The Apostolic Community Life Center is a second-third generation Hispanic multi-cultural commuter church. The challenge and opportunity that impacts the local congregation and the surrounding community is that the ministry site is located in a predominantly Spanish-speaking community where monolingual (Spanish), bilingual and immigrant people do not directly relate to our predominantly English ministry. Although the English¬speaking congregation has good intentions their inability to articulate and communicate in Spanish creates a cultural barrier causing a disconnect between the Hispanic American and Hispanic immigrant community. Theologically the church is the salt of the earth and if kept in the salt shaker it is ineffective. The vision of this ministry project will bring opportunity to both the church and surrounding community to envision the ministry site as being inclusive, providing hope, forgiveness, and compassion through seeing God’s presence in the barrio. The intervention methods that will be engaged will be workshops, surveys, and interviews that will be given to the stakeholders. This challenge and opportunity will change how the local congregation perceives the surrounding community by it assimilating into the population thus becoming part of the community. Traditional apostolic ecclesiology will be challenged. This will bring a fresh vision of mission to the local congregation that the mission field is the barrio just outside of the church building.
