This past Labor Day weekend was the seven year anniversary of our partnership with West Michigan Wellness Group. Over those seven years, they have served hundreds of our friends and neighbors and even many within our own church family. Because we have been able to offer space in our building, they have walked alongside people through some of the darkest and most difficult seasons of their lives.
What began seven years ago has helped us see something important: space can become a place where relationships form, needs are met, and lives are changed.
That is why we are so excited about what is happening through our Make Space Team. They are faithfully thinking about how we can steward the resources God has entrusted to us in ways that serve our community and help us build relationships with the people around us.
And those relationships matter.
We live in a time when it can be surprisingly difficult to connect with other people. Our lives are full, our schedules are crowded, and we spend much of our time behind screens. We can live near one another and still barely know each other. People are longing for places where they can belong, be known, and experience genuine connection.
We believe the church can help create those places.
Relationships have always been one of the primary ways people encounter faith, experience God’s love, and find their way into Christian community. So when we talk about making space, we are not simply talking about filling rooms or keeping our building busy. We are talking about creating opportunities for relationships to begin. We want to use what God has given us to contribute to our neighbors’ flourishing and, through genuine relationships, introduce people to the love and hope of Jesus.
That’s why we are thrilled to welcome a wrestling group to our campus. Soon, kids will be wrestling while their parents and grandparents wait, watch, and spend time together. Week after week, people from our community will walk through our doors. That gives us an opportunity not to treat people like projects, but simply to know them. To learn names, hear stories, serve, encourage, pray, and become good neighbors.
Alongside wrestling, we continue working toward hosting a daycare in our building. Again, the goal is larger than simply using available rooms. It is another opportunity to serve families in our community and create space where relationships can grow.
The Make Space Team is working to bring events and service opportunities right here to our campus. We want our neighbors to know that Corinth is a church that cares deeply about our community’s flourishing and wants to use what God has entrusted to us for the good of others.
We are getting close to having three distinct groups using our space in ways that create connection. And we are continuing to dream.
We have ideas for car shows and train shows, along with possibilities like a car maintenance day where we could provide oil changes and basic assistance, either free or at cost. We also believe there are many more opportunities we haven’t imagined yet.
But ultimately, making space isn’t about a building. It’s about people. We make physical space so relational space can emerge, and we trust God to work in the relationships that follow.
We make space so people can gather.
We make space so strangers can become neighbors.
We make space so relationships can grow.
And we pray that through those relationships, people might experience Jesus’ love.
God has given Corinth an incredible resource in this campus. We want to steward it well, not simply for ourselves, but for the community God has placed around us.
And that means we need you.
If you would enjoy meeting people, welcoming families, serving our neighbors, or simply being present in these spaces as relationships begin to form, we would love for you to be a part of it. Some of the most significant kingdom moments may begin with something as ordinary as sitting beside a parent at wrestling practice, helping someone change their oil, or learning the name of someone who keeps walking through our doors.
We don’t know where every relationship will lead. But we believe making space for people is one of the ways we can faithfully make space for God to work.
If you would like to be a part of using these opportunities to build relationships that may very well echo into eternity, please let us know!
Jared and Jason