“The church is not a religious community of worshippers of Christ but is Christ himself who has taken from among people.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Our vision
A Family on Mission
By Jesus Martinez
I have spent many years of my time walking within the urban community and areas of ministry including anti-trafficking, juvenile jail (DJJ), Boys and Girls Club of America, children’s group homes and homeless shelters. I have spent countless hours in the streets of downtown Fort Myers and in some of the worst communities in Dunbar, FL ministering one-on-one or in small groups, helping the disenfranchised by meeting their immediate needs and for those whose hearts are open - their spiritual needs too. I came to be well educated in our county’s resources and known by many of the service providers in our area. Powerful relational bridges were created in the process, and my vision of the ministry needs here in SWFL grew into one that my wife and I could not turn away from, one that we knew the Lord was clearly leading us towards.
When I look in the scriptures and look at the method of Jesus, it leads me to uncommon relationships. Jesus ate at the table with tax collectors and sinners, he was known to be among the have-nots, the street people. We even read about a woman from the streets who enters into a Pharisee’s home and washes Jesus’s feet with her tears and her hair. A storyline so scandalous that it left the religious elites of the day questioning Jesus’s discernment as to whom he let around him in his social circle.
In the last 9 years my wife and I have used our home to help transition over 40 adults from homelessness and/or addiction and fostered 10 children. Along with being a Licensed Foster Care home, we are advocates for foster care here in SWFL, speaking at events and training’s for The Children’s Network and One More Child. We serve on the board of Into the Jordan and have built relationships here in SWFL with sex trafficking survivors, children in jail, children in the foster care system, gang members, drug dealers, and the homeless. For the most part this is the unchurched, the broken. Scripturally we know this demographic of people as “the least of these” and “the lost.”
Within our uncommon relationships, most of our invites to come to a formal church have been met with a “no”, or “maybe” but rarely ever showing up to a Sunday morning service. Church goers in their eyes have failed them, or I hear “I am not good enough to go to church” or the infamous “the church is full of hypocrites”. The common theme is that there is very little relationship or bridge between the churched and the unchurched. This is where we step in as a family on mission. Our call and hope is to build relational bridges between the church and the unchurched here in SWFL and to be able to use this model to train and teach church leadership locally and nationally on how to serve more effectively “the least of these.” Our model of ministry is not based on “outreach projects” but merely building relationships and inviting people to our dining table. The table is where Jesus took his time, where we see him eat and minister with the outcast plenty of times in the scriptures. We find that in eating with others, their walls come down. We have found that relationships can be built within 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day, or 1 year- and they can transform a life. Through the Lord’s guidance we have come into a ministry partnership with Generate, as house church planters and missionaries who train others on how to build intimate communities of faith in their own neighborhoods and communities.
Since March of 2020 we have baptized 56 people, new believers. For many of them, we continue to open our home at 12:30pm every Sunday for potluck lunch, worship, prayer, scriptures and fellowship. This is where they come to grow together in the Lord. We walk them through scriptures during the week, one on one or in groups. We have open-invite dinners in our home frequently, and are finding that it’s through these consistent, loving relationships that people we minister to are coming to obey Christ, through being loved well and through personal conversations. We have also been guiding other families here in SWFL and across the nation as our church body is being challenged and encouraged to open up their homes more and to give their time to the “unchurched” and “uncommon relationships”.
The most valuable thing we have to give is our time, it's the one thing that we cannot multiply or gain more of. We are seeking funding to provide for our precious time as missionaries. Time for us at the table, time for us while we counsel, while we mentor, while we minister to the least, the last and the lost. Meeting our financial needs gives us time to impact our local community for Christ, in the specific ways that he has called us. Below you will find statistics for the demographic of people whom we engage with daily.
- Jesus Martinez
In 2019 Barna Group released its research findings unpacking faith trends in the U.S. including a general reluctance to engage in spiritual conversations, an aversion to evangelism and the erosion of religious belief and practice. Within there findings the City of Fort Myers was ranked #14 in the study of America’s most Post Christian Cities.
33% of Americans are interested/or attend church. This leaves 67% of the population who are not interested in Church as it is presented on Sunday morning.
59% of millennials who were raised in church have stopped attending.
31% of millennials believe that Church is boring and that they can find God elsewhere.
35% of millennials believe that Church is not personally relevant to them.We are interested in reaching them through unconventional ways. They are the future of the Church, and most will not step into a church building. The church is being called to mobilize, to “Love our neighbors.”
4% of Church growth is “New Believers” or “Converts.”
96% of Church Growth is Sheep shifting. People moving from church to church. Church hopping for a “New or better children’s program, a different Pastor, better programs and or better Worship.”
According to these statistics, American Church at large is not creating new believers but is simply marketing to existing believers in hopes of growing their attendance. 58% of those who do not attend Church believe there is a “higher power” or “God.” Our ministry focuses on these unchurched. Serving among the 2,700 people in Fort Myers, FL that experience homelessness at any given time of the year, advocating and providing mentorship for the 450 children in the foster system, and those who fall through the cracks for a variety of reasons. Our eyes are open to families and individuals here within the city limits that do not attend church, the “Post Christian community.” We are seeing new believers, we are seeing bridges being built and those who come into our home let down their walls and begin attending Church on Sundays.