Project Neighborhood was established in 1995 with an intentional community home called Koinonia, named for the Greek word meaning fellowship. The program is Calvin’s off-campus living-learning community, where students share a common space and commit to service and neighbourhood engagement. For decades, students have described it not just as housing, but as a way of life.
Jay Wise, director of Housing and Operations, said Calvin will discontinue Project Neighborhood at the end of the 2026–27 academic year, after one final cohort, with plans for a closing celebration the following summer. For the final year, the Project Neighborhood cohort will relocate from Koinonia to the Travis Street House in the Creston neighborhood.
Wise described the decision as the result of a long pattern of declining participation. At its height, he said, Project Neighborhood included multiple houses that partnered with local churches and placed students in neighborhoods across Grand Rapids. In recent years, the program has operated with a single house and therefore a smaller cohort.
Koinonia’s purpose has always shown up in the details. The Koinonia House website highlights neighbors who look forward to meeting each new group of students, as well as traditions like pancake breakfasts and a yearly block party. Those aren’t extras, they’re the point of the home. Project Neighborhood wasn’t designed for students to simply live near Grand Rapids — it asked them to practice community within it.
Samuel Fynwever (’24), a math and Spanish major who lived in Koinonia for three academic years, said he was drawn to “the possibility of doing life with 9+ Calvin students, regularly breaking bread together,” within the “vibrant beauty” of Eastown.
The reality, he said, arrived quickly. Moving in during the COVID era meant the house began under strain: conflict, heavy course loads and the difficulty of coordinating life when everyone felt stretched thin ensued. Still, he said the structure of the house became one of its gifts.
“The structured house time provided one of the greatest learning opportunities,” Fynwever said, teaching him “how to share space and work through disagreements, with both candor and grace.”
A typical week included a Sunday dinner and meeting, a devotional during the week, and one assigned chore. Those chores even became a second-year tradition: a chore competition, with a trophy dubbed “Mr. Koinonia” that was signed by weekly winners and hidden around the house for others to hunt down later.
House meetings, though, were where the hardest learning happened. Fynwever described a steady pattern: check-ins (“High-Low-Buffalo”), sharing calendars, showing up for each other’s campus events and conflict time. Early on, he explained, the house practiced tools like conflict styles and sentence frames.
Even the house’s quirks became community tools. Fynwever described the “Purgation Station,” a basket in the kitchen where anyone could place food that was taking up space but likely wouldn’t be eaten. For the rest of the week, anyone could claim items and store them personally; whatever remained was composted or tossed.
Talisha McCullough (’19) — a social work graduate who lived in Koinonia as a senior and now mentors in the program — described Project Neighborhood as a place that taught her “how to be known when it is often easier to isolate and hide.”
As a student, she loved learning how to live with different people and navigating conflict directly. She also remembers a period when the house was co-ed, and the way mentors modeled what a healthy Christian relationship could look like — sharing responsibilities, approaching conflict with grace and living their faith openly.
As a mentor now, McCullough has watched a new cohort take Koinonia’s name seriously. This year’s house emphasizes hospitality, she said, and the result is tangible: more than 70 guests have been welcomed into the house through meals, game nights, movie nights and shared traditions. She described a December cookie-decorating competition with neighborhood kids, followed by a Christmas movie and hot chocolate in the basement movie room — one of many moments she says made the house feel like a steady, bright presence on the block.
McCullough also expressed grief about Calvin selling Koinonia. She hopes that when the house changes hands, it might go to a faith-based community or nonprofit that preserves something of its purpose.
Another alumni, Paige Wolfe (’17), said Project Neighborhood shaped how she understands community — both inside the house and in the neighborhood beyond it.
“Through getting to live with students that held different worldviews and life experiences, we got to explore how and why they were approaching a situation the way they were,” Wolfe said, “and how as a house we would blend together all of these perspectives to reach a common goal, whether that was grocery shopping or handling a conflict that came up.” She added that her time at Koinonia was “challenging,” but filled with joy, growth and lifelong friendships.
Wise said Housing hopes to close the program with care by allowing time for gratitude, storytelling and honoring the mentors and students who shaped Project Neighborhood over the years.
The Preserve, Bunker and Garden Houses will remain as options for students looking for intentional community close to Calvin’s campus. The Bunker and Preserve houses are focused around life in stewardship and community at Calvin’s Ecosystem Preserve while the Garden House invites students into volunteer service for the community, each house hosting five to six students every year.
