Community Cup Church of the Nazarene’s Equipping the Local Church grant project to develop a Parent Support Center ministry has been evolving from its conception! What began as ministry to encourage and reach community families, has morphed into a chain of community partnerships providing spiritual, emotional, and physical support for those in the Kankakee, Illinois, community.
Community Cup received an Equipping the Local Church grant in 2023, initially planning to find ways of utilizing their newly purchased church building to be a safe place for families, specifically offering parenting classes and support groups to better nurture, love, and educate families. However, several months into the process, they were faced with a vital need that was felt, not only by families, but many individuals in their surrounding community.
Pastor Makenzie Flores is co-lead pastor at Community Cup with her husband, Mario. She shared, “Clean clothes can deeply impact people’s well-being and mental health and this is just a small part of the project.” Community Cup was able to open a laundry room that is available for community use, staffed by church pastors and volunteers who get to know the regulars. “We have been talking to them about Jesus and inviting them into a relationship with him. It started by just being their community and loving them as neighbors,” she said.
But the work didn’t stop there. Pastor Flores quipped that “$5,000 does not go as far as I would have thought! And at the same time, God provides.” She then went on to say, “The laundry room is just phase one of a much larger project,” said Flores. “There have been many community partners in conversation with us around the whole plan to have a community center and possible immigration site.” From a simple laundry room bloomed a community collaboration.
Beginning in 2023 with its first Equipping the Local Church Grant, Community Cup began working with Kankakee Forgives, a community-based nonprofit that works with mothers affected by gun violence. They are expanding that partnership, through a second grant they received in 2024, to partner with the high school next door to provide a weekly program for at-risk teen girls. The girls will meet in the church’s coffee shop where they can safely express themselves, build mentoring relationships with trusted church and community members, all of which they hope will be a deterrent to fights that often escalate to gun violence.
Pastors Flores reported that in 2024, new partnerships emerged with United Way and Success by 6 to provide services, using the church’s facilities, to postpartum moms. With the help of community navigators and a children’s pastor, these mothers have access to psychosocial and spiritual counseling.
The church has also witnessed a need for an adult-supervised “third space” for college students and young people. Drawing on connections in their membership to two local colleges, the coffee shop will be staffed and open at times when many other safe spaces are closed. Pastor Flores said, “This ministry meets a very specific need in our community: a third space open in the evenings for students to gather and study. However, the vision is not just to passively open our space to college students; it is to be a holy space where all are safe and welcome.” Volunteers from the church will be present to build rapport and begin to unpack and listen to people’s stories in order to better know how to talk with them about Jesus and share the Gospel. Community Cup hopes that this initiative becomes a launching pad to invite students to join in worship and, ultimately, lead them to live into their identity as a loved and loving child of God.
Recently, someone shared with Pastor Flores,
“You continue to give me hope for the church. When I think of Church, this is what it should be.”
Community Cup Church of the Nazarene, with the help of an Equipping the Local Church Grant, was able to focus on tangible needs in the community which has led to God broadening their vision and building new connections with community partners to do more together than they could have on their own!
To find out more about the Foundation’s Equipping the Local Church Grants, visit the grant page. To learn more about Community Cup Church of the Nazarene, visit their webpage.
