Leader Profile: Adam Wood
ROBERT HYATT
October 2, 2019

Adam Wood  serves as the lead pastor at The Neighborhood Church  in Garland, TX. A native to the Dallas area, Adam served as a worship leader and young adult pastor before joining the community that would re-plant as TNC in 2016. Adam loves music, the Dallas Mavericks, nights out with his wife Amy, and dance parties at home with his two red-headed daughters.

How would you describe the area your church is in?

Garland is a large suburb just to the northeast of Dallas and TNC is smack dab in the middle of it. Our area can be described by a lot of “Multi’s” — multi-ethnic, multi-socioeconomic, and multi-generational. We do most of our community engagement and relationship-building in and around an ecumenical community center situated in the middle of a dozen different low-income apartment complexes.

How would you describe the journey of pastoring the Neighborhood Church? What have been some of the milestones/different seasons?

The Neighborhood Church relocated and re-planted with a core team that had a strong sense of who we were called to BE before we ever determined what we were called to DO as God’s people together. That season of discerning our identity — of a “being” that precedes “doing” — almost directly parallels my own journey as a pastor.

Like many church plants, we built TNC with wet cement. Our identity, place, and core convictions are a strong foundation that also gives us just enough flexibility to figure things out as we go. But “going” out into the neighborhood together was a vital shift in our early days. If we were ever going to live up to our name, we had to get out into the neighborhood. The wet cement of how we do what we do has taken different shapes in these 3 years. We’ve hosted block parties, picnics, movie nights, VBS for neighborhood kids at a community center and we’ve made significant partnerships with two of the largest homeless ministries in Dallas. Most significant, however, is our Neighborhood Clothes Closet. By offering free clothes, shoes, and toiletries we’ve been able to pray with and build relationships with over 250 families in our community.

Ultimately, we’re just trying to follow Jesus together for God’s kingdom in our neighborhood. What I’ve discovered is that cultivating a Jesus-centered culture of embrace, transformation, and mission takes time (especially in the land of consumerism and mega churches). We are really good at raising money to support our kingdom partnerships or to start kingdom experiments. Now we’re in a season of learning the slow work of building a kingdom presence and a kingdom community.

Looking back, what do you know now you wish you had known when you first started the Neighborhood Church?

That it is NOT all up to me! The church’s vitality is not solely contingent upon my preaching, my leadership, my guidance, or my amazing ideas. Because our church was moving through significant transitions and toward an eventual re-plant, I believed the lie that it was up to me to fix it, build it, and hold it all together.

Every time I’d sit with Jesus I’d be reminded of my identity as a beloved son of the Father’s… but then I’d stand up, walk away, and try to earn it. God used that time to remind me that 1.) I’m not alone and 2.) He’s always working. It took some time for that to sink in.

As you think about what you’ve been able to do so far in ministry there what are some things you have done/tried that have worked well?

We launched a Neighborhood Clothes Closet that has provided clothes and toiletries to more than 250 families and school uniforms for almost 200 children. Really, though, it’s about the slow work of building relationships, praying with our neighbors, and seeing God’s kingdom come in unexpected ways.

We’ve seen physical and relational healing. We’ve seen lonely neighbors find a friend. We’ve seen new Christians in our church catch a fire for loving their neighbors as themselves despite socioeconomic or ethnic differences. After 2 years, however, we’re still asking the question, “How can we become more effective in helping our neighbors become part of God’s family?”

What hasn’t worked so well? What have you had to rethink/reimagine/rework?

What hasn’t worked well is the move from serving our community to incorporating our community into the life of the church. We thought it was because our neighbors we met at the Clothes Closet or VBS just needed a ride to our worship gathering. What we’ve seen so far is a lot of interest that have translated to only a few visits.

I think Verlon Fosner of the Dinner Church movement is right when he says that our churches have a sociological problem. Are our worship gatherings hospitable to all people and not just young, white, middle class Christians? Is our church building hospitable to seekers? Are our worship gatherings really the best “front door” to our church?

In an effort to re-imagine the expectation that “they” should take a step toward “us” — we’re trying to take a step toward our neighbors by creating space for relationships to grow in our shared space within the neighborhood. This Fall we plan to launch our own expression of a Dinner Church we’re calling The Neighborhood Table. We started with the relationships we’ve already formed through the Clothes Closet and we’re excited to break bread together and see where God takes us.

What is one failure you experienced and what did you learn from it?

When I became the primary preacher in what would become The Neighborhood Church, I doubled the amount of sermons I had ever preached in only four months’ time. We were in a season of transition and I had placed some unrealistic expectations on myself. I thought I had to preach my way into becoming a vibrant church and pastor. I soon found that I couldn’t sustain my unhealthy rhythm of work and rest, nor could I live up to the emotional, spiritual, and functional qualities I had judged myself on.

