Mariners Church
A Model of Long-Term Engagement in Community
By Krista Petty
Church Name:
Mariners Church
Location:
Irvine, CA
Web sites:
Compassion Ministry:
LightHouse Ministries
started over 10 years ago
Church size:
15,000
Key Audiences:
Suburban churches desiring significant community impact
and meaningful spiritual development in members through service
Key Lessons:
Listening and acting on God’s Word as it relates to serving others
Aiming people’s hearts towards the poor and how to mobilize large numbers
Creating a culture of volunteer-led ministry, supported and resourced by staff
From Internally Focused to Externally Focused
Mariners Church has gone through some times of great celebration and has a rich heritage of ministry. But typical of many churches in America, its history also includes times of pain and conflict. Laurie Beshore, Lighthouse Ministries Pastor for the church, admits that it was suffering that served as a catalyst for a change in the church’s focus from internal to external. Laurie says, “Our church went through a split followed by five years of declining numbers and three senior pastors in rapid success. We were humbled. The launch of community outreach was one of the first decisions we made that led to the turnaround.”
And turn around they did. The church went from a wounded body of 400 people to a vibrant congregation of 15,000 in the heart of Orange County, California serving the cities of Irvine, Santa Ana, and others around the world. In less than 20 years, Mariners went from virtually no active involvement in ministry to the poor and needy to 4,087 volunteers and 437 volunteer leaders giving some 53,000 hours in community service in 2006. Today, ministry among the poor now defines what it means to be a person of faith and an active part of the mission of God at Mariners.
Ministry Context
Mariner’s ministry context in Orange County plays out like a tale of two cities. On the one side is Santa Ana, home to over 330,000 people in a space of 27.3 miles. It is 76% Hispanic, 12% White and 9% Asian. Twenty percent of residents live below poverty. Out of all adults over 25 years of age, 43% are high school graduates and only nine percent are college graduates. Just east of Santa Ana is Highway 55—a dividing line of sorts between Santa Ana and Irvine, CA. Irvine is home to Mariners Church and to the 170,000 people who live more comfortably in 46 square miles. Less than 10% have incomes below the poverty line and 61% are white, 31% are Asian and 9% are Hispanic. Ninety-five percent of adults over the age of 25 are high school graduates and 58% are college graduates.
According to Laurie, “Orange County is in the top 90% of wealthiest counties in the U.S., but it ranks in the bottom 10% for charitable giving.” This statistic represents the challenge churches and church leaders have in getting people from the professional area of Irvine to engage in ministry to the poor and needy living just down the road in neighboring Santa Ana. “A person earning minimum wage in Santa Ana would have to work 142 hours in one week to afford the rent for a two bedroom economy apartment,” says Laurie. While there is no shortage of people in need one of the U.S.’s wealthiest counties, there is a shortage of people willing to step into solutions.
But where man sees challenges, God sees opportunity. For leaders at Mariners, these two vastly different cities provide just the right ingredients for God’s Kingdom to emerge and a fertile environment for Scripture to come alive. Two verses seem to describe these adjacent communities particularly well:
"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Luke 6:20
“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Matthew 19:24
Mariners in Brief
Mariners Church began to take shape in 1963 with a small group of Christians who got together to pray, study, and share the vision of reaching the Newport Harbor community with the gospel of Jesus Christ. From the very beginning of the church, founding Elder Lloyd Johnson says, “Our desire was that people become interested not in church, but in who Jesus Christ is.” The congregation physically relocated several times as it grew over the years, finally settling in the affluent city of Irvine. It is a suburban church populated predominantly by upper class families. By extending their ministry to the community of Santa Ana, the church is beginning to broaden its reach. Today, it offers an example of rich and poor coming to know Christ and serving one another.
Mariners on Mission
Lighthouse Ministries, the church’s local outreach arm, is home to numerous ministries working in Santa Ana. They currently have a community center reaching immigrant families with various programs such as tutoring, ESL, computer classes, Bible literacy, nutrition, mothering support through MOPS, and other parenting support. They also run a number of summer camps, where children from this poverty-stricken area are able to have a life-changing summer church camp experience. Their Motel Ministry (reaching families that technically are homeless) also provides mentoring, tutoring, and Bible studies in this same community.
