A Lenexa church that has steadily grown its congregation over the past six years recently moved to a bigger space.
On Sunday, the nondenominational Real Church held a grand opening service at its new space at 15612 College Blvd., less than a mile from its former location in a warehouse on Strang Line Road.
The opening was the largest service the church had held, leaders say, hosting more than 250 people, a significant jump from its original 25-person congregation it had when it opened in 2019.
“The space was needed, the parking was needed, and we may need more sooner than later. We didn’t realize how quickly it would start to grow. So we’re very, very blessed,” Danny Slavens, the church’s lead pastor, told the Johnson County Post.
The church opened in 2019
A Lenexa native and 2000 graduate of Shawnee Mission West High School, Slavens moved around the country, eventually landing in Los Angeles for about a decade.
While he was in California with his wife, Yen Slavens, who serves as Real Church’s pastor for women’s ministry, he said they felt a calling to return to Johnson County to help others.
“I hadn’t been back in Kansas for many years, and when (the Lord) called my wife and I and our family (back to Kansas) to plant a church, I was excited,” he said. “I’ve always loved where I’m from, and I’ve always wanted to help change and uplift the city and build a community.”
The Slavens’ vision for Real Church, Danny said, is a “hospital for broken people.”
“We don’t leave them where we found them,” he said. “We bring them in, we love on them, we help them heal, we help them get better and we help them get back on their feet.”
The church has focused on homelessness
Slavens is also on the board of the nonprofit Kansas City Dream Center, and through that connection, Real Church has also come to focus on that group’s work helping those in need, particularly those experiencing housing insecurity.
The church started a program called Stoplight Ministries, where church members keep a supply of backpacks containing essential items like water, clothing and Band-Aids to give to people they see on the street.
“We go, ‘OK, here’s what you do with this: Keep this in your car. Everywhere that you go, there may be a possibility that you see someone … Somebody that’s on the side of the road, somebody that’s at a store, and they may have a need. Well, you can fill that need,'” Slavens said.
Since it began its Stoplight Ministries, the church has given out about 3,000 backpacks, Slavens said. In addition, they also help provide people experiencing homelessness with information they need on finding housing and resources they can use to help get off the streets.
“The need itself, just the hurting, the downtrodden, the people that have physical needs and financial needs, we get to say yes to all of them,” he said.
The church has grown steadily
Shortly after its original opening, Real Church encountered its first big problem: the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s never a wise idea to plant a church right before COVID hits,” Slavens said, laughing.
Coming home to Johnson County around that time, he said he noticed more people in Lenexa and the surrounding communities were isolated and didn’t know each other. When they come to Real Church, he wants them to feel like they belong and know each other better.
“The Bible declares that we should be brothers and sisters in Christ. And so I think we live that way,” he said. “I’m with the people as much as I’m with my own family, and they can see an authenticity. It holds me accountable. I’m not a pastor that’s far from my church.”
With that focus on community, the church continues to grow, from the 100 people that gathered over its first year to the 250 people that attended this past Sunday. It’s all done through outreach, rather than advertising, Slavens said.
“Instead of someone coming from the outside in that doesn’t know us, we prefer for people inside the church to reach out to people so they have a contact and a connection already,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, this person invited me. This person invited me. Hey, this person goes to your church.’ And that’s how we’ve just grown, over and over, incredibly consistently for the last six years.”
“Being real”
While the church has a five-year special use permit at its new location that was approved by the Lenexa City Council earlier this year, Slavens said they may at some point have to expand to an even larger space.
But right now, they are thankful for what they have.
“When you do life together, it’s super important because when you go through struggles, The Bible declares that we struggle together. When we have victories, we celebrate together,” he said.
“I just truly believe the authenticity of who we are as a church, being real and being not just a community, but being family, I think is what’s really separated us and why we’ve grown,” he added.
