A Jesus Movement: A Decade of God’s Transforming Work in the Jackson Neighborhood

A Jesus Movement: A Decade of God’s Transforming Work in the Jackson Neighborhood

When we look back over the last decade in the Jackson Neighborhood, what stands out most isn’t how much we’ve done—it’s how much we’ve had to learn.

We didn’t move into Jackson with an exact blueprint for transformation or a packaged model of ministry. We came with a calling to follow Jesus faithfully in a specific place, trusting that if we stayed long enough, listened deeply enough, and obeyed the Holy Spirit, God would renew what only He can. What has unfolded since then has been slower, messier, and far more beautiful than anything we could have planned.

This is not a story of rapid church growth or clean outcomes. It’s a story of incarnation—of God choosing to work through proximity, patience, prayer, and ordinary people learning to say yes, again and again. It’s the story of how Neighborhood Church has become not just a weekly gathering, but a collaborative ecosystem for neighborhood renewal, rooted in the simple conviction that Jesus cares deeply about people and places—and that His renewal work touches every part of life.

A Call to Place: Learning to Stay (2015–2016)

In 2015, we came as missionaries to the Jackson Neighborhood of Fresno, California. Jackson is an eight-by-twelve block neighborhood—923 homes—one of the most under-resourced areas in the city and often described through statistics: poverty rates, graduation gaps, income levels, and crime data.

But we quickly learned that if we led with solutions we would miss the people those solutions aimed to serve.

Our calling wasn’t to fix Jackson. It was to become people who truly loved our neighbors. To love the people right in front of us—not as a project, but as family-in-the-making. Jesus’ words in Luke 10 shaped us deeply. The Good Samaritan didn’t solve racial injustice in a day, but he crossed the road, moved toward suffering, and stayed present.

So we stayed.

Practically, those first months and years were marked by a slow, deliberate posture. We prayer-walked the same streets week after week. We knocked on doors without an agenda. We sat on porches and around kitchen tables listening to stories. We learned names, family histories, and where people had been hurt—often by institutions that promised help but failed to follow through.

Jeremiah 29:7 became an anchor for us:

“Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you… because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

That verse reshaped our imagination. God wasn’t calling us to extract people out of a broken neighborhood—He was inviting us to seek shared flourishing (shalom). That first year was quiet. Trust came slowly. There were many moments when we wondered if anything visible was happening at all. But Jesus was forming something deeper in us: the conviction that faithfulness in neighboring precedes fruit.

From Listening to Shared Action (2016–2018)

As trust deepened, neighbors began inviting us into their real lives—not just their needs, but their ideas, frustrations, and hopes for the neighborhood. We started having intentional one-on-one listening conversations, asking simple but powerful questions: What do you love about Jackson? What feels broken? What have people tried before?

One moment in particular changed the trajectory of our work.

After a child was seriously injured along Tulare Avenue—a busy street with no sidewalks—grief and anger rippled through the neighborhood. Parents were tired of watching their kids walk to school in the road. Rather than stepping in as “leaders with answers,” we helped neighbors organize. Living rooms filled with residents. Hand-drawn maps identified danger zones. Stories were shared. City planners and council members were eventually invited into the conversation.

When the infrastructure plan was approved, something deeper than traffic safety had happened. Neighbors experienced collective agency. They realized their voices mattered.

Out of that moment, Jackson Community Development Corporation (Jackson CDC) was formally established in 2016. What began as an informal grassroots community development effort became a nonprofit platform for neighbors to shape the future of their own community—addressing safety, education, leadership development, and long-term well-being.

Around the same time, another expression of shared action took shape. We started gathering our neighbors at Jackson Elementary for a weekly worship gathering. We started seeing people accept Christ, be baptized and make disciples. It was amazing! We were also so encouraged by a handful of churches who became our cheerleaders and support - Mountain View,OnRamps and so many others. In fact our church’s first leadership team was 6 lead-pastors from across town! Around that same time we renovated a woodworking workshop and hired young men from the neighborhood—ages 16 to 24—many of whom carried gang affiliations, criminal records, or had problems in school. Together they built Little Free Libraries by hand, sold them to supporters, and personally installed them in front yards across Fresno.

This wasn’t job training alone. It was dignity. It was trust. It was Christ-centered mentoring alongside skill-building. Young men who had been written off were entrusted with tools, paid real wages, and sent into people’s neighborhoods as representatives of something good. That work continued faithfully until COVID forced us to pause it in 2020.

Micah 6:8 took on flesh for us in those years:

“What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Justice, we learned, is rarely abstract. Sometimes it looks like sidewalks. Sometimes it looks like a paycheck. It always looks like salvation, but you have to stay long enough to see it. 

The Church Takes Shape: A People, Not a Place (2016–2019)

Neighborhood Church officially began gathering in January 2016 in the cafeteria of Jackson Elementary School. The location mattered. We wanted the church to be unmistakably rooted in the neighborhood—not set apart from it.

Those early gatherings were simple and relational. Scripture was read. Songs were sung—often led by whoever was brave enough. Teaching connected the Bible to everyday life in Jackson as neighbors sat around tables in the gathering. Prayer was open and honest. Shared meals anchored everything.

As our gathering grew, First Armenian Presbyterian Church generously offered us space to gather in 2019 so we could have air conditioning and clean play space for the kids to enjoy. That move deepened our partnerships with other congregations in Fresno and reminded us that the Church is always bigger than one expression.

During these same years, rhythms began to emerge that would become anchors in the life of the neighborhood.

Every September, our church launched Adopt-A-Gator, inviting neighbors to pray intentionally for a specific staff member at Jackson Elementary. We adopted teachers, custodians, office workers, administrators and after school staff —praying for them by name, delivering encouragement, and showing up consistently in a system that often leaves educators unseen.

