Truth be told, we set ourselves up for the devil's machinations. Our little congregation of thirty-five to fifty people (depending on the day and number of children) meets on the outside porch of the Harambee Christian Family Center. We have the porch covering over our heads, but no walls. From that corner we can see our neighborhood, in all four directions, and they can see us. They can also hear us. The piano, the bongo drums, the twin guitars, the congregants singing the same songs every week.

I really like our little Sunday worship service, for two reasons. First, we try to live out the biblical idea of a "kingdom of priests," so many members have preached, led sharing and prayers, delivered mission field reports, and served on the worship team. Second, and more importantly, Sunday morning does not define us as a body.

Don't get six-year-old Northwest Fellowship confused with the Harambee Christian Family Center, a multi-faceted ministry to the eight square blocks surrounding the intersection of Navarro and Howard. Formally, Harambee Center and Northwest Fellowship are independent in every way. Still, walk into Harambee Center's after-school tutoring program, then walk into church, and you'll see the usual suspects. It's this non-legal, unofficial connection that enables Northwest Fellowship to be church seven days a week.

There's a six-unit apartment about eight houses away from the porch where we meet. Last year, five of those apartments housed Northwest Fellowship members. This situation was great for the landlord, who had steady rental income for the first time since Methuselah's IPO. It was also great for neighborhood young people. Many of them, though not all, are without fathers. Quite a few of the fatherless ones found their way to 1500 Navarro Avenue.

All my life I've wanted to live out Matthew 25, the parable of the sheep and the goats—as a sheep, that is. Here, because of the people I'm close to, I feel like I get to meet Christ as we respond to people who are hungry, thirsty, sick, in prison, and (emotionally) naked. I've seen entire families redeemed. Christians in the U.S. are accustomed to hearing testimonials about people and families undergoing radical transformations. But I, personally, had never been part of such a transformation—until Northwest Fellowship.

Nowhere are things perfect, and we certainly have our flaws. Even though half the people in our neighborhood speak Spanish, we do nothing in that language—and that goes for me, too, a native Latino. We had a big battle over the direction of the church two years ago—divided more by class than by race. It was hard for everyone.

But I'm grateful for this little church body, especially when I encounter believers struggling in similar circumstances. I know of a number of situations where, although a church worships and is committed to ministry in a community, only one couple actually lives there seven days a week. That couple bears the brunt of the actual community ministry. Often they end up burning out—which amounts to saying to those to whom they minister, "Come, follow me, into a life of burnout." Not exactly an attractive picture.

I hope people will remember our little church by the times we hosted barbecues for the whole community, went camping in Malibu, took vanloads of kids up to a mountain retreat, and went to the soccer game en masse and cheered for both teams at the same time. Now there's eternal life.

[This article originally appeared in re:generation and is used by permission of the author.]