What does real church community cultivation require? The Rev. Dr. Eun Strawser, physician, author, and pastor of Ma Ke Alo’o, a network of multiplying missional communities in Honolulu, Hawaii, has spent years working out a practical answer to that question. After planting her first church and growing it to 450 people, she realized a crowd had gathered but a community hadn’t really formed. Her second church plant took a radically different approach, starting with 15 people, a discipleship core, and weekly community dinners before ever launching a Sunday service.
In this conversation with Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm, Eun makes the case that discipleship is the missing link in most churches’ understanding of community. She shares what it looks like to form people for neighborhood presence rather than church volunteerism, how to make locally rooted invitations that actually move people, and why the vision of the early church in Acts 2 is less about miraculous growth and more about a countercultural way of life together. If your church is serious about church community building that goes beyond filling seats, this episode is a place to start.
