Under-resourced urban communities face a variety of challenges. Violence as the primary way to solve conflict, abandoned buildings where businesses used to be, crime and homelessness just to name a few. These challenges are presented daily on the local television news and in the newspapers.
Many times the strategies to solve these problems involve bringing people together who live outside those under-resourced communities. For years we have witnessed politicians, marketplace leaders, and nonprofit executives working to address the challenges of urban America and under-resourced communities around the world. I am in no way trying to suggest that this should cease. I will suggest though that these strategies alone have not and will not have the most transformative impact on the problems in these communities.
We must not overlook that the answers to the problems in under-resourced urban communities dwell in the very places and faces where the problems exist. One of the most dynamic parts of the revolutionary ministry of