Urban ministry 101
Here’s an easy exercise to do with your church, small group or bible study that will give you great conversational rabbit holes to explore what it truly means to share the Gospel. The exercise is to go around the room, and ask everyone to individually define what the phrase “urban ministry” means to them.
Hey, my name is Kyle Peacock, and I am the Program Coordinator for Urban Reach NYC where it’s our mission to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ within “Urban Settings.” This blog is here to highlight some tips and tricks we’ve learned along the way, in hopes of helping you become a more efficient Christ Centered Community Servant. My grammar is notoriously awful, so apologies in advance for that, and my “ministry successes” have only happened because of the hundreds of failures leading up to them. I fully understand that I’m no expert, and I don’t wish for you to view me that way either. I’m just a follower of Jesus trying to figure out how to love people better.
With that understanding, let me share my journey of defining Urban Ministry in this 3 part blog.
Part One…
I grew up in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park located in Sevier County, Tennessee… aka NOT urban! It was a small country town in a valley, surrounded by mountains. Everything and everyone was so spread out, and it was all connected by narrow and curvy country roads. Speaking of everyone, most everyone looked like me, sounded like me, talked like me and even thought like me. A quick google search tells me that Sevier County has 95k residents, in which 90% are listed as “White/Non Hispanic” which is 24.4x more than any other ethnic group living there.
If you were to ask the younger East Tennessee Bible Belt Christian Kyle to define Urban Ministry I would’ve said something like, “That’s when you go to the bad area where the needy and poor people live (normally the projects or ghetto), and you work in a soup kitchen, food pantry or help the homeless people.”
Now, for our purposes in this blog, let’s NOT think in terms of “right or wrong” but instead, let’s think in terms of perspective.
That was my perspective of Urban Ministry. Now, let’s fast foreword to the present day…
To date, I’ve led short term mission trips to NYC for over 10 years, totaling over 8,000 trip takers. I’ve worked full time in NYC for 3 years, partnering with 100 plus different churches and ministry organizations doing community outreach. I live in a very small studio apartment (for real it’s 295 square feet) in Astoria, Queens. Some experts claim my neighborhood to be the MOST DIVERSE NEIGHBORHOOD IN THE WORLD where 160k residents within 40 square blocks in Queens, NYC are speaking 167 different languages.
*My perspective of Urban Ministry changed, due to my experiences living with a variety of cultural backgrounds, each expressing very different worldviews*
Over the next few blog posts, it’s my goal to explore how diversity is the way I define urban ministry through the perspective of “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men” - Matthew 4:19… and “Go and make disciples of all nations” - Matthew 28:19
And let’s be clear from the start, the word “diversity” does NOT just mean different ethnic people groups. I wish to explore how Urban Ministry is an amazing vehicle to serve a diversity of needs to better reach the diverse worldviews living in your city!
To Be Continued…
