As I drove through the urban blight of my hometown of Wilkinsburg on a midsummer day, I was overwhelmed. Our congregation had been reaching out to the community for about three decades, with little to show for it. How could our small congregation make even a dent in the poverty I was seeing, with nearly half of the houses around our church building abandoned, and many working poor living in the other houses?

Our congregation had very few resources to address the needs. And help from outside the congregation, whether through the government, organizations, or the church, was in short supply and usually short-lived. While I was driving, I was passing scores of children. With few safe places to play, they were playing near the street, in the street, everywhere. I must have seen a couple hundred children in my several-block drive.

That’s when God opened my eyes. Wilkinsburg was poor in dollars but rich in children! There they were, hundreds and hundreds of children, looking for people to look up to, for places to play, for safety inside their world and meaning outside of it.

Others had come to this awareness long before I had. Over the years, zealous women and men in our church had organized vacation Bible schools and other programs to help witness to neighborhood children. These programs were well received and often well attended, but they never seemed to transition into regular attendance at our church. We couldn’t see any long-term impact for Christ. It was disheartening.

Then God provided a Christian man from another church who wanted to have a weekly kids program on our church’s lawn. Each week he set up a microphone and speakers, dressed in colorful costumes, led games, and told a Bible story. He did this for over a year, with some of our members as helpers. When that man moved out of state, Covenant Fellowship was faced with the loss of that connection with the children in the community. The session committed to continuing the program for a year, and several people came forward to lead it. Some elements of the program changed, and it was moved indoors; but the children continued to come. It was clear that the KidZone ministry needed to continue. Joel and Autumn Butler became the permanent coordinators.

One night, instead of providing a snack, the KidZone workers made a full-course meal. Though the children hadn’t been expecting a meal, most ate everything on their plates, including the vegetables! Since then, a dinner has been provided each week, and some children take food home for their families.

In 2003, an RP mission team of 12 young adults stayed at the church for 6 weeks. These hard-working, mission-minded people provided a surge of energy to the vacation Bible school and KidZone programs. They helped with evangelism in the community, and also helped to clean up the neighborhood surrounding the church building. They initiated special events for the kids. Since they were around the church building every day, they developed close relationships with a number of children, and even got to know some families.

In subsequent years, as mission teams and church members persevered with their outreach to the community, we began to see beautiful flickers of hope. KidZone continued to be well attended, but now a few neighborhood youth were attending Sabbath school or youth group. Two Bible studies began, and, though small in numbers, brought regular attendees from the community. One or two families at a time were regularly joining us for worship.

As closer relationships developed with people from the community, members’ passion to help them grew. We were often looking for what might be the next way to serve them. One thing that was clear was that person-to-person time was critical.

For over 20 years, the trend of Covenant Fellowship members had been the same as the general populace—to move farther from the city. In 2007 Patrick Marx, a seminary student, purchased and remodeled a large house in the center of Wilkinsburg—a house far too large for himself. He purposefully rented rooms to single men so that they could support one another spiritually in this urban setting. Discipleship House, as it has come to be known, has been a haven for seminary students, for single men in our congregation, and for men who are transitioning out of difficult circumstances.

Also that year, the RP mission team and congregation took a large step in their efforts to clean up the neighborhood. After reading about the difference that can occur when people see that someone cares about the appearance of the neighborhood, we advertised a Neighborhood Cleanup Day. The borough of Wilkinsburg donated some materials such as plywood, which we used to board up abandoned houses around the church. We also cleared and cleaned a number of vacant lots, in addition to the yards of the houses we boarded up. Rather than just paint the boards white, some of the artistic members of the mission team and congregation painted them to look like windows and doors, complete with curtains and other domestic details. Several from the neighborhood came to help the church, or worked on their own properties that day.

Response to the cleanup day was very encouraging, so it has become an annual event, with a more ambitious agenda each year. In four years, about 100 homes have been boarded up, and several dumpsters full of debris have been cleared from the neighborhood. Cooperation with the borough has grown each year. By 2010 we were receiving 100 sheets of plywood from the borough, which also sent a team of workers to help us. Several borough councilwomen have come to help. We’ve received generous donations, including over $1,000 in services from Waste Management, Inc. Workers have also come from many RP congregations. Nearly all the congregations in Western Pennsylvania have sent workers to help with KidZone or Cleanup Days, and this year a team of 8 came all the way from Indianapolis to help.

