Ebenezer Church is over one hundred years old and is located in south Minneapolis. Over the past three decades, the community around the church facility has significantly changed, but the congregation has not connected much with our new neighbors. In 2001, the congregation adopted this vision statement: "Our vision is to be a Christ-Centered, community-based, outreach-focused church that intentionally embraces people of all cultures." This sounds great, but the changes required of us to actually become community-based and outreach-focused remain quite a challenge. Yet by God's grace, we are living more and more into this vision that God has given to us.

On the first Tuesday of every August since 1984, neighborhoods across the United States and Canada gather to get to know one another and to increase awareness about local police programs, such as drug prevention, town watch, and other anti-crime efforts. It's called National Night Out. Initially communities held lights-on vigils. Now, many communities hold block parties, festivals, and other events to help bring neighbors together.

Since people would already be looking for something like this, we thought we'd host a block party for the folks that live near our church facility in south Minneapolis. Our youth were serving in local mission with another youth group from a sister congregation in South Dakota, and together with the Evangelism and Service boards of Ebenezer, we planned and threw a party last August that our neighbors still talk about to this day.

We purchased food from a famous meat market in the neighborhood, rented a couple of inflatable games and created a host of other children-oriented games, and gave away prizes donated by local businesses and purchased by the congregation. We handed out fliers to over five thousand homes, and then prayed.

We didn't know how many people would show up. We had done something like this a number of years ago, but didn't have too many people other than Ebenezer folks show up. So, we optimistically planned for 200 people. Well, to our delight, over 400 came to our party that night. We raided any food that we could grill from the church kitchen, and quickly bought more food to serve. We gave away prizes from 6:00 - 9:00 pm. The key to the evening? (It's not very spiritual.) We gave away free iPods! We had advertized this on the fliers, and people young and old all wanted the iPods.

If Ebenezer Church wishes to be community-based and outreach-focused, we will need to look a lot more like we did during National Night Out than we currently do on Sunday mornings. Above all, we want to remain Christ-centered in all we do.

(To see a video clip of Ebenezer's National Night Out, go to www.myebenezerchurch.com)

Pastor Todd Mathison serves Ebenezer Lutheran Brethren Church, Minneapolis, MN