Reachway Church of the Nazarene is impacting its neighborhood of Peoria, Illinois, by providing a space the community can use for its benefit.

Reachway is a church plant that started five and a half years ago. Lead Pastor Seth Major said when he started a job at the local hospital, his eyes were opened to the problems the church's neighbors struggled with. 

"It really showed me how low the bar is for quality of life for my neighbors," Major said.

The building Reachway meets in was originally built in the 1950s for a Nazarene church. Major and the congregation felt it was important to steward the building's original intention—to reach the community in an impactful way.

Major said that the neighborhood that surrounds Reachway has been historically neglected due to issues relating to race and socioeconomic, including some of the residents' habits.

"We believe in a God who goes after the one," Major said, referencing the parable of the lost sheep.

The church began a partnership with a local nonprofit called Jolt, which is committed to reducing harm for those who are unsheltered or inadequately sheltered and people who struggle with substance abuse.

In partnership with Jolt, Reachway held a series of town hall sessions at the church property. The sessions were led by experts and practitioners in harm reduction and others with specific insights on the community who were able to educate listeners on topics like the opioid crisis or homelessness.

In response, the church, which has less than 50 regular attendees, raised $12,000 to create the "Street Family Hub" by renovating a portion of the church and adding plumbing into a bathroom for a shower. In addition, they added a kitchenette and clothes closet for donations, allowing the unhoused or unsheltered to utilize the space when needed. 

During Thanksgiving, the church hosted a "Friendsgiving" with Reachway members, those from the local unhoused community, and the people who help serve them through Street Family Hub or Jolt.

"The experiences allowed us to welcome folks into our facility and gave some of our laypeople an opportunity at the church to meet — for the first time — a homeless person," Major said. "They were able to add names and faces to headlines."

Reachway rededicated its facility as a community space in order to communicate to the surrounding neighborhood that the building exists to help the community flourish. 

Major says the congregation has continued to ask the question, "What could be done if we simply open our doors and allow people to use this space for things they already do?"

Jolt helped answer that question, moving a significant part of its operation to the church building. The organization plans to continue expanding its services into a residential recovery program.

Major encourages every church that is hoping to find its way into the community to "have an ear to the ground."

"Know who has slipped through the cracks," Major said. "It took our local church three years to figure that out. It's not always obvious. The whole idea is that they're in the shadows in the first place."