PHOENIX - A routine call home in 1990 enlightened Eli Marez to a great need.
"I called my old Royal Rangers (youth) leader and asked, 'Where are the guys I grew up with?'" Marez says.
Marez learned that few of these childhood peers were attending church regularly.
Pricked by this discovery, Marez began calling family and friends throughout Phoenix's Maryville community, where he was raised.
He uncovering a disturbing pattern.
Most of his peers - Latino, born and raised in the U.S., and English-language dominant - did not attend church.
Those who did attend church tended to drift from church to church. Few remained in Spanish-speaking Latino churches.
Marez began praying that God would raise up a pastor who had a vision for reaching unchurched second and third generation Hispanics.
Marez didn't imagine he was the man for the job.
He was comfortable as an associate pastor at New Hope Community Church in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where he, his wife Rose, and their two daughters participated in all areas of church life.
Besides, the journey would be lonely: Marez knew of no churches that targeted second and third generation Hispanics.
But as months passed, his burden only grew. After much prayer and counseling, Marez believed God was calling him home. In November, 1993, the Marez family returned to the Maryville area.
After blanketing the community with invitation flyers, their first Bible study drew two people. Marez wondered if he had made the right choice.
TAILORING THE CHURCH
That initial bible study was misleading. Not long after, the church began to grow.
Today over 200 people attend Sunday services at New Beginnings Community Church. 80% of attendees are second and third generation Latinos, with the remaining 20% comprised of Whites and Blacks. Marez notes that 100 people have come to new faith in Christ or rededicated themselves in the past ten months alone.
Marez attributes the success of the church plant to the application of a "seeker-sensitive" strategy.
Mainstreamed by Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago, Saddleback Community Church in California, and others, the "seeker sensitive" strategy focuses on reaching unchurched people.
"We want to reach the person who has lost confidence in the church," Marez says. "This person is distrusting and critical of the church, because of what they have experienced in the past." Many of the 70% of Hispanics who will not attend church this Sunday fall into this category, Marez says.
In following a seeker sensitive strategy to reach second and third generation Latinos, Marez made two critical adjustments from more traditional churches, both Latino and non-Latino.
THE MESSAGE: "Communications have to be revamped," Marez says.
Unchurched people, he says, are wary or unfamiliar with church terminology. "Terms like the Holy Ghost, redemption, atonement, will all lose the unchurched person," Marez says.
Instead, each Sunday morning Marez attempts to talk in ways people readily understand.
Each message gives three points that listeners can take home and apply to their daily life. Rather than explain doctrine, Marez speaks to people's felt needs, about subjects like Improving Your Marriage, Handling Stress, What God Says About Your Future. "We try to show that Jesus Christ is the answer to the things they're thinking about," Marez says.
THE ATMOSPHERE: New Beginnings Church (NBC) strives to be as "low-pressure and non-threatening" as possible.
"We don't ask people to come forward when they make a decision," Marez says. "We ask them to make eye contact with the pastor, so they don't feel they're being pressured to do something they don't want to do."
When mid-week small group gatherings drew resistance - many shied away from the intimacy of a small group - NBC switched to monthly large group gatherings, a Promise Keepers meeting for the men and a bible study for the women.
"We eventually want to have small groups, but now seems too soon," Marez acknowledges.
Carlos Santana is one person for whom NBC's strategy made the difference.
A warm greeting, hot coffee and soothing music before church began, and a relevant sermon arrested Santana on his first visit.
"I had a feeling that this was my home," Santana says.
Feelings aren't everything, but they are a great start. Santana not only committed hismelf and his family to NBC, he brought cousins and in-laws, too.
He drew them with a simple yet compelling reason: "NBC is good soil."
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