We want to be Jesus to our community, but so often doing church is an insular project, where we use the bulk of our time and energy toward self-sustenance. With this grant, we will get out into our community in Gary, IN to explore what church can become when we prioritize the voices of the most marginalized. We will use participatory research methods to find out what work our community wants churches to be doing and to build energy around those ideas. The grant will fund two forms of data collection: focus groups with key community members and a series of community events that double as both ethnographic fieldwork and an experiment in new forms of church. By conducting focus groups with teachers, police officers, social workers, and other key constituencies in our community, we will learn what gaps a fledgling church can (and should or should not) fill. By hosting community events, we will experiment with new forms of “doing church” that visibly improve the lives of our neighbors. Together these forms of participatory research will help us discern how our church can be part of our entire community's flourishing.