GREENVILLE, N.C. (ABP) — While some churches try to figure out how to gain access for ministry in neighboring apartment complexes, Oakmont Baptist Church in Greenville, N.C., just bought the place.
Now the new landlord is moving forward to establish ministry with, to and among residents of Oakmont Square, a 112-unit complex that borders the church.
Members of Oakmont Baptist Church blitz a neighboring apartment complex the church bought and in which it plans intentional ministries to the working poor, college students and senior adults.
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Pastor Greg Rogers says his growing congregation first cast eyes at the adjacent 10-acre complex in 2005 because its own 7-acre campus was landlocked. The church already maxes out two worship services and three Sunday schools. But they still had significant debt from sanctuary construction and didn’t feel it prudent to take on the project.
When the previous owners came back in August 2007 with another offer the church was ready to buy the 14 buildings with eight apartments each, plus a community center, for $1.5 million.
Oakmont acquired the apartments with only a general view of “next.” After intentional congregation-wide coaching with Eddie Hammett of the North Carolina Baptist Cooperative Fellowship, the church has gained a clear understanding of how to invest the treasure next door.
“Out of that coaching that Eddie did, we really began to experience some forward movement,” Rogers said. He credited the coaching sessions with the congregation shifting its thinking from how to utilize the apartments and their real estate to benefit the church, to discovering how they would enable the church to become “a missions and ministry hub for our part of Greenville.”
“We want to explore ministry for residents and collaborate with others on doing ministry in this part of Greenville,” said Rogers, in his 28th year as Oakmont pastor.
Hammett coached the congregation to self-discover three clear ministry uses for the complex: affordable housing for the working poor; as a ministry to students who crowd the Pitt County Community College and East Carolina University campuses; and among senior adults.
With monthly rent at about $485, quality housing at Oakmont Square is within reach of the working poor. The church started mentoring, tutoring and Bible study ministry for children there more than a year ago.
The coaching sessions helped Oakmont embrace a “go to” missions mentality rather than waiting on the unchurched to come to them.
“We began to see God was already doing some things in that complex, with some residents and with our people,” Rogers said.
A first move was to form an Oakmont Square Apartment Vision Team. A special Easter offering raised $57,000 to fund renovations for 15 “unrentable” units and church volunteers blitzed the complex May 21 to get those units into shape.
The project paired Sunday school classes which helped unify members who sometimes exist in different planes because of multiple church services. The blitz provided a one-day medical clinic, a children’s program and lunch for every resident to encourage fellowship among them and church members.
Two hundred fifty one members showed up for what Rogers called, “a day that in many ways revolutionized and cemented the shift” of his congregation’s focus from attracting to going.
With the help of North Carolina Cooperative Baptist Fellowship the church is placing a ministry intern in the complex who will work with ECU and Pitt students and will plant and nurture an intentional Christian community of college students. The intern and church staff like student worker Amy Andrews and Rogers will offer the students “nurture and training to be Christian leaders, offering acts of service in the name of Christ for the good of the world,” Rogers said.
He believes the apartments can offer a place for students who are tired of dorm living and who “want to be informed and intentional disciples of Jesus.”
He said church members are now talking about building a community center “for everybody else” rather than a traditional Christian life center for members.
About 90 of the complex’s 112 units are occupied and the complex is self-sustaining. A volunteer team works with an on-site manager and the church administrator to manage the facilities.
Norman Jameson is reporting and coordinating special projects for ABP on an interim basis. He also is a contributing writer for the Religious Herald.