This past January, I (Alisha) stepped into a new role as pastor of rising generations at Neighborhood Ministries — an urban outreach rooted in Phoenix’s 85009 ZIP code, the city’s most economically challenged area. In just four months, I’ve come to know the incarnational Christ in ways I never imagined.

I’m learning, day by day, what it means to be the presence of Jesus — to carry his life-transforming love, hope and power among distressed families, and to help ignite a passion for God and his kin-dom within our community.

My work is shaped by the Incarnational Framework of Street Psalms, a model designed to guide leaders through life-giving paradigm shifts that awaken the potential of a community in mission to act freely for the common good.

As I navigate this call, I return daily to five simple, sacred questions. These help me remember what it means to be “Jesus with skin on” in the neighborhood I now call home.

1. Does my way of seeing call me out of the myth of scarcity into the reality of abundance?  

We cannot truly wrestle with scarcity or abundance without naming the systems of oppression that create and sustain them. These systems are not accidental — they are intentionally designed to harm the most vulnerable: the widow, the prisoner, the orphan, the stranger. But in choosing to walk with the least-of-these, to accompany rather than fix, we open the door to human flourishing — flourishing that has the power to expose and transform the unjust systems of this world.

The students I accompany at Neighborhood Ministries come from truly difficult and painful places. And yet, when I choose to walk with them toward Christ — and away from the systems that have sought to label, limit, and oppress — I am not just guiding them. I am being transformed myself. I get to witness the unfolding of God’s abundant love in real time. Together, we step into a new reality. One not marked by scarcity, but by the richness of grace.

2.  Does my way of doing call me out of theory into practice? 

To love is to act. Love that remains in theory is incomplete, unrealized and unrecognizable. All too often, Christianity is reduced to a “personal” relationship with God, as if faith can thrive in isolation. But a lived faith demands relationship with neighbor, with community, with the vulnerable. It is in the doing that love comes to life.

Doing, in the way of Christ, means making space: freeing myself to love, to serve, to build the kind of community where lasting change can take root.

As a 2024 graduate of the Journey: Missional Leadership Development Program at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, I carry these lessons with me into the everyday work of ministry. Applying what I’ve learned isn’t abstract; it’s deeply relational. It means listening, showing up and nurturing transformation within the Neighborhood Ministries community, one relationship at a time.

This is where faith becomes flesh. Where theory becomes practice. Where love becomes justice.

3. Does my way of being call me out of rivalry into peacemaking?   

I define my vocation as radical ministry at the margins and radical inclusion at the table. This call shapes everything I do.

At Neighborhood Ministry’s Sueños Youth Center, I walk alongside young people navigating immense pressures as they search for hope in a world that too often dismisses or distorts their worth. Their flourishing demands more than surface solutions; it calls for a presence rooted in transformation. It requires that we not only welcome difference, but celebrate it by creating space for the most vulnerable to blossom into the young people God dreamed them to be.

Peacemaking, in this context, means expanding our circles of concern. In a world growing more polarized by the day, it is far too easy to slip into “us vs. them” mentalities. But rivalry cannot birth the kin-dom of God. Only love can do that. Only welcome. Only the relentless pursuit of Shalom.

4. Does my way of seeing, doing and being call forth a community of mission that is free to love and serve? 

We live in a world where too many of us are held captive by our wounds and are bound to our worst selves, caught in cycles of harm that dehumanize both ourselves and others. But the Gospel invites us to something different. It invites us to launch with love, to break the chain of hate and fear with the liberating power of grace.

In Jesus, we see a Savior who extends salvation to the needy, the powerless, and the unrighteous — not as manipulation for reward, but as an act of exceptional, exuberant grace. This grace is not selective. It is a radically open invitation, welcoming every neighbor — and by neighbor, we mean everyone — into the arms of a God who freely lavishes forgiveness, both on the powerful and the lowly.

At Neighborhood Ministries, many of our students come to us already carrying deep religious scars from shame, exclusion and threats of damnation. But we believe that the model of God’s loving relationship is not just theology —it’s the blueprint for community. It’s how we shape each other, and how we shape a world where every person has a place at the table.

5. Where do I see Jesus at work in all of this? 

At Neighborhood Ministries, we often say our mission is to move in and “be Jesus with skin on.” In more traditional church language, we’d call this incarnation, or the holy act of embodying Christ’s love right where people live, struggle and hope.

To truly partner with Jesus, we must be willing to go and see — and just as importantly, to celebrate — the good news in hard places. The incarnation of Jesus teaches us this: God didn’t love us from afar. He moved into the neighborhood. He became one of us. And now, we are called to do the same.

This isn’t a “thoughts and prayers” kind of faith. It’s not abstract or distant. It’s an embodied practice, one that demands proximity, compassion and deep presence. It means showing up alongside those who are hurting, those who have been overlooked or cast aside, and making God’s love tangible.

And I’m one of the lucky ones: I get to witness this every day. I get to be a small part of the incarnational work that Jesus is already doing through the lives of students, families and neighbors in the heart of Phoenix. That’s where I see him—in the struggle, in the joy and in the sacred, ordinary moments of showing up.

Go and do likewise.