About 10 years ago, when we made a concerted effort in evangelism in the community, we found that most people didn’t know about Covenant Fellowship. Some people thought we were still the PCUSA congregation from whom we bought the building in the 1980s. Many confused us with the megachurch with “Covenant” in its name that is a mile from our building.

But now when we do door-to-door visitation, people immediately say things like, “You’re the church that has done such a nice job on those buildings,” or “You have that kids program.” Usually it means that they will chat further with us, and even invite us in for a long conversation. When we walk down the streets, especially if we have KidZone workers or mission team members with us, children come from all directions to see us.

When I think back to those frustrating days of seeing all the children and not having a clue what to do, I thank God for what I see. While our congregation has scarcely put a dent in the problem of inner-city hopelessness, I can now look into children’s faces and see that God has kindly allowed us to make an eternal difference in some very precious lives.

Where before it seemed so hard to find open doors for ministry, in the past couple years doors have been opening faster than we can walk through them. Recently—in part because of our church’s neighborhood work—a landlord offered us three buildings for free. He owed back taxes on them, but, because of a brand new borough ordinance, we were able to take ownership of the properties with tax forgiveness and multi-year tax abatement. The congregation formed a committee to work not only with these properties but also to consider future work the congregation could do to restore abandoned properties in the borough. God also formed a connection with a generous friend in the PCA who donated $10,000 to help get this ministry underway.

Two of the three houses are already being renovated, and two Covenant Fellowship families have committed to purchase those properties and move in when the houses are ready. We hope that the third building, an apartment building, will become another Discipleship House. Another church family has recently purchased a house in Wilkinsburg as well.

Rehabilitating just a few abandoned houses requires a lot of time and expertise, and it was clear that our housing committee was becoming overwhelmed just a few months into their task. The congregation passed bylaws for the committee, which then became known as Wilkinsburg Christian Housing. Those bylaws envisioned the option of an executive director, but no one could foresee that happening for years to come, given how our resources were stretched.

God stunned us again with His perfect provision. Peter and Vicki Smith and their teenaged children decided to move to Pittsburgh and join our congregation in its neighborhood ministry. They had in-depth experience working with the poor and outcast in Waldorf, Md. Since the RPCNA congregation there had closed, they were keeping their eyes open for a place to minister close to an RP church and under its oversight. “I have had a longstanding desire to minister among and with the poor, especially within a Reformed Presbyterian context,” says Pete. “Working with Covenant Fellowship seemed a natural fit and an answer to prayer.”

Without many guarantees, the Smiths packed up and moved to Wilkinsburg in August. Pete is now executive director of Wilkinsburg Christian Housing, and Vicki is Covenant Fellowship’s administrative assistant. Their presence has already energized the congregation’s work in the neighborhood and has helped provide the housing board with the time and talents needed to move forward and to have a greater impact in the neighborhood in the years to come.

The work hasn’t gotten easier. But it’s easier to see how God has worked over the years. There have been failures too, like the tutoring program that we hope will one day be feasible again.

And we have learned a lot. “I’ve learned that my assumptions about people in our community are wrong,” says Autumn Butler, co-director of KidZone. “Why are adults letting their kids run around without supervision in the neighborhood?  I have no idea.  I used to think it was always drugs or laziness. As I get to know the kids better, I see things differently.  For some, their parents are busy trying to just make ends meet and put food on the table.  They have to work hard for little money and their kids are left home alone.”

But, she says, the rewards of getting involved are tangible: “I can walk in any direction from Covenant Fellowship and find people I know. I can wave to people on the street, stop and talk for a few minutes, etc. The people in the church neighborhood are my friends. I’ve had some of them in my own home for coffee, dinner, games. Community outreach is a lifestyle and takes more than going to church on Sunday mornings.”

In the course of day-to-day interaction, Joel Butler (Autumn’s husband and co-director of KidZone) has seen tremendous spiritual opportunities. Children will often approach him outside of KidZone activities to ask questions about God and His Word. Many of the children become interested, he says, when they see a consistent Christian witness in everyday activities.

Soon after its founding in the 1970s, Covenant Fellowship set its sights on Wilkinsburg, and determined to see Christ exalted in this borough at every level. Few could have imagined how many decades would be required to see a significant impact, and it’s likely that we have decades of hard work ahead. But God, in His kindness, has allowed us to see some amazing fruit. And He has used the little children to show us.