About Us

The pastors and care ministries of our community churches are regularly approached by needy individuals and families. Our churches also respond when crisis impacts our community. Each individual church understands it has limited resources to meet the needs and, therefore, needs to make sure the resources go to legitimate needs. Individual churches also focus on different ministries, i. e., clothing, food, children’s vaccinations, counseling, emergency response, etc. and each has members with different gifts and skills who are willing to volunteer.

Several churches in our community have identified a problem with the current way our churches respond to individual, family, and crisis needs – the churches are disconnected. An individual or family could be asking each church to meet the same need and the churches do not know it, which means precious resources are being abused. Or, an individual or family may have a legitimate need but cannot get help because our churches do not know where the resources are located for meeting the particular need.

A recent example is the 2008 Tropical Storm Fay which caused severe flooding in some of our community’s poorest neighborhoods. Many churches responded to the crisis and reached out to assist affected families with food, clothing, and volunteer hours, but there was no coordination between the churches. It became apparent that the churches had common goals, and that organizing the efforts of all churches in a more formal way would allow this community of Christians to act according to their faith in a broader and more effective way. This situation created a desire among local churches to identify and combine material and human resources to meet needs together, rather than separately.

In February 2009, nine churches joined together to be founding partners of Love In the Name of Christ (Love INC) of South Lee and North Collier Communities (includes Estero, Bonita Springs, and North Naples). Chartered and incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, Love INC brings Christian churches together, across denominational lines, to help meet immediate needs such as food and clothing, as well as, to address longer-term responses through relational ministries such as life skills training and transitional housing. We are now in the process of sharing this vision with over 30 other Christian churches within our affiliate boundary and inviting them to participate in our community Love INC network.

We join over 135 Love INC affiliates in 30 states that are helping more than one million people in need each year through nearly 9,000 churches, 6,000 community agencies, and more than 300,000 volunteers. Through Love INC, caring Christians are providing help, hope, and God’s love to neighbors in need. Churches in south Lee and north Collier counties plan to use this national model for collaboration to organize their efforts to serve residents of their communities and to assist all nonprofit and government agencies in maximizing their services to these residents.