De Queen First UMC was awarded a $750 grant through ARUMC’s One More Question initiative. The grant money was for the church’s Block Party Outreach where they plan six block parties by July 2025 with the goal of becoming better neighbors and forming deeper connections in the community.
“The original concept began with us adopting a four-block radius of the church as our neighborhood,” said Rev. Stephen Copley of De Queen FUMC. “With that, each time we have an event at the church, we go door to door in our neighborhood to invite them. This achieves a goal of publicity within the community, but further develops relationships with our neighbors. We have been using this model for about three years. In August, we tried it with a Block Party for the Neighborhood. It was a resounding success with nearly 90 people in attendance.”
Since then, they have had two Youth Block Parties at the church. One in November and another in December. Rev. Copley said “we used the same model of about three days before the event, we went door to door in the neighborhood. We especially focused on those homes where we knew that youth lived. Then, on the evening of the first event in November, we added a new wrinkle. The youth went out with the adult leadership and went to many of the houses where we knew there were several youths. It was to issue an invitation to come to the church to the Block Party. We found that this worked extremely well. It felt at the two events as there was a sense of this being a neighborhood block party, where all the neighbors youth were welcomed.”
They have four more events planned between the youth block party and block parties to which all the neighbors are invited. Rev. Copley said they have built stronger relationships with their neighbors as a result of this outreach.
One More Question, an initiative to support local churches in being better neighbors and partners in their communities, started hosting trainings at local churches last fall. The goal is to teach, train, and resource congregations who want to design outreach ministries WITH their communities. There is specific support for smaller churches (those who worship fewer than 200) so that all ARUMC congregations can step out in faith to ask One More Question. The grants are sponsored by The Methodist Foundation for Arkansas.
There are still plenty of opportunities to attend and receive grants in your district! You must attend an event to be eligible for a grant. You can register here.
Participating churches are eligible for grant awards of up to $750.
August 10: Brinkley First UMC
August 17: Russellville First UMC
August 17: Hamburg UMC
August 24: Paragould UMC