Last Friday the Northshore Baptist Association hosted a Multi-Housing Ministry Roundtable with Tia Albertson from Tarrant County Baptist Association in Fort Worth, TX. Tia’s husband Ray serves as Pastor of North Star Fellowship, which is a church that meets in a large apartment complex in Irving, TX. This is a fully constituted, fully functioning church that is intentionally planted to reach this particular multi-housing complex along with multiplying itself into others. The Roundtable was possible because of Northstar’s being in SE Louisiana on a mission trip.

I love this stuff because of my connection to an Apartment Church in Irving, while a student at Southwestern Seminary. Oak View Baptist adopted a strategy that included multi-housing church planting due to the lack of ethnic diversity in their congregation and overwhelming lostness in their one mile radius. I learned a ton at Kirkwood Park Fellowship and the principles of organic church life that I practiced as an apartment church pastor have stayed with me over the last 10 years.

Next time you drive by an apartment complex or mobile home park, think about the lives of the people there. Consider that what takes you 2 seconds to drive past, houses 400-1,500 souls who need to hear the gospel. A few takeaways from our roundtable with Tia Albertson and North Star Fellowship:

1. Pray, Pray, Pray. Prayer walking is a good habit to get into and easy to do at a multi-housing complex. Click here for a Prayer Walking Guide.
2. Try to work with the management. Go to serve. First question, “How can I help you?” not, “Can I have a Bible Study here?” A few ideas on this later.
3. Look for persons of peace who live on site. Who is God working with that lives on site.
4. Aim for church life on site. “The word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood” John 1:14

If you simply do outreach to a multi-housing site, inviting them to your church site, you will reach 4% of the population. But if you take church-life to them, you will reach 30% of the site. I’m praying that we go for the 30%.