At Christmas, neighbors decorated cars and drove through the streets in a Christmas parade, while families stood outside cheering—many encountering the church not as an institution, but as a celebration of hope.

Easter became more than a Sunday. On Good Friday, we created an outdoor Stations of the Cross along Huntington Boulevard—handmade art, Scripture, and a bilingual liturgy inviting neighbors to walk with Jesus toward the cross. On Saturday, the neighborhood gathered for a massive Easter party—food, games, joy, and gospel witness. On Sunday, we gathered neighbors outdoors to proclaim, “Christ is risen.”

These weren’t events we hosted for the neighborhood. They became rhythms we shared—markers of renewal in a place often overlooked.

Jesus’ words guided us deeply in those years:

“Behold, I make all things new.”

Crisis, Adaptation, and a Shift Toward Ecosystem (2020–2021)

When COVID hit, everything changed overnight.

Jackson was hit hard. Many neighbors were essential workers without safety nets. Undocumented families received no government relief. Food insecurity surged. Fear and isolation settled in.

So we pivoted—not because we had a strategic plan, but because love demanded it.

We accelerated our work, becoming a critical lifeline. Emergency relief funds helped families with rent and utilities. Weekly food distributions served dozens of households. A volunteer-run neighborhood helpline responded to urgent needs. School supplies were delivered directly to students’ homes. Wilderness trips offered healing space for families after months of confinement.

At the same time, Neighborhood Church moved online, then returned to in-person outdoor gatherings. Eventually, we found ourselves meeting in living rooms.

That shift changed us.

Meeting in homes stripped away performance and replaced it with vulnerability. Worship felt closer. Prayer became more participatory. Creating space for people in the spirit of hospitality became sacred. We began to realize that what had emerged out of necessity was actually a gift.

Acts 2:46–47 came alive:

“They broke bread in their homes… and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

COVID clarified something we had been sensing for years: Neighborhood Church was never meant to be just a weekly gathering. It was becoming an ecosystem—House church gatherings, nonprofit work, social enterprises, and community partnerships all interwoven in service of people and place, for the sake of the gospel. 

Re-centering on Formation and Local Leadership (2021–2023)

After years of intensity and the strain of the pandemic, we sensed God inviting us to pause. With the blessing of our Leadership team, we entered a sabbatical—a season of rest, prayer, and reorientation.

When we returned, clarity emerged.

Rather than rebuilding everything as it was, we leaned into what the Holy Spirit seemed to be forming beneath the surface: deeper discipleship through one-on-one and group spiritual formation, prayer and worship as the engine of mission, and leadership rising from within the neighborhood itself.

We began meeting consistently in living rooms, marking the beginning of what would become a micro-church network—smaller, relational expressions of church embedded across the neighborhood.  Instead of building one thing bigger, we decided to grow bigger by multiplying smaller things across our neighborhood. 

At the same time, Jackson CDC continued to mature. After COVID, Sarah Valentine, a Jackson neighbor already involved in our Saturday Sports program, stepped into leadership. A few years later, in 2023, Rhonda Dueck, another deeply rooted neighbor, became Executive Director.

Under her leadership, Jackson CDC has flourished. Programs expanded. Systems strengthened. Resident leadership deepened. What began as a small nonprofit responding to immediate needs grew into a robust, neighbor-led organization multiplying the work far beyond what we could have done alone.

John 15:5 anchored us during this season:

“Apart from me you can do nothing.”

We were reminded that fruitfulness flows from abiding. 

Integration, Continuity, and New Expressions (2023–2025)

In recent years, old seeds have borne new fruit.

The vocational thread that once ran through the woodworking shop re-emerged through neighbors launching a new woodworking shop and a newly renovated mechanics pit, where kids are now learning woodworking and automotive skills alongside Christian mentoring. Hardwood and hearts are being formed. Wrenches and prayer sit side by side. Different tools, same theology—dignity, discipleship, and belonging. 

Love of neighbors deepened across the ecosystem. Jackson CDC expanded mentoring to dozens of kids weekly. Residents trained as Community Conductors stepped into leadership. Neighborhood Church gatherings remained relational and prayer-centered. We multiplied a house church, focused on providing spiritual direction to our neighbors and deepened our partnerships with Jackson Elementary, local churches, nonprofits, and civic leaders for Kingdom renewal.

Prayer remained central—prayer walks through streets and schools, worship woven into gatherings, leadership meetings grounded in listening prayer.

Isaiah 58:12 often comes to mind:

“You will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.”

Even amid personal trials in these years—health challenges, family crises, exhaustion, seemingly endless spiritual attacks—God met us. He refined our dependence and expanded our compassion.

What This Decade Has Taught Us

Looking back, a few convictions remain steady:

God works slowly—and deeply.

Proximity changes everything.

Listening precedes leadership.

Spiritual formation sustains what programs cannot.

This has always been God’s work.

Philippians 1:6 continues to anchor us:

“He who began a good work among you will carry it on to completion.”

An Ongoing Invitation

We don’t see this decade as a finish line. It feels like a foundation.

Neighborhood Church has become a collaborative ecosystem for neighborhood renewal—weekly gatherings, a nonprofit, social enterprises, community partnerships, and friendships all working together to live out our shared values of Jesus + People + Place across 8 blocks, 12 blocks, and 923 homes.

God is still at work in the Jackson Neighborhood. There is more healing to come, more leaders to be raised up, more salvation stories yet to be told.

To our church family—thank you for walking this road with us.

To our partners—thank you for trusting this slow, relational work.

To those just discovering our story—you are welcome here.

We remain committed—to Jesus, to one another, and to this place—trusting that the same God who began this work will carry it forward.

With gratitude,

Joe & Heidi White