The Church in the Mobile Home Park

Prelude

Since 1994, we have lived on a 10 acre property in rural Harris County, Texas near the town of Tomball about 30 miles northwest of Houston. I (Bob) was working for Enron and we were returning to Houston from a 5-year assignment in London. When we moved to the area, it was rural and mostly undeveloped. The property we found was perfect to support Cathie’s interest in horses. There was no zoning. Immediately to our north was a 60 acre Christmas farm. We knew the owners who also lived on the property well—even attended the same church (which they invited us to when we moved in). We were good friends also with our neighbors to the west who lived and ran a business on about 7 acres. We knew a few other people in the area casually.

About a half mile to our west, a ten-acre mobile home park had been operating with about 40 mobile homes since at least the early 1980’s. It was not a very nice place, but we ignored it even as we drove by on our way to town. It didn’t occur to me that residents of the park were be my ‘neighbors,’ probably because virtually all of the residents were Hispanic immigrants.

The park’s sewage system failed in the late 1990’s and after complaints from the neighborhood, the state authorities shut it down.  We were happy about the loss of our poor neighbors.  We were living the good life in the ‘exurbs.’  But, in 2001, the park opened up again, having repaired its sewage and water systems.  To our relief, its new waste treatment system required a lot of land to dispose of the treated effluent so only 20 mobile homes could be accommodated.  That wasn’t good, but it could have been worse.

In 2002, the owner of the park applied for a state permit to discharge his treated waste water into the state’s water system.  With the permit, he would be able to put up to 55 mobile homes on the site.  The news flashed around community.  Soon our neighbors were enlisting our assistance in contesting the application legally.  We hired a top environmental law firm and went to battle.  No one talked to the park owner and he never approached us about his plans.  And, while all of us ‘organized neighbors’ were Christian church members, none of thought to ask whether the park owner might be a Christian brother.  We were waging war the way the world does.

During 2003, we attended hearings, made and wrote statements and conferred with our lawyers.  But, we never talked to our neighbor the park owner.  Then the judge said he wanted us all to visit the park to walk the grounds.  We had never been into the park in the nearly 10 years it had been just a few hundred yards away.  As I was walking along, a very definitive thought came into my mind: “If you don’t like the way this park is being run, why don’t you run it?”  I had only been a follower of Jesus since January of 2000, but I’d experienced God’s ‘talking to me’ this way before.  But, my reaction to God was “Wait a minute, God.  Remember me?  I’m Bob.  A corporate suit type of guy.  Certainly not someone who would run a mobile home park.”  I tried to put the idea out of my mind as too disruptive of my personal peace and risky to my reputation.

The judge made his recommendations to the state soon after and they denied the owner’s permit. That was the good news.  The bad news was that, in the last half of 2003, a disagreement over church policy and a failure on our part to control a wayward dog we had adopted resulted in a sharp deterioration in the relationship with our Christmas tree farm neighbors to the north.  We felt we should no longer freely walk and ride on their land and our monthly dinners out stopped.  It was not real ugly, but the break was surely characterized by pride and failures to apologize and forgive.  And, we were members of the same church. 

Our Christmas tree farm neighbors were aging and we knew at some point they would sell the farm.  We dreamed of buying it and building a larger horse community encompassing our own.  But, we never wanted to say much about plans like that to our neighbors; they might think we were in a hurry for them to sell.  So, there things sat in 2004.  Our relations with our neighbors to the north were now more distant, but at least we did not have to worry about the mobile home park expanding. 

During 2004, the mobile home park owner, unable to expand himself, put the property up for sale.  He knew too the state authorities would give the permit to another operator whose past record was unblemished.  Our ‘victory’ over him was starting to look a bit shaky.  I still had not been able to put the thought of buying and running the park myself out of mind.  Now, the prospect of someone we didn’t know coming in to more than double its size put us in the same place we had been.  So, I was thinking maybe we should buy the park for the common good of the neighbors—and then shut it down.  But, it was clear if we wanted to do that, we would be on our own.

About that time, Bob met Brian Schaffer, a Nazarene pastor and former missionary in Latin America.  Brian had formed a non-profit to facilitate compassion ministry by linking needs in the city with resources in the suburbs.   We drove past the park and talked a little about it and agreed to stay in touch.  We didn’t recognize God’s hand in this meeting, but clearly He was at work.  But, I was still trying to avoid listening to His call.

A few months later, we began attending a congregation where the elders were considering some new ways of being the Church.  A colleague and I (who were writing a book about the mission of the Church) joined this congregation to teach about planting the Church in the family, in the workplace, the school and, of course, in the local neighborhood.  One of the problems we had in teaching what we saw in Scripture was that there were no examples we could point to of the missional gathering of Christians across congregational lines to be the Church in their neighborhood, or in their workplace or school. 

