Our
Story

In 2013, God challenged the hearts of several of us, then residents and faculty, at the Via Christi residency program to consider life and ministry together by committing to live in community within a particular neighborhood. We prayer-walked and drove several neighborhoods asking God, “Where?” We knew little about the Planeview community except that it was a diverse, poor, and crime-filled

neighborhood in south Wichita. However, we sensed, with a strong leading from

Christ, that Planeview was the neighborhood into which God was calling us to

move. So we did! Drew was the first to rent an apartment at 4040 Holyoke Street

that same year and moved in. That became the site of our first Church at

Planeview house church, “Holyoke”, where we met to worship, pray, and engage

neighbors. Later the Morgan family bought a home near the corner of Whitney & 

Fees streets and many in our church helped fix it up. As our church grew and we

expanded, “Whitney Fees” became our second house church site. Soon after,

others sold their homes elsewhere in Wichita and moved into the neighborhood.

Rather than visiting or serving and then going away, we encouraged medical

students, residents, and faculty to join our growing church and move into the

neighborhood to share its joys and troubles, be salt and light, serve, and share

Christ with those around them. As our church has grown, we continue to meet

weekly in a network of house churches within the neighborhood. All gather

together monthly as the Church at Planeview for fellowship, worship, and celebration.

 

Living on mission together in Planeview prepared many of us to pursue

international missions, particularly serving in hard places. Moving into this

neighborhood meant giving up one’s ‘right’ to earthly stuff, to privacy, even to

security. It also meant learning to live and love cross culturally and to experience

community within a house church model. We’ve had the great joy of walking

alongside of and then sending out our own CAP international missionaries who are

serving in hard places in north Africa and the Middle East.

 

Finally, we have embraced our calling as a church body to welcome into our

church family, provide community for, serve, and to disciple medical students and

resident physicians who come to Wichita for residency training.

In all of this, our calling is to love Jesus Christ and to follow His example.