Facilities for the Future

The Glendale Mission & Ministry Center (GMMC) is a collaborative vision of the First Christian Church Glendale (FCCG), the Arizona Region, and Disciples Church Extension Fund (DCEF). When FCCG ceased operations in 2017 after more than one hundred years of ministry, GMMC ensured that the Church would stay connected in the Glendale community.  The partnership between local, regional, and general church got creative to maintain a missional presence by enhancing established ministries and starting new ones.  From its three-acre, five-building campus, GMMC now serves nearly one thousand lunches a month and distributes more than 1100 emergency food bags and almost 60 hygiene kits, plus clothing, to the area’s poor and houseless residents. The center also supports local nonprofits with meeting and office space, and three congregations nest and worship there. In addition, Catholic Charities runs a much-needed Head Start Program from a portable classroom on the GMMC campus. The creative repurposing of this facility made sure that ministry continues in new ways in the place where God has called the Church to be.

As congregations shrink in size, or end their visible ministry all together, large church buildings and extensive campuses can become a financial burden. Mission may be sacrificed for mortgage payments. Assets will be sold off as congregations move their ministry elsewhere. Still, there is often great need in the communities and opportunity for life-changing mission. Glendale Mission & Ministry Center shows that there is a place for the Church to re-imagine and re-use its buildings to facilitate innovative ministry.