One Sunday, I looked over to see our enemy-neighbor the mobile home park owner worshipping along side us.  I had successfully ignored Brian Schaffer’s interest in working with us.  But, now I was having trouble ignoring God’s hand in bringing our adversary-neighbor to our church!  I was getting the idea that God was serious about our buying and running the park.  I came under conviction that he needed to go speak to my enemy-neighbor and to reconcile. 

It took me a few Sunday’s to obey God’s call to reconcile with him.  He did not seem bitter about my part in his economic misfortune.  We met for lunch to talk about his desire to sell the park.  But, I was certainly not at the point where we were about to actually buy it.  But, soon, God would move again.  He allowed the sins we had sown in the past with our Christmas tree farm neighbors to deliver their harvest.

In the summer of 2005, our Christmas tree farm neighbors signed a contract to sell their property to a subdivision developer.  The land was never offered for public sale so we never had the opportunity to buy it.  I recognized the bitter fruit of my failure to be a good neighbor.  Cathie was beside herself—she wanted to move somewhere where this would never happen again.  But, what should we do?

From my continuing study of the mission of the Church, I knew we were called to build up the body of Christ where we lived.  Given all the time and money we spend in our neighborhood, we are going to give an account for how we spent those.  So far, we’d blown it with our neighbors to the north and were going to reap the consequences of another new subdivision in our back yard.  I was also thinking that the flight to the suburbs in America was a systemic sin: we move for a better life for ourselves and the place we leave be damned.  Now, we felt the desire to do exactly that.  But, I knew we couldn’t go.  We were exiled to Tomball, Texas—and we were called to seek its prosperity (Jeremiah 29:7).

At this time, my colleagues and I were reading Robert Quinn’s Building the Bridge as You Walk on It.  I was cut to the heart by Quinn’s observation (stated in secular terms) that in our flesh, we are ‘comfort-centered and self-focused’ while in the Spirit, we are ‘purpose-centered and other-focused.’  I saw myself as a ‘comfort worshipping idolator.’  I did those things, even things for God, that kept or made him comfortable.  My false gods were comfort and personal peace.  Like Isaiah in the presence of God, I felt ruined.  I had ignored God’s gentler prodding up until now.  But, the shock of suburbanization of our neighborhood and Quinn’s insights were too much.  God had finally gotten to me.  I saw I was useless to God in my comfort zone.

The Mobile Home Community and North Stuebner Airline Project

In October 2005, Brian Schaffer, a Nazarene pastor and former missionary to Latin America, and I began to seriously discuss a neighborhood ministry in the mobile home community located one-half mile from our home in Tomball.  Brian was committed to compassion ministry to the less fortunate and I was convicted that the residents of the mobile home community were ‘my neighbors.’  I had been ‘driving by them on the other side’ for more than ten years.  But, now I felt moved to buy the mobile home community and run it as a business ‘embassy of the Kingdom of God.’  Brian and his wife Deborah (who have 4 children ages 16 to 2) wanted to sell their home and move from the Cypress area into Tomball. They felt the calling to move into the manager’s house in the mobile home park to provide the on-site supervision.  

Since 2003, my study of the mission and purpose of the Church convinced me that it was to be the ‘sign, foretaste, instrument and agent of God’s reign in Christ.’  That is, the Church was to demonstrate in the midst of real life and within the ‘people group nations’ of our communities what life is like under the Lordship of Christ.  Jesus said the Kingdom of God is like yeast that a woman takes and works through a whole batch of dough. (Matthew 13:33)  When God brought Brian and Deborah into our lives, that yeast became our model for the Church in the mobile home park.  Brian, his wife Deborah and my wife Cathie and I were to be the Church in the mobile home park.  We relied on Jesus’ promise that ‘where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there’ and that ‘ my Father will grant whatever you ask in my name.’ (Matthew 18:19-20)  At this point, the Kingdom of God in our neighborhood was certainly like a mustard seed!

The 20 families living in the mobile home park were 95% Hispanic; many were undocumented.  Most were young families with quite a few kids.  How were we to be the Church to these people?  When Jesus sent 72 disciples out two by two he told them “Heal the sick you find and tell them the Kingdom of God is near.” (Luke 10:9)  So, our concept was to meet the practical needs of our residents without expectation of anything for ourselves (that is, in agape love).  The plan was to begin by upgrading the physical condition of the park.  About 40% of the land area in the park was used to dispose of the treated effluent from the park’s waste water treatment plant.  Spray heads protruded up from very badly maintained areas of land that we useless for play or for any other purpose.  We proposed first to get the grassy areas under control and keep them mowed.  We enlisted Brian’s teenage sons in the effort.  We moved the mobile homes that were located 10 feet off Stuebner Airline Road back further into the park.  As we relocated families within the park, we made sure their installations were better than they had been.  We trimmed the trees.  And, we gave notice that we did not want to continue providing spaces to two resident groups of young undocumented males without adult supervision.  They were sources of noise and behavior that we did not want to facilitate and the mobile homes were in very bad condition—beyond their useful lives.