All of this led to a panic attack moments before I was going to preach one day. So there I stood on stage in a very awkward and pregnant silence, unable to speak with all the anxieties still swirling in my head. Eventually, I said I’d pray and that we would just sing again. (Of course, that’s the service we had a guest worship leader!) That’s when someone said, “No, we’re going to pray for you.” Our community surrounded me and as they laid hands on me, the idol of self-reliance began to crumble.

I’m still learning to create space for healthy disengagement. I’m still learning to follow Jesus’ rhythm of work and rest. I’m still learning to let go of the unrealistic expectations I put on myself and others.

What is something you’ve been hearing from or learning from God in this last season of leading?

The phrase “Give me an undivided heart to revere your name” from Psalm 86.11 has been echoing in the back of my head for the better part of a year. God is continually inviting me to stillness, rest, and contemplation to allow him to put the disparate pieces of my life into something that is both holistic and wholly his.

What do you dream/hope/pray the Neighborhood Church looks like in five years?

My hope is that we would become a life-giving church in the neighborhood that would one day reflect the neighborhood in all its diversity as we follow Jesus together. Basically, we want to live up to our name as we invite all people into life with Jesus in the kingdom of God.

Tithe.ly is Partnering with Ecclesia!

By Bob Hyatt • September 15, 2025
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An Ethical Response to Violence

By By Jim Pace • September 15, 2025
In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s shooting, social media has been filled with perspectives, as is typically the case. I am reluctant to add mine as there seems to be no lack one way or the other. To be clear, this is not just about Charlie Kirk, this is about violence across the board. I did not feel led to write this because it was Charlie Kirk specifically, but rather another in a long and winding line of acts of violence, that my ministering at Va. Tech gives me a bit of personal experience with. But as I have just finished teaching two classes on Christian Ethics, and as I was encountering again the spread of responses from my Christian sisters and brothers, I felt led to look at this event through that lens. Ethics, at its base, seeks to answer the question, “What is better or worse? Good or bad?” As a follower of Jesus, this is what seems right to me… 1. We never celebrate harm. Whatever our disagreements, rejoicing at a shooting violates the bedrock claim that every person bears the imago Dei (Gen 1:27). Scripture is explicit: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls” (Prov 24:17); “Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44); “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21). I don’t love blasting verses like this, but you cannot get away from them if you are reading the scriptures. 2. Moral responsibility sits with the shooter—full stop . Saying “his rhetoric got him shot” smuggles in a just-world logic that excuses violence. As a contextual theologian, I have an enormous amount of respect for the impact our various narratives have in shaping our understandings of the world around us. They are inescapable. But that is not what I am talking about here. Ideas can be wrong, harmful, or worth opposing vigorously, but vigilante ‘payback’ is never a Christian category. My primary gig is that of a consultant for churches and non-profits. Today, in my meetings and among friends, I have heard some variation of “He got what he deserved,” and “I vote for some very public justice for the shooter.” Both of these views speak of revenge; the follower of Jesus is called to lay these down as our Messiah did. Not asked to, told to. 3. Grief and outrage about gun violence are legitimate; schadenfreude is not . Channel the pain toward nonviolent, concrete action (policy advocacy, community intervention, survivor support), not dehumanization. Here are four thinkers who have had a profound impact on the Christian ethic I try to work out in this world. As I share them, three things are worthy of mention. One, I certainly do not claim to follow their guidance perfectly, and at times I do not even do it well, but they have all given me what seems like a Jesus-centered and faith-filled direction to move in. Second, I do not claim to speak for them in this particular matter; I am merely showing how my ethical lens has been formed. Third, clearly I am not dealing with all the components of our response to these types of violence, this is not a comprehensive treatment, merely the reflections in the moment. Stanley Hauerwas : “Christian nonviolence is not a strategy to rid the world of violence.” It’s part of following Jesus, not a tactic we drop when it’s inconvenient. Stanley Hauerwas, Walking with God in a Fragile World, by James Langford, editor, Leroy S. Rouner, editor N. T. Wright : “The call of the gospel is for the church to implement the victory of God in the world through suffering love.” Simply Good News: Why the Gospel Is News and What Makes It Good. In other words, we answer evil without mirroring it. David Fitch : Our culture runs on an “enemy-making” dynamic; even “the political rally… depends on the making of an enemy. Don’t let that train your soul.” The Church of Us vs. Them. Sarah Coakley : Contemplation forms resistance, not passivity. For Coakley, sustained prayer trains perception and courage so Christians can resist abuse and give voice against violence (it’s not quietism). “Contemplation, if it is working aright, is precisely that which gives courage to resist abuse, to give voice against violence.” Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self. Coakley would say that far too often we react before we reflect. This is the problem that Fitch is getting at in much of his writing, that our culture actually runs on antagonisms, the conflict between us. We need to find a better way.