Christian Neighbors Church’s Unique Start and Community Impact

In 2010, Pastor Luke McFadden and his wife Meghan made a move that would define their next season of life.

The couple relocated to a South Waukegan apartment close to two large public housing residences. They desired to make an impact in their new neighborhood; meeting their neighbors, building relationships, and seeing what God might do. What followed was a church born not from a building campaign or a strategic initiative, but from a casual barbecue.

“Someone suggested starting a Bible study at our first barbecue,” Luke recalls. “And so we started the next Thursday.”

That Thursday gathering quickly became what Luke describes as “raucous and oddly fruitful.” People came to faith and word of this neighborhood gathering spread. Others from outside the neighborhood started driving in, drawn by something they couldn’t quite explain. One of the first people to come to Christ in those early days was a woman named Barb Poynter, a founding member of what would eventually become Christian Neighbors Church (CNC), and a person whose story would weave itself through everything that followed.

Fifteen years later, CNC is still rooted in Waukegan, and it’s still growing outward from that same posture of presence.

A New Home, Built to Serve

After years of meeting in rented spaces, CNC purchased a permanent property in April 2025, opening its doors for a celebration service in January 2026. Moving from a converted doctor’s office waiting room, to a school gym, to the basement of an office building, and then to a permanent 14,000-square-foot building was certainly worth celebrating.

After the purchase, the church underwent renovations with every decision made through one lens: how do we use this space to serve our community?

A smaller sanctuary was converted into a gym and multi-purpose fellowship space. In one of its first uses, teenagers from the community came to play basketball, stayed to hear peers from the church share their faith, and left having encountered the gospel in a space designed to feel like theirs. Nursery and youth classrooms were renovated to welcome the many young families living in nearby neighborhoods.

The lower fellowship hall, still under construction, may be the most telling expression of what CNC is building toward. Designed with track lighting and hanging hardware for art exhibitions, it will also serve as a space for community meals and potentially a warming center for people experiencing homelessness. Rather than a sanctuary that moonlights as a community center, it’s a community space built for the full range of what a neighborhood church is called to do.

“Our new facility is really tailored,” Luke says, “to serve and support people in our community.”

An Organic Partnership

As CNC was finding its footing, Love INC Lake County was already doing what it does — connecting churches and volunteers to neighbors in need, running programs that go beyond meeting immediate needs to empowering people for the long haul. The church and organization found each other, as Luke puts it, organically.

“I don’t even know who made the first call,” he says. “We just became aware of each other early on.”

What drew CNC in wasn’t a program pitch. It was the people. Luke watched Love INC staff and volunteers show up with genuine care for the neighbors CNC was also trying to reach, and recognized in them a shared heart.

It was also, practically speaking, a gift. A developing church can only focus on so many things at once. Love INC had already built what CNC couldn’t yet; a network of proven programs, trained volunteers, and years of earned trust in the community. Rather than duplicate that work, CNC leaned into it.

“Why would we want to [duplicate the work],” Luke says simply, “if there’s another Christian ministry in our area that is already doing that so well?”

CNC began referring congregation members to New Hope Ministry classes — programs like Faith & Finances and Affirming Potential that equip people with practical tools and deeper confidence. Participants didn’t just learn skills. They found community, grew in faith, and came back changed. Luke started celebrating New Hope Ministry graduates from the pulpit, dedicating a portion of select Sunday services to honoring people who had completed the programs.

“God has really used much of what Love INC does to form our people in wonderful ways,” Luke says.

The Real Test of Love

When asked to name someone from CNC who could speak to the Love INC partnership, Luke didn’t hesitate. He said, “Bruce understands both our church and Love INC, and I think he could really speak to what it’s like to serve people in both contexts.”

A retiree, Bruce has brought to his volunteer roles the same precision and patience that defined his entire professional life. When Luke shared a vision for a church-based counseling program that could serve people regardless of their ability to pay, he asked Bruce to help research how it might be possible. Bruce said yes.

Something shifted in the course of that project.

“I really felt it was a God thing,” Bruce says. “There was something that clicked that made me realize — I think this is the church I’m supposed to be at.”

He traces the moment back to something even earlier: a quiet morning during personal devotions when he felt a prompting he couldn’t make sense of at the time, the Salvation Army motto: doing the most good for the most people in the greatest need. It felt out of place then. Working alongside Luke on the counseling project, it suddenly didn’t.

A leader of CNC’s Compassion Ministry team for many years, Bruce focused on connecting people in and around the church to the resources and support they needed. He also began volunteering with Love INC, working remotely alongside Barb to manage the database that makes New Hope Ministry programs run. It’s detail-oriented, unglamorous work, and he’s the first to say it doesn’t require anything extraordinary. What it requires, he says, is someone who cares enough to do it carefully.

Over time, Bruce’s understanding of what it means to serve began to deepen and, at times, to be challenged. “I think I had the wrong definition of success,” he says. “I began to realize…success is just being willing to help. Being willing to bring relief in whatever situation.”

He frames it theologically: “The real test of love is: Can you love people that are not like you? That’s the real test of how loving you actually are.”

Consistency Is the Ministry

Sara came to CNC the way many do, through relationship. She had been involved with The Mosaic Initiative, a Waukegan-area network of churches and organizations working together for the city’s flourishing, and it was through those connections that she first heard about Christian Neighbors Church. She came, she says, trying to enter with “a listening, learning posture.”

What she found at CNC was something she describes as mutuality, where both the giver and the receiver benefit through relationship.

That spirit, she says, is one she also recognizes in Love INC. When she thinks about what the partnership has meant, for her own formation and for the church’s ability to serve, one word keeps surfacing: consistency.

“I wish it was a flashier word,” she says, “but consistency just sticks out to me, and that matters — to any community, but especially one that may have seen people come and go.”

She sees it in the New Hope Ministry classes that run semester after semester, year after year. She sees it in the small, practical gestures that compound over time, like the period during CNC’s building renovation when Love INC held the church’s TVs in their warehouse for nearly a year, just waiting with them through the process. “Things like that stick out to me,” Sara says, “as really wonderful extensions of God’s love.”