Then, we initiated the effort to get the state permit required to pipe our treated effluent offsite so the spray field areas would be available for a soccer field, community garden or just play.  And, we proceeded to contract for a new waste treatment plant that would be contained in a building and be much quieter than the old unit that was currently doing the job.  We installed street lights.  And, we paved the streets and driveways which had been in very bad condition.  We paid for the painting of two mobile homes (we do not own any of the homes; we provide space and utilities only) that were in bad condition.  A third mobile home that was in the worst condition was a particular challenge.  We attempted to help the husband obtain a new trailer, taking him to dealers and sitting with him to understand what they were telling him.  We helped him get his employer to pay him fully by check so his pay would register as large as it actually was.  In the end, he did not have the financial strength to buy a new home.  But, he did initiate re-siding of the home and we paid for paint.  In the summer, we arranged for a visiting youth group mission to work on the home.  They built a new front deck and steps to replace the dangerous, rotten steps that were in place and did some painting. 

These ‘healing’ efforts were our effort to raise the level of our service to the residents.  We did not want the neighbors and other passers-by to look into the park and think badly of Hispanic immigrants for things that were beyond their control.  As owners and managers, we could do a lot to improve the way the park appeared outwardly.  But, we knew the real mission was to call our residents to a higher way of life—to Kingdom living.  As we first demonstrated how a Kingdom landlord and manager treat their residents, we planned to call them to raise the level of their lives as neighbors.  Hispanic culture often includes loud music that is not of benefit to the whole community.  Early on, we had lots of opportunity to teach that ‘loving one’s neighbor’ means doing no harm to him.  In this area, we worked on keeping individual family yards mowed and getting junk and non-operational vehicles out of the park.  Basically, we started to teach what it means to be a ‘good neighbor’ at the very basic level of doing no harm.

But, we knew ‘healing’ meant much more than improving physical surroundings, as important a symbol of God’s love and provision as they may be.  We wanted to call our residents to become Kingdom citizens of America or, if they were not to remain here, to their home countries.  So, we installed a community center in the park where we could engage residents in groups for learning or just fellowship.  The community center was simply a double-wide mobile home we purchased and gutted completely to create a classroom or fellowship area and two smaller work rooms with a bathroom.  As soon as we installed it, we began to get requests from residents to use it for birthday parties, wedding and baby showers and other gatherings.  We were even invited to some of these gatherings.  At one of them, we learned that a number of our residents were involved in a Roman Catholic equipping system called the Christian Family Movement.  We learned that its purpose was closely aligned to our own—to help families help each other live more closely to God’s design.  So, we could see that the Church in the mobile home park had some other body parts to whom we were not yet connected.

Our main purpose for the community center was to be a place where we could teach English and computer skills and mentor the school age kids.  This was our first effort to really engage residents personally.  We saw English not only as very important to our residents individually and to their witness to their American neighbors more generally.  We believed that offering English in love would be the best way to know and engage our residents personally and to show them more directly what life was like in God’s Kingdom.  We felt we would have many opportunities to share the reason for the hope that we have and to invite our residents into God’s Kingdom (i.e. life on God’s design) right here in the park. 

For me personally, this was the most difficult.  A lot of the initial healing work required just contractors, physical effort and money.  It involved things I could do in my own strength.  Though I knew we could not build up the body of Christ in the mobile home park without God’s power flowing through us, I gravitated to those tasks that I could do without His help.  During the first year of our ministry, our little Church was pretty moribund.  We started out meeting weekly to share what was going on and to pray for the park.  But, that got difficult with schedules and other activities.  And, as things moved slowly week to week, it didn’t seem to be necessary to gather that often.  Soon, the Schaffers and Baldwins weren’t gathering much at all.  We were just doing our work in our fleshly strength. 

In Faith-Walking 101 in September 2007, I had my ‘failure of integrity’ unmasked—that is, my failure to keep the word I had spoken of my intention to build the Church in the mobile home park.  My most flagrant ‘habitual disobedience’ was revealed to be self-reliance—the failure to trust and rely upon my vision community—the Church in the mobile home park.  As I left FW 101, I renewed my vow to act in faith on my word.  (We should note that we never conceived of starting a ‘congregation’ in the park that would gather to ‘worship’ on Sunday.  Rather, our ‘worship’ was to be the offering of our lives as living sacrifices all week long.  Our purpose was to demonstrate God’s plan for human community—Galatians 5:13.  We believed God would use those offerings to do His work in the lives of our residents.  That was our Church work—to be the sign, foretaste, agent and instrument of God’s reign in Christ in the park.)

