Liles Brings Energy To New Church

Joe Liles, lead pastor at The Neighborhood Church, signs his email “Pastor.Father.Husband.” These are his three callings in life, he said. “Without those three things in combination, I’m not effective in any of them.”

Joe Liles, lead pastor at The Neighborhood Church, signs his email “Pastor.Father.Husband.” These are his three callings in life, he said. “Without those three things in combination, I’m not effective in any of them.”

Saturday, May 4, 2013

BENTONVILLE - The Neighborhood Church may have a new home, but Lead Pastor Joe Liles said the church is wherever its people are.

The congregation of the 1-year-old Lutheran “church plant” worshipped for the first time Sunday at its new location in Bentonville.

At first, when thinking about planting a church, Liles said he envisioned what the church would look like. But in the process of renovating the space for the church, he said, “I keep on looking at the people. I realize the building has nothing to do with it. It’s always been the people.”

Liles’ thinking about bricks and mortar comes naturally, given his former occupation. After graduating with a math degree from Willamette University in Salem, Ore., he spent two years as a project manager for a construction company in Phoenix, where he’d lived most of his life. The projects Liles oversaw weren’t the only projects under construction, though.

Liles worked 12-hour days, but instead of going home to wind down from the long workday, he said he found himself in church most nights. On Sundays, he attended three services at three churches.

“Everything I was doing was in an effort to get to church,” Liles said. “I would move all my schedules to get there.”

Liles, the son of a Lutheran minister, grew up in church, but he didn’t realize how much he craved that atmosphere until he’d wandered away from that path a bit.

“Every one of those actions, whether it was painful, whether it was joyful, has been an effort to be right here,” he said.

That’s when he decided to enter Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, to become a pastor.

All those Sundays in Phoenix spent worshipping for eight to 10 hours helped prepare him for his long days as a pastor at The Neighborhood Church.

The Neighborhood has been a portable church since its first worship service on Easter Sunday 2012. A crew of church members, including Liles and other key leaders, spent up to four hours setting up for worship service at Central Park Elementary School in southwest Bentonville. Tear down was an additional two hours. Some Sundays also included a business meeting.

The church set up morphed into a time of fellowship for the crew and other church members, Liles said.

“We are huge on fellowship. We crave it,” Liles said.

But it got in the way of the work being done.

The crew eventually reduced the time for set up to about an hour and a half, Liles said, but the focus had turned from growth and development of their faith relationships to the minutes ticking away on the clock.

To get away from watching the clock and get to more fellowship, the congregation decided it was time to find a permanent home.

“The best way to get out in the community is to stop worrying about ourselves,” Liles said. “And to make sure we have a place to do ministry out of, not be in.”

The church’s new home is a remodeled restaurant in a strip mall on Southwest Regional Airport Boulevard, about a mile from Central Park Elementary School.

Liles said the former restaurant space was perfect because it had nooks with shingled roofs built in the interior and a back patio, both of which go along with the neighborhood theme. The first space completed in the new church was the children’s area, called the Kids Cul de Sac, he said.

“That’s how much we value children,” he said. “ That’s always going to be the focus. We want kids to love the church so much they won’t let their parents go anywhere else.”

Pendant lights that look like clouds and a large tree with giant leaves hanging off make it feel as though they are on a neighborhood playground, Liles added.

The focus on children is what got Lana Mangold of Garfield to join the church, she said. She and her husband, Ken, heard about it before it opened, and they attended the first service. Ken Mangold serves with Liles on the Habitat for Humanity of Benton County Board of Directors.

Lana Mangold wanted her grandchildren, ages 8 and 5, to start going to church, and The Neighborhood was the right fit, she said.

“He has such a passion for kids,” she said of Liles. “That is so critical to getting families to go to church and stay in church.”

“We drive 45 minutes just to attend church, and it’s completely worth it,” she added.

About 15 children younger than age 5 attend The Neighborhood, Liles said, including his two children. His wife, Jessica, is the children’s minister.

The Lileses met in seminary. Jessica, a native of rural North Dakota, wanted to work in rural children’s ministries, but Joe was leaning toward pastoring a large church like the ones he grew up in, he said.

When the couple looked at their lives together and how they each could stay faithful to their callings, they found God was calling them both to plant a church, Liles said. They could develop the ministries they’d always wanted to see, he added.

Liles was a part of his father’s church plant in Las Vegas in 2000. That experience helped him form ideas of changes he’d like to see within the church, he said.

“I had this idea that church can be different. Church can grow in ways that we don’t even know yet,” Liles said. People just need to keep trying new things, he added.

That’s the message he tells his congregation each week.

“This journey is about you, but you have to realize that your relationship with God is just that: It’s a relationship. … It’s the same thing with the church,” Liles said.

He wants to see each member and the church as a whole make progress on their faith journey to see what they can become as a body of Christ, he said.

And Liles will walk that journey step by step with each person, said the Rev. Stacy Seger, pastor of Christ the King Lutheran Church in Bentonville.

Christ the King is a partner church of The Neighborhood, along with three other Evangelical Lutheran Church in America churches in the area, and helps support it financially. Other financial help comes from two churches in Hot Springs, one church in Phoenix, seven churches in Oklahoma, the Arkansas-Oklahoma Synod of the ELCA and the ELCA.

The youngsters from Christ The King and The Neighborhood team up for Wednesday night youth activities, Seger added.

“When you meet (Liles), he’s a friend. He’s not the kind of pastor who is untouchable or unreachable,” Seger said.

He plays softball with the church members and even sits on the floor with the children during children’s church, she said.

Both Mangold and Seger said Liles’s energy is what attracts people to The Neighborhood.

“He’s helped us find that passion again,” said Mangold.

Seger sees Liles’ energy flowing through the congregation’s members to their friends, she said.

“He is making disciples. He’s employing people of the church to go out into the world,” and reach out to people they know, she said.

Liles said he will continue to energize the people of The Neighborhood for as long as God calls him.

“I truly believe that God has called each person to The Neighborhood with a vision to have a powerful impact in this community. We are passionate and courageously following and being led on the path God has guided us to.”

Religion, Pages 8 on 05/04/2013