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Starting a church in Tucson, Ariz.—a city identified as the 12th-most “post-Christian” in the U.S. on Barna research group’s 2017 scale—was daunting. Even the neighbors didn’t want it. Asked for letters of support in 2017, local entities in the Arroyo Chico neighborhood instead responded to Mission Church planters with a letter expressing that they did not want a church to move into the neighborhood. Pastor Andy Littleton said the neighborhood “generally has distrusted churches to look out for others and not themselves.”
So Mission Church flipped that perspective, looking first at the needs of those around them. Over the years this commitment to Christian Community Development principles—an incarnational, person-focused approach—has led to neighborhood projects and collaborations, gradually transforming the church’s relationship with the community.
In 2025, one of these relationships led to a partnership between Mission Church and an architecture professor at the University of Arizona, less than 3 miles (5 km) from the church. Littleton said a community member who had become an advocate for the church encouraged the professor to reach out. The professor asked whether her students taking a community-focused urban planning course could use the church and neighborhood as a “learning lab.”
Early in the semester, the students observed the local area and identified opportunities for improvement. Littleton later spoke to the class about Mission Church’s work and the community development principles they were committed to. The students developed their own proposals for neighborhood improvements, drawing on what they had learned.
Pastor Andy Littleton speaks to a community-focused urban planning class at the University of Arizona.
At the end of the semester Mission Church hosted the presentation of the students’ final projects, as the professor and a student representative discussed the proposals with community members at a meeting of the neighborhood association.
The response to the collaboration was favorable. Littleton said a commercial developer who attended the event “went out of his way to express that he was deeply surprised and moved to see a church helping do such a meaningful thing.”
The partnership with the university also appears to be continuing. Littleton said the professor has continued to engage and is interested in doing something collaborative again this year.
Littleton believes this example illustrates how consistent, community-centered engagement can build credibility in a post-Christian environment. Initial skepticism did not disappear through persuasion alone; rather, sustained presence, relationship-building, and practical collaboration created opportunities to develop trust. Over time, the church’s relationships extended beyond its own congregation and into the wider community, positioning Mission Church not simply as an institution seeking acceptance, but as a participant and partner in the neighborhood.