Lowell School

Jericho Road Church meets at Lowell School for our Sunday morning worship gathering. But our relationship with the school goes way beyond that. Our desire is to team up with the school by tangibly loving the staff, the students, and their families.

We have done this in many ways over the years: teacher appreciation dinners, buying school pictures for kids who couldn't afford them, and putting on a monthly kid's club in the school gym.

Lowell is also a unique school with a population of 25% under resourced students. Many of these students are immigrants. We work closely with the school staff in meeting the needs that arise within that specific community. For example, every year at Christmas facilitating a Christmas tree that provides gifts for the members of those families.

Renovation

In January of 2010 several churches in the South Wheaton and Glen Ellyn area came together to ask two questions: What does God want to do in our community and What would it look like if God got his way? These questions speak to the heart of God's mission in the world. As the local expressions of the Body of Christ we desired to be faithful to this calling, yet we also recognized that our different backgrounds, expressions of faith, theological distinctions, and competitiveness, keep us apart. We were convinced, however, that if we chose to make the mission of God our primary pursuit we could lay aside much of what has separated us. What if our goal was that every man, woman, and child living in proximity to our churches had a repeated opportunity to hear, see, understand, and respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ?

To this end, pastors began meeting twice a month for over a year. We prayed together, laughed and cried together, and worked through materials by Dr. Dwight Smith. Not only did this give us a common language and perspective, but more importantly, it built a container of trust. We came to a place where we can trust one another with the resources God has given our respective churches.

There will always be a need for different churches and expressions of faith. But this one thing is clear; the calling God has given us is greater than any one church can accomplish. However, if we unite around the mission of reaching every man, woman, and child with the gospel in the Central DuPage community, and mobilize our resources to that end, we can complete the mission God has given us.

The churches who are participating in this vision are: Blanchard Alliance Church, Wheaton Christian Reformed Church, Jericho Road Church, Life Church, Village Green Baptist Church, and Wheaton Evangelical Free Church.