate 40 near downtown Amarillo. During the previous 10 years, 14 churches had moved out of the impoverished, drug-infested area. Fewer than 1,500 people attended Sunday School in a census tract that included 84,000 people, he said.
___The BGCT and Amarillo Baptist Association backed Lane's desire to start a church there, and High Plains Foundation provided the money to get the church started, purchase two buildings and support various ministries. The Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas missions also has supplied ongoing support. Texas Baptist Men contributed volunteer labor for getting an abandoned warehouse into useable condition.
___CityChurch's strategy was "to go where faith is to be found, ... to spend your time, to spend your money, your effort where it will do the most good," Lane said. "We found that children are willing to listen, and they want to go to church, and they respond to the gospel. ... We began to build a congregation out of children."
___They did it by meeting one of the children's most basic needs--food.
___CityKid Café was born. It's a program to feed children during the summer and on holidays when they are not in school. Starting the effort required use of one of the church's basic philosophies, Lane said. "We don't ask 'Can we afford it?'; we ask 'Is this what God wants us to do?'"
___A Blue Bell ice cream truck pulled up outside CityChurch on the first day of CityKid Café. The truck's refrigerator system had died, and the driver needed to dump the ice cream somewhere. "We used the Blue Bell ice cream all summer at CityKid Café," the pastor said.
___God has continued to provide, Lane said, noting similar scenarios to the Blue Bell truck have occurred. The ministry will be out of something, and someone will show up with it unannounced.
___"Things like that happen all the time at CityChurch," he said. "It's normal fare here."
___Life in the neighborhood is hard. Lane described several "typical" homes. One has a 19-year-old mom with four kids. Another has a grandmother, three daughters, 18 children and no father. In yet another, a grandmother cares for eight kids because her own children are in prison. There is a single mom nearby with seven kids, each one with a different last name and no father to be found. Then there's the one-bedroom apartment where a dad works a minimum-wage job and has five children to support.
___The drug culture is the nasty trigger behind much of the suffering. "People addicted to cocaine will sell everything," Lane said. They'll even trade their food stamps for drugs.
___One motto of the church is: "We go to the worst first." When a church does that, Lane said, it finds the drugs and the hunger.
___"We identified all these children who were not being fed," he said. And it shocked people. "Half the cows in the world are being fed in the 27 counties around Amarillo, and yet there are kids in Amarillo who do not eat. ... The families are so dysfunctional the kids do not eat."
___Because adult drug users will trade food for crack, CityChurch feeds children at the church site. "We see the kids eat the food," he said.
___The only exception is when the church gets a desperate call regarding hunger. The staff then packs food into a "Love Bomb" and goes to the house to cook the meal and serve it.
___Now the church has launched another ministry at another site in the neighborhood. My Father's House is a residential facility with 34 apartments for unwed mothers and single moms. Women and their children can live there for up to two years, Lane said. They must go to school, get a job and support themselves. Twenty-five women and 19 children live there now.
___CityChurch received the building as a gift from Banc One, got $1.08 million in tax credits to remodel it, sold the credits and now has a building valued at $650,000.
___"It's just like a hotel," Lane said. "It's built for the glory of God. ... It was done right."
___Some land has been acquired for a park across the street from CityChurch's main location, said Holloway, the High Plains Foundation president. All the "dressing up and cleaning up" brought about by CityChurch through its partnership with the foundation and others have helped the neighborhood's image, he said. "This all helps to dress up that part of town, to transform it from an old, rundown part of town."
___CityChurch's commitment to reaching children and providing for their needs is paying spiritual dividends as well. The kids start young at the church, but they grow older. The children reached a few years ago are now in middle school and high school. In three years, the church will need singles and young adult ministries.
___"They're winning their friends to the Lord," the pastor said. "We are projecting that within five years we'll have 500 saved, educated tithing people."
___One young man who grew up in the church got his first job recently. The church staff picks him up from school every day and takes him to work, Lane said. On the first Sunday after starting work, the youth put $20 in his offering envelope and wrote on the outside, "I'm a tithing man!"
___Many churches have "devalued the worth of a child's decision," Lane said, referring to how churches give special significance to adult conversions. But at CityChurch, "we're literally raising a congregation."
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