In February of 2009, Jim Streitelmier, pastor of the nondenominational Neighborhood Fellowship Church, located in the area of 10th and Rural in Indianapolis, and Dr. Javier Sevilla, primary care physician and Professor at Methodist/IU Hospital, joined forces to utilize the church to open a free clinic to serve the poor of Indianapolis.
The clinic has continued to grow with the assistance of many community partners, including IU, UIndy and Butler University. The clinic has also been blessed to have had many hundreds of volunteers helping to organize things each week.
Today, on weekdays the Neighborhood Fellowship church is a school. On Sundays it’s a church feeding the soul of the community and the people they serve. From 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays, students from IUPUI, Butler, and the Univeristy of Indianapolis come together to bring much-needed healthcare, social assistance, and legal aid to the brand new building across the street from the church on Indy’s near Eastside.
The IU Student Outreach Clinic has been a place of compassion when compassion has been needed most of all. It is a place where the dignity of all people is embraced, patient and student alike.
Jim Strietelmeier
Because of the success and popularity of the weekly clinic, it has become apparent that hosting all of the current and planned services will require much more space and equipment than could be done in a 100 year old church building.
In 2017, Neighborhood Fellowship Church was able to purchase a newly built retail property of approximately 7000 ft² directly across the street from the church and clinic facility. Years of work to transform this empty shell into a new facility for the clinic has completed, and in 2022 we opened the new doors to serve our patients 5 days of the week.
