The Co-Op is a group of urban and suburban churches, ministries and marketplace people in the greater Kansas City area committed to working together to impact the culture of our city as well as bring about transformation at the neighborhood level.  

 

The Need

Like most urban centers, Kansas City has its pockets of poverty, homelessness, drug-infestation, violence and crime.  Like most urban centers, Kansas City has experienced the exodus of ethnic professionals to suburban communities, leaving large urban neighborhoods absent of the economic and social resources to preserve their communities as bastions of peace, safety, family, and church.  Like most urban centers, Kansas City has experienced the poor healthcare options, poor education options, poor employment options, and poor housing options that accompany the exodus of professionals from the urban core as they take with them their collective resources and the associated tax base.  Kansas City, like most urban communities, is currently experiencing the effects of gentrification – the in-flux of non-indigenous people to the urban core, taking advantage of lower real-estate values, seeking a more ‘downtown’ life-style where most significant amenities are within blocks vs. miles, and forcing the urban poor into the doughnut-shaped void between a revitalized city center and the outlying suburban community.  

Yet, Kansas City is unlike many other urban centers in the United States.  Straddling the north/south stateline between the western edge of Missouri and the eastern edge of Kansas, the Kansas City metropolitan area hosts one of wealthiest counties per capita in the United States (Johnson County), some of the nation’s best public school districts (Blue Valley, Shawnee Mission, and Olathe), one of the poorest counties in the State of Kansas (Wyandotte County), and arguably one of the most troubled school districts in the country (Kansas City, Missouri public schools).  This geographical concentration results in some of the best being adjacent to some of the worst, and the exodus of urban resources across state and county lines effectively keeps the best getting better, and the worst getting worse.

The heart and mission of many suburban churches is to intervene and share resources with urban churches and their neighborhoods to offer hope, improve services, and reveal Christ in the process.  While the help to the urban church is needed and appreciated, the close proximity and relative isolation of these suburban “Samaritans” generates a “feel-good-project” mind-set that, to urban leaders and pastors, feels like more work and burden than the “long-term, deep-dive, solve-the-root-problems” mind-set that is necessary to bring about lasting change in their neighborhoods and communities.

Nevertheless, Kansas City has the opportunity to be different.   Significant suburban and urban resources are waiting for a collaborative, holistic, long-term, solve-the-root-problems-while-glorifying-God approach.  Urban leaders and pastors are waiting for a longer-term and meaningful investment that provides hope of overcoming the despair and isolation that breeds on itself in their communities.  The Co-Op of the greater Kansas City area, is a new kind of collaboration between urban and suburban congregations as well as marketplace people to bring about evidence-based community tranformation that is ultimately, self-sustaining.

 

Mission Statement

The Co-Op exists to recruit, develop, equip and deploy Christian, community-minded, collaborative leaders for the purpose of creating holistic, sustainable community transformation that reflects Christ’s plan for a just and reconciled city.

 

A Short History

From the fall of 2006 through most of 2011, a group of suburban and urban church pastors and leaders met on a regular basis and invested themselves in the building of relationships.  Relationships deep enough to get beyond the underlying core assumptions that have historically prevented suburban and urban churches from effectively working together to address the deeply rooted systemic needs of the under-resourced in our city.  This long and persistent step was absolutely necessary to build enough trust and mutual respect to begin to shape the organizing framework whereby churches, ministries and marketplace people could work together in focused, strategic ways over an extended time to bring holistic, sustainable transformation to neighborhoods in Kansas City. From the outset, there has been a mixture of both urban and suburban churches and ministries along with marketplace people at the table, hashing out the framework for this type of collaborative work; patiently building the trust and credibility that we believe is required to accomplish community transformation in Kansas City.  These pioneers are:

• Paseo Baptist Church, Kansas City, Missouri, Pastor Greg Ealey
• Crosspoint Community Church, Kansas City, Missouri, Pastor Dennis Solis
• Church of the Resurrection, Leawood, Kansas, Jonathan Bell and Jeanna Repass
• Westside Family Church, Lenexa, Kansas, Matt Adams
• Colonial Presbyterian Church, Kansas City, Missouri, Randall Leonard
• Significant Matters, Olathe, Kansas, Tom Bassford and Dave Geenens
• Mt Olive Missionary Baptist Church, Kansas City, Missouri, Pastor Golden Davis

We realize that the greater work lies ahead.  To this point we have merely created a framework for working together.  A framework we believe reflects God's heart for all people, including the poor, and a picture of unity that reflects his prayer in John 17 and the kind of working humility described in Philippians 2.   While this size of group was necessary to get to this point, the critical effort needed to achieve the goals of the Co-Op will require many more churches and marketplace people working together.

 

Gospel Sharing…Disciple Making

As the Church we know that our work is centered in sharing the “gospel” and making disciples.  The Co-Op is based on a theological conviction that “gospel sharing” and “disciple making” are in fact an inexorable mix of proclamation, demonstration and implementation.  As His disciples, we must share the hope we have in Christ, we must demonstrate His character living within us and we must allow Him to bring our time, talent and treasure to bear upon the needs of others.  Disciplemaking must include a life of stewardship, surrender and sacrifice in service to others for God’s ultimate glory.  And surely, as more and more of us begin to see our lives as disciples in such terms, we will see ourselves and the Body of Christ become the instruments He uses to more fully reflect the words of Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  It is our shared theological belief that God’s plan for both “disciple making” and “gospel sharing” is a picture of the whole church sharing the whole gospel, for the whole person, with the whole world.  

 

Click Here to download a pdf file explaining more about The Co-Op