Willow Creek Engages Congregation Through Celebration of Hope

We encourage U.S. churches who share our mission of alleviating spiritual and physical poverty through the work of local churches to explore, invest, experience, and engage in what God is doing in El Salvador. Since 1993 ENLACE has been equipping church and community leaders to identify, design, and manage sustainable poverty-alleviating projects throughout the country. Over the years many  foreign and local churches and institutions that have identified with ENLACE’s vision have worked alongside rural communities in El Salvador to bring hope and transformation.

Replica of the type of improved adobe homes Willow is helping the churches in Santa Ana build for families in needWillow Creek Community Church in South Barrington Illinois is one of our new church partners. This church has committed to walking with churches in the the Santa Ana region of El Salvador as they reach out to transform their communities. Willow Creek first became involved when they sent a vision team comprised of church leaders to explore the work that was already going on in El Salvador. After committing to invest in ongoing training and community projects, they experienced El Salvador by sending down work teams to build relationships with the people of San Jacinto while physically helping them to build up their community.

Recently, Willow Creek has gone a step further to engage its entire congregation through a year-long Celebration of Hope, during which the whole church has the opportunity to better understand, pray, give, and get involved with the transformation they are supporting in El Salvador and around the world. Through the sharing of stories like those of Alex and Anna who received new homes through church and community projects in El Salvador, and through peppering their lobby with photographs of hope and change, Willow Creek is opening their congregation's eyes to the tranformation that is possible when the church reaches beyond its four walls. 

A replica of a risk mitigation wall in Santa Ana sits in Willow Creek's lobby, showing their congregation one way they are helping local churches in El Salvador provide hope for their communitiesMark Haugen, the Latin America Operations Director for Willow Creek's Compassion and Justice Ministries, was quoting Bill Hybles, the senior pastor of their church, when he said that “God, in a unique way, prepared the local church to be His community that is to bring hope, healing, and restoration.¨ Willow Creek's effective engagement encourages us at ENLACE because we know that the communities where we work are being covered in prayer, and that God’s church--in which we all serve different functions for the same body--is healthy, united, and bringing hope to the world.

If you are an individual who has experienced ENLACE and would like to engage the rest of your church by hosting an event or leading a campaign, email us at partner@enlaceonline.org to find out how!




Snapshot of Heaven

By Kim Frederick

After an hour of listening to the foreign praise songs in the church, everyone’s hands were sore from clapping and our legs were tired from standing. We had printed and translated the lyrics of the songs we thought the church would sing, but the spirit took them off into a beautiful time of praise and worship that went far beyond the words on our pages. For all of the youth from Willow Creek Community Church who came last week to help the Zurisadai Church build homes in San Jacinto, the church service on Sunday was their first real experience in El Salvador. When the word Alleluia finally broke through all others, I think we were all relieved that we could join in their joyful noise and cry out with them, “Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia! Dios está aqui!” God is here. Later in the week, one of the team’s young leaders would recall this moment as “the clearest picture of heaven” she has ever had. “At first we couldn’t understand, but suddenly we were all singing together in one voice, just like we will be singing one day in heaven.” 

At first glance, moving dirt and bricks, mixing cement by hand, and carrying heavy water containers from the well to the worksite might not seem like heavenly activities. However, the sense of community that the youth from Illinois shared with the church members, the housing recipients, and other residents of San Jacinto was clearly a blessing from God for everyone involved. Any language or cultural barriers with which they had arrived fell away, and we all left with a new understanding of God’s unconditional love and the strong faith of His people.  

Just as they proclaimed “Alleluia!” in one voice on Sunday, the team expressed that they felt people’s joy and pain with one heart during home visits. The youth from Willow Creek brought energy, excitement, and encouragement to the Zurisadai Church and the community of San Jacinto, while receiving a clearer picture of what God has called His Church to be--a place of love, a source of a light, and a spring of hope and healing for it’s neighbors. 

If your church would like learn more about becoming one of our U.S. church partners, contact us at partner@enlaceonline.org for more information or to schedule a vision trip to El Salvador.

Visit our picture gallery for more photos of last week's adventures! 

"I Have Seen The Church In Action!:" Willow Creek's Partnership with ENLACE

Pastor Rafael with the Willow Creek team outside the christian school in Comecayo.

Over the past year, several leaders from Willow Creek Community Church have visited El Salvador to see how they can partner with ENLACE in the work of equipping churches to transform communities. As it turns out, ENLACE's model is a perfect fit for Willow Creek. Last year, they decided to partner with ENLACE and invest in the region of Santa Ana over the next five years, a commitment that will likely impact a large number of the region's 700,000 people in the coming years.

In July they sent their first short-term mission team in order to encourage and assist the New Jerusalem Church in Comecayo in their community transformation efforts. The team worked on one of the church's most significant initiatives to date: a 300-meter sidewalk that will serve to protect thousands of people in the area. In addition, the team visited Students getting out of school while Willow Creak team is working to build a side walk.15 needy families identified by the church and community and brought them basic food supplies and prayed with them. Pastor Wally Marshall also led a small seminar with the church helping them refine their cell-group efforts that have helped to grow the congregation to more than 1,000 members with dozens of sister churches in the region.

Team member Earl Casas wrote a blog during his trip and had this to say about the week,

I’ve seen poverty and violence while here. I’ve seen situations where it seems there should be no hope but I’ve also seen faith in action here. I’ve seen a force, stronger than the crippling grip the gangs can maintain, penetrating the darkness and pushing back the fear, loneliness, and hopelessness of the poor and destitute. I have seen the Church in action. As we left our new friends we were comforted to know that the work here continues through these compassionate brothers and sisters in Christ who are simply trying to live out their faith as God directs and in so doing they are changing their world.

By partnering with the region of Santa Ana, the Willow Creek Community Church will most certainly be part of the burgeoning transformation in the lives of tens of thousands of Salvadorans in the coming years. However, Earl Casas and the Willow Creek team learned a concept familiar to missionaries and donors; It is often through the act of giving that one receives the greatest blessing.

We came to be a blessing but instead were blessed. We came to bring hope but instead received it. We came to bring resources but left with much more than we gave. We came to teach and encourage but instead we learned and were inspired.

Contact us to find out how your church or organization can partner with ENLACE to make a direct and lasting impact in the lives of thousands of people in El Salvador.

Click here to donate or become a Friend of ENLACE and to help ENLACE work with 100 churches by 2015.

Click here to see the riveting story of Pastor Rafael Gonzalez, pastor of the New Jerusalem church in Comecayo.