Lighthouse Ministries operates as a part of the overall ministry of Mariners Church and is not a separate non-profit organization. It has been recognized by the city, and secular social service agencies work eagerly with Mariner volunteers, allowing them to mentor children involved in some of their toughest foster care cases. Over 12,000 people were served last year through this ministry.
Step One: Convicted by Scripture
When the church was recovering from some painful times of people leaving and past leadership challenges, senior pastor Kenton Beshore realized the church lacked a ministry to struggling community residents. He asked a group of leaders to begin looking at what God had to say about serving the poor and disadvantaged. A volunteer task force led by a pastor Scott Rae was asked to do a thorough study of the Scriptures relating to this issue. According to Laurie, what grew out of this study was a growing passion to “put feet” to what they were learning.
Laurie recalls, “Lighthouse Ministries had a somewhat unique beginning. It began with a group of people who did nothing for an entire year; or, it seemed like nothing. There were no programs, no big bang budgets, no outreach opportunities, neither mission statement nor organizational structure. For the whole first year of what was to become Lighthouse Ministries, the leadership team immersed itself in the study of God’s Word, supplemented by reading many Christian and secular books on reaching people who are poor and in need.”
What the team discovered through their study startled them. God had a great deal to say about local missions. “References to helping people in need were found in both the Old Testament and the New,” Laurie says. Realizing how directly and frequently God spoke about how He wanted the poor treated and what He expected from the church in fulfilling their needs took the team aback. Increasingly, they felt burdened to heed God’s call and accept the responsibility He had laid on their hearts to care for people in need. The burden was compelling—“both frightening and exciting,” Laurie remembers.
Step Two: Ask “What do you need?”
The committee then began to look at what the neighboring community of Santa Ana needed. While demographics pointed to some of the needs, the most effective assessments came from simply hitting the streets and asking the people living there what they needed and would like to see happen in their own communities. These community surveys also began to open the hearts of Mariners’ parishioners and build the relationships foundational to the launch and growth of the church’s many ministries today.
Step Three: Aim hearts and get started
Being convicted and knowing the needs were foundational, but Laurie admits that those two things, alone, had surprisingly little visible impact at first. It took longer than expected to get the new community ministry off the ground. “Essentially very little happened for five to six years,” she admits.
In its history, conducting a “seed project” was a vital step to launching Lighthouse Ministries. The ministry’s web site documents its simple start:
The first official ministry of Lighthouse didn’t come about as the result of any fancy trend data or study of the community. In truth, it was a matter of seeing where God was already working and joining Him there. A group of dedicated volunteers had begun a Homework Club in an inner-city area near our church. Volunteers were willingly going into the apartments of poor families and tutoring their children once a week. The children were hungry for the positive relationships they were building with their tutors. More and more kids began asking to join the Homework Club. Eventually, a carpool program was set up to bring the kids to the church where there was a bigger area available to work. Kids would line up after school to wait for their rides. Soon they started coming a half-hour early. Then it was an hour early. Unfortunately, there were times when there just weren’t enough drivers and some kids got left behind. This provoked the volunteers to look into opening a facility right on the street where the kids were living. The vision was to create a place where the doors could be open all week long and the kids could receive the tutoring and build the relationships they so desired. This was what eventually became the Lighthouse Learning Center in Santa Ana. The need was there, the volunteer base was there, and all we needed to do was come alongside it and encourage it to grow.
Following this seed project, Mariner’s leadership began preaching and teaching very intentionally on such topics as favoritism, serving the needy, and sharing with the poor. Over time, many hearts became turned toward the challenges faced by residents in neighboring Santa Ana. Finally the church took a significant step to advance the ministry by inaugurating “Lighthouse Weekends.”
Mobilizing Volunteers
Lighthouse Weekend is an annual event, usually held in May, where all church offerings collected over the weekend are designated to community outreach ministries. The weekend message is directed at meeting needs of the poor, and volunteers who have experienced life-change and greater purpose by serving hands-on in Santa Ana share testimonies live and via video. Congregational enthusiasm for outreach is further fanned as thank you letters are read from the men, women, and children whose lives have been touched through Lighthouse Ministries. The worship service is even shortened a bit, to allow the entire congregation to visit the “fair” set up around the church. Booths around the church grounds highlight opportunities to get involved in first-time community outreach opportunities. “Using large events, like this weekend, helped to build a database of committed people to build the community ministry upon,” explains Laurie.