How to actually present ESL in our community center was a stumbling block that delayed this critical component for months.  None of us except Brian was competent in Spanish.  And, he had a day job!  So, we needed a bi-lingual person who could bridge the language gap for us as we presented English and make our residents comfortable to come to class.  Finally, the wife of an Hispanic landscaping contractor came into our lives—a real act of God’s provision.  She was not a believer herself, but we very soon had opportunities to share with her why we were doing what we were doing—and for the hope we had! 

Actually, our conception of the Church in our neighborhood went beyond the mobile home park to the square mile area centered on Stuebner Airline Road and bounded on the north by Hufsmith Road and on the south by Hufsmith-Kuykendahl Road.  We started calling this area “North Stuebner Airline” or “NSA.”  It was a suburban geographic area within which we felt residents should be able to know one another well enough to recognize not only one another, but their children.  And, it had physical characteristics that could make for a relatively safe area over which kids could roam—as they had done in their neighborhoods up until this present generation.

Directly across the street from the mobile home park and immediately to the north of our ten acre property, a new subdivision was being built on the site of a former Christmas tree farm.  We could see from the plans it was to be a gated community with no common space provided.  Experience in Harris County was already showing that this kind of living was not turning out to be ‘abundant’ as Jesus promised it could be. (John 10:10)  In fact, it is quite far off God’s design for human life.  Haggai 1:5-8 and Revelation 3:14-17 seemed to be good descriptions of life in America’s middle class—people like us who’d be our new neighbors.  God was ‘blowing away all we bring home’ because we are ‘all busy with our own houses while His house remains a ruin.’  We recognized that, in our time, God’s house is the unified Body of Christ.  So, we began to see that, beyond the mobile home park project, we had a ‘community Church planting’ opportunity in the whole NSA.  We saw we had the potential to influence the culture of the area as God’s Kingdom ‘yeast’ among the ‘bread loaf’ of 75 new families moving into the gated community on our northern boundary.  (Again, we had no plan to build a Sunday ‘worship’ congregation, but rather a 24 x 7 Kingdom community.)

In August 2007, Cathie and I purchased the 26 acre plot of raw land immediately to our south (which is to the southeast of the mobile home park).  That prevented anything crazy from happening on that land as it can in an area with no zoning.  We now plan to move over to that plot from our current 10 acre property.  Six acres of our current 10 acres would make an excellent park and play area for the new subdivision.  While the developers showed no interest when we proposed leaving a lot open on the south boundary of the new subdivision so that it could open seamlessly out into the park, it’s something we can take up with the homeowners association as residents start to move in. 

On the 26 acres, we plan to leave a lot of heavily wooded wilderness while cutting a walking and riding trail for use by residents of NSA.  Our lawyers tell us we will be sued if someone gets hurt on the trail on our property.  So, part of our ‘Church work’ is to write a land use agreement that will give us the chance to talk to our neighbors about how we treat one another in God’s Kingdom.  Our offer should give occasion for rethinking about making money by suing our neighbors.  That practice in our culture is inhibiting active community and care for one another.  Of course, we will still be at risk.  We will also build new horse riding and training facilities that can be shared with borders as we are currently doing.  How we share facilities is again a witness of the power of Christ to enable fallen people to love one another in day-to-day life.  All we do we must do ‘as for the Lord’ so it bears witness to His work in our lives.

How will this story end?  We don’t have a clue.  All we know is we want to cast a different vision of life together than is being experienced in today’s suburban America.  It’s a vision based on love for God and one another, well summarized by Galatians 5:13.  We have the opportunity to call believers in NSA to demonstrate together what life looks like under the Lordship of Christ.  Those who respond will become our expanding ‘vision community’ or ‘church in NSA.’ With God’s help, we hope to show there is another way to live—aligned with God’s design—that is much better than today’s suburban life.  And, that’s our ‘church in NSA’ evangelism plan—to demonstrate life in God’s Kingdom in our neighborhood and to invite those who don’t know Him to step into it too.  While we have no plans for conducting Sunday worship, our vision community (the Church in NSA)  will have to gather to pray and study Scripture together to keep ourselves aligned with His design.  Our worship focus is to be the offering of our bodies as living sacrifices in every aspect of neighborhood life.  Our prayer is that “God’s kingdom will come and His will will be done in NSA as in heaven.”

Bob and Cathie Baldwin

Tomball, TX