My Voice - How did We get Here?

This month we are celebrating the five year anniversary of the Orchard STEPs House, a clean and sober living environment committed to helping homeless men get off the streets. In the past five years, 60 men have had an opportunity to be mentored, given a chance to make it off the streets, and shown the love of Jesus in a very practical, meaningful way.

Nine years ago this month, my wife, Annie, and I were praying about moving to Chico to start a church that would be committed to meeting the practical needs of its community. Be careful what you pray for!

In August 2001, Next Generation Churches appointed us to church plant in Chico, CA. We packed up our home in Missouri and moved to Chico, only to see me recalled to military service after September 11. For most of the next year, Orchard Church was a core group, mostly of new believers, meeting in the living room of our rented house, led by Annie and a couple men from the fledgling team. I was only a prayer partner to the group, as I fulfilled my military duty.

Shortly after returning home, our core group began to really seek the community that God would place us in and allow us to serve. We looked for a community was that was unchurched, and where the need for the church was great. After months of seeking God, Orchard Church chose to move into a neighborhood called Chapmantown, a diverse 10,000 person area in southwest Chico, filled mostly with families struggling at or below the poverty line. We were amazed to find that there were no churches reaching into and serving this community. Our first meeting place in Chapmantown was a rescue mission called the Jesus Center. We met there for nearly three years. Ever since, we have loved our partnership with the Jesus Center. Sunday mornings, we would set-up the dining hall for church services and the DNA of our church begin to form as a diverse, accepting group of Jesus followers. College students, businessmen, homeless men and young families of all backgrounds were accepted and loved in our Sunday services. Soon, we began to see men and women making decisions for Christ, including our friends who were homeless. Through that experience, God opened our eyes to the needs of the homeless in our community. One need we decided to meet was to help homeless men who needed a fresh start. In July, 2005, 6 men moved into our men’s house and the journey for our house and our church began.

Since that time, our community of believers has outgrown the Jesus Center and we have moved one block over to an elementary school. However, our love of diversity and compassion for the lost continues. It is engrained in our culture now. Four years ago, we began an after-school program for at-risk youth and a wilderness program to help kids see the possibilities beyond the poverty and addictions of many of their families. Last month, 30 youth went to the Pacific Ocean, many of them for the first time and were taught about how they belong to the “Community of Christ” and are part of the strongest family in the history of the world: the Church. Two years ago, a young couple in our church envisioned a Sunday night service in our city center for people in poverty and homelessness to get a meal and people to love them and worship with them. Church on the Street is often a picture of heaven with those who are hungry being fed, thirsty and given something to drink and lonely and given care and compassion.

For the past several years, Orchard Church has been committed to accepting people right where they are at, loving the broken, and helping the lost feel comfortable enough to hear how Jesus can change their lives, today and for eternity. I would have never believed the journey God has taken us on these past nine years, but wouldn’t change it if I had the choice. Many Sundays, I spend time encouraging a young professional, a college student, a teen stuck in a broken home and a homeless man looking for hope. I often ask Annie, “How did we get here?” The answer always is the same: God knew the vision and direction for Orchard Church much better than we ever could. Thank God!