Sustaining the Outreach Arm
Today, Lighthouse Ministries is a significant ministry of Mariners Church. “It is the largest staff team (27) requiring separate a communication team, accounting team and operations staff,” says Laurie. But it wasn’t always that way. “Our first employee was a part time person and we gradually grew from there.” Financially, the ministry launched with only $10,000. Now, almost 15 years later, the $1.96 million dollar ministry is funded through the special Lighthouse Weekend designated offerings, some general funds, and various fundraising activities.
The greatest sustaining factor is not the dollars given, however. Lighthouse has been more about growing people’s hearts and ability to serve than about dollars. They have seen a 50% growth in the numbers of people serving, while only a 15% growth in budget. The leadership at Mariners believes strongly in empowering volunteers to lead ministry endeavors. Staff members focus on resourcing, training, and appreciating volunteers and lay leaders, helping them build plans that support their personal passion and vision for community ministry to the poor and needy. Staff also work to engage new volunteers in service experiences.
Challenges
Mariners is committed to relational ministry. Location, though, can be a challenge to volunteers building meaningful relationships with people in need. “Twenty-two minutes is the limit for people to drive to perform on-going volunteering or serving,” says Laurie. So Lighthouse tries to keep their service opportunities and ministries in Santa Ana close enough to the church, yet within the neighborhood served. “The ministries in Santa Ana are about a 12 minute drive from the church,” she notes.
Church leaders also mention the challenge of community ministry getting trapped in what Laurie calls “pity ministry.” For a long time, the leadership at Mariners thought that effective service was all about moving a family out of a motel or getting a student into college. “Those are great things to celebrate and strive for,” says Laurie, “but, we found that when we moved people from their place of comfort to our place of comfort with their lives, they would often end up returning to their old lifestyle.” Eventually Lighthouse stopped placing the emphasis on those outward signs of growth and starting paying more attention to what their service recipients were saying about their inner growth. “We told our own God stories more often, and listened to theirs. We visited their homes and had them visit ours,” Laurie says. “We go to know each other as people, not as servant and served. We are not called to provide pity ministry. We are called to develop relationship and meet needs.”
Internal Benefits of an External Focus
Lighthouse has not only had an impact on the church culture; it defines this church. As people become a part of Mariners, they understand that they are part of a body that is committed to ministering to the poor and needy. They see it as a critical way that authenticates everything Jesus said and everything He calls a church to be.
With the success of Lighthouse Ministry in meeting needs and encouraging spiritual growth among volunteers, it has become a model for the church’s other missions programs as well. Recently Mariners merged the Lighthouse Ministry and Global Initiatives areas into one department, sharing resources and leadership (see organizational chart).
When Mariners stepped out to pursue ministry to the poor and needy, leaders expected that people with a heart and concern for the poor would step up to lead the way. What they didn’t anticipate was that almost 4,000 people would be involved in serving annually and that an effective leadership structure and model for their church would result. They expected to become more compassionate but they didn’t dream that financial giving to this specific ministry would grow to be a multi-million dollar budget annually. They expected to open up to God’s Word on the subject of the poor and needy. They didn’t expect to save the rich while serving the poor. They expected to see the poor with new eyes. They didn’t think God would give the entire church greater vision and purpose. Laurie says, “We need the poor more than the poor need us.” Mariners Church never anticipated that through serving the poor, God would change staff, leaders, individuals, and the church most of all. But that’s just how God works: beyond all that we can ask, think, or imagine.
Krista Petty is a coach for Externally Focused Churches and writer forGroup Publishing and Leadership Network. Most recently, she served as editor of The Externally Focused Church (Group Publishing)and Living a Life on Loan (Standard Publishing). She resides in Johnstown, Colorado with her husband, Steve, and three great kids. The Petty's are active members of LifeBridge Christian Church. Comments or questions for the author can be sent to .