One of our values at Venture Church Network is being relationally committed, something we believe is important to the body of Christ. I’d love to share my story of the time I got to experience what being relationally committed meant.

I currently pastor at Desert Springs Community Church in Goodyear, Arizona. This church was planted in 1983 and fell into hard times in the mid 90’s. They were around six weeks out from closing the doors! They didn’t have a pastor because they couldn’t afford one and they were behind on their mortgage payments. They reached out to a sister church in Phoenix called Palmcroft Church where I was on staff at the time. As their sister church, we came along side Desert Springs, helped them catch up financially, and eventually some families from Palmcroft, including mine, joined together with Desert Springs. This all happened 26 years ago. Today, Desert Springs is a thriving church that’s planting other churches, and it’s alive today because of those relational networks and ties we have as an association of churches.

There are some other churches that come to mind when I think of ‘relationally committed.’ One of our churches in Tucson had to close after 65 years, but God birthed something out of that after they received some help. Canyon Del Oro Bible Church in Tucson, one of our VCN churches, came along and helped that new church birth – Hope City Church. This church is in an area of town that’s drug infested and has a high amount of prostitution and gangs. Canyon Del Oro come alongside them to help, and three years later, Hope City Church is thriving. This couldn’t have happened without relational commitment.

We like to say that our association, VCN, is about churches helping churches and pastors helping pastors. There are two sides to that. There have to be churches willing to share, help, and come alongside other churches. And there have to be churches that are humble enough to receive that help. When that happens, it’s powerful. It’s almost like that’s how God designed the church to work – by loving each other well! Let’s be relationally committed.

Steve Engram,

Regional Director of Venture Church Network Southwest