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Imagine church as a courtroom

When this pastor set his new course, one-third of original members left

ODENTON, Md. – One Sunday morning when Jimmy Rollins was 37 years old, he stood before the church his parents had spent most of his life building, and what he saw was a sea of black. The church had a handful of white members, but Living Waters Worship Center was a majority-African American church in a majority-white town – Odenton, Maryland, a suburb south of Baltimore – and for Rollins, that meant it was a church that had lost its way.

Rollins knew that the church needed to change, and he took to the stage and told the church that very thing. Need knows no color, he said.

He needed to jump-start this thing, prime the racial pump. So on one Sunday, Rollins asked two teenage girls to dress up as hobos and sit at the edge of the church driveway, holding up signs asking for food or money. There’s only one route onto the church property, and everyone who came that Sunday had to pass these white girls before parking and coming inside. During the service, Rollins asked the congregation about the girls: Did you see them? Did you help them? Let’s see a show of hands.

In an auditorium of 600 people, three hands went up.

Rollins let silence hang in the room. Then: “I looked out at them and said, ‘We failed as a church this morning.’”

In the wake of this stunt and others, the church lost one-third of its original members.

Rollins made other sudden changes. In a church culture where some saw “God’s favor” in the ability to purchase high-end alligator shoes and tailored suits, he began preaching in T-shirts and jeans. He grew the church’s volunteer ranks and had them wearing red T-shirts underneath their suit jackets.

“For a year, I did culture,” he says. “I preached: ‘We don’t exist for us. We exist for the people who aren’t even here yet.’”

Reinventing a church

Between 2011 and 2012, Living Waters Worship Center morphed into something Rollins decided to call i5 Church. Churches in the United States have been experimenting with nontraditional names for at least two decades. Tulsa has a GUTS. New York City has a Dwell. Charlotte has an Elevation. Such names communicate a certain flavor, a style and mission.

But i5? It’s a moniker without immediate resonance.

Rollins intended it as a literal description of the thing he was creating, a church that is motivated entirely by meeting five needs: food, water, clothing, shelter and care. Race would not be a factor.

“Need has no color,” Rollins likes to say. “We have to love beyond our preferences.”

The five categories come from Matthew 25:31-46, in which Jesus tells his disciples that in the end, he will separate all people into two groups “as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” The sheep are the ones who cared for “the least of these brothers and sisters” by giving them food and drink, by welcoming them in, by clothing them, by caring for those sick or imprisoned. The goats, who did not do these things, “will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

It’s a stark passage whose message fell especially hard on Rollins a few years ago. From 2009 until 2011, Rollins was unhappy with the reach of his church ministry, where he had served for 17 years. He was drinking too much. His marriage was suffering.

A revelation in Africa

As one last test of his commitment to the church, Rollins took a trip to Africa with a team from Living Waters. One afternoon, the team’s van broke down on the side of a remote road. As they waited for help to come, he experienced a breakthrough. “I got slam-dunked by God” is the way Rollins puts it. He was overwhelmed with a vision for how he really wanted to do church. He sat in the broken-down van and typed into a laptop as fast as he could.

Rollins imagined a courtroom. God was the judge. Jesus was the prosecutor. The jury was made up of prisoners, homeless people, the sick and naked and downtrodden. The defendant was Jimmy Rollins. And on every area of accusation – Did you clothe them? Did you feed them? Did you visit them in prison? Care for them in sickbeds? – Rollins was found wanting, guilty. A goat.

After three hours, Rollins knew exactly what kind of church he wanted to run.

That’s the church he’s running today.

The mission of service

Every week, i5 food trucks pick up about 1,500 pounds of perishable goods to deliver to a food pantry. Earlier this year, the church gathered 1,700 pairs of shoes to send overseas. They’re digging wells for clean water in Tanzania and Kenya. In August, i5 partnered with the Board of Education in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, to deliver 1,500 bags of school supplies to impoverished families.

“Every single Saturday, we’re at a shelter in D.C., a shelter in Baltimore,” says Steve Harris, an i5 associate pastor.

In 2013, Rollins entered into a partnership with One Child Matters, a child sponsorship organization based in Colorado, to change the church’s approach to orphan care. The church had been supporting 14 orphans from its general fund; Rollins challenged church members to support orphans directly. In one Sunday morning, members signed up for over 260 monthly child sponsorships. In effect, Rollins not only freed up church finances for meeting local needs, but also managed to support more orphans overseas.

The net effect was a new culture of generosity: After the One Child Matters campaign began, giving per member increased by more than 60 percent.

While the i5 congregation has grown in size since its nadir, some of its most important initiatives are focused on serving a more diverse population. Neighboring the church building is the i5 Kids Early Learning Center, a preschool facility serving 120 children. Rollins’ wife, Irene, runs the center, known until recently as Noah’s Ark.

The project that excites Jimmy Rollins more than any other is an athletic program called i5 Elite, geared to sixth- to eighth-graders. Irene and two volunteer coaches founded the program two years ago. i5 Elite employs two full-time director-coaches supported by more than 100 volunteers, and its multiracial ranks have swelled to 260 kids in track and another 90 in football. Girls’ volleyball starts this fall, and Rollins hopes soccer will soon follow. i5 Elite athletes boast 40 national track-and-field titles so far.



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