What happened when one church stopped just talking the talk …

Have you ever heard people talk about the evangelistic strategy of having Christians live in every neighborhood block in a city?

Many talk of such a strategy, few actually develop and execute a real strategy for achieving such a goal.

But one church in Los Angeles, California did several years ago.

As the story goes, the church leaders identified more than 3,500 such neighborhood blocks in the sprawling city, and the church already had Christians living in more than 1,700 of them.

In one of those neighborhood blocks lived a block captain who was diligent about getting to know, serve, and express the love of Christ to his neighbors. One of his neighbors was an atheist, a fellow who had a great disdain for the persistent Christlike kindness shown by this block captain.

After some time, the atheist decided he had enough. He sold his home and bought a new house on the other side of L.A., sure he would escape the smiling hospitality of the block captain he so disliked.

The atheist loaded his belongings into a truck, and as he pulled away, he saw in his mirror the block captain waving goodbye to him.

“Finally! I’ve escaped!” he thought.

As the atheist drove away, the block captain retrieved his cell phone from his pocket and called the block captain in the neighborhood the atheist was moving to. It turned out the the block captain lived just a few houses down from the atheist’s new home.

When the atheist pulled his truck to a stop in front of his new address, he was warmly greeted by the block captain of his new neighborhood, and a few other men from the church, who offered to help him unload his truck.

“My gosh! They’re everywhere!” cried the atheist.

It doesn’t do any good to talk about reaching your city unless you have a strategy to do it and you actually execute that strategy.

Do you have a plan to reach your city? Are you executing it? Or do you just talk about how nice it would be to reach the lost in your city while they actually perish?

Scotty