Tree of Life celebrated Holy Week in our new (temporary) location at the Commerce Center in downtown South Bend, Indiana. We had the joy of baptizing three of our youth group students and felt a sense of the Lord’s risen life stirring among us in the face of our world’s many uncertainties.

WHY WE MOVED

In January of 2025 Tree of Life received a notice from the new owner of the shopping center where we rented for the last eight years demanding we vacate within 60 days. The landlord provided no rationale for this demand, but it came only two weeks after we explained that we ran an immigration legal aid clinic at our church, so we suspect anti-immigrant sentiment had something to with the decision.

60 days is not much time to move an entire church and an immigration legal aid office! We scrambled to find a new location that could house our congregation, youth ministry, and legal-aid office. We could not find an appropriate space within our price range that was near our members. We also approached dozens of churches about sharing space. However, for a variety of reasons none of these worked out. Finally, in late February the owner of the Commerce Center in South Bend, offered to rent us an office and then give us FREE use of the common rooms in the center for church and youth group. The owner is the brother of one of our former youth group kids. We feel immensely blessed to have this beautiful and secure place to worship and continue our ministries while we work toward a more permanent space.

WANDERING TOWARDS ROOTS

Tree of Life’s original mission was to bring the love of God in Christ Jesus to all people, starting with our local neighborhood. Unfortunately, our lease termination has taken us out of our original neighborhood. We are still working with youth in the neighborhood and have many members and immigration clients from that area. However, we are also open to the Lord taking us to a new area of South Bend as long as it is not too far from our current community. While we are grateful for our temporary space at the Commerce Center, we realize we cannot fully develop long-term relationships with our neighbors unless our church is visibly located in a neighborhood. It is also not an ideal space for young children. Furthermore, we believe that after nearly 14 years of ministry, it is time for us to put down roots and establish ourselves in the South Bend Community. For these reasons we decided to start a building fund.

Because of the restrictions surrounding church loans and the lower-income nature of our congregation we need to raise at least $100,000 from outside donors in order to buy our own building. We are trusting the Lord’s timing for reaching this goal but would like to raise the money over the remaining months of 2025, if possible. Our own congregation is giving and saving with a goal of raising at least $15,000 by the end of 2025.

As we save and raise funds towards a new building, we are also praying that the Lord will make known to us the place he wants us to put down roots. We are considering several older churches and some vacant stores as possible locations. While our congregation has lower incomes, we are rich in volunteers and even have a few members with extensive building experience. We would love to be a part of renovating a sacred place or empty building in a neighborhood.

Will you consider partnering with Tree of Life in our journey towards a more permanent home through prayer, giving, or both? We have a vibrant youth ministry, a much needed and growing legal-aid ministry to low-income immigrants, and a strong commitment to making disciples of our risen Lord Jesus Christ who are formed in the Christian practices vulnerability, hospitality, and reconciliation through a life lived under the authority of the Bible, in fellowship with Christians from many ethnic and economic backgrounds, and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Will you help us answer the call of God for the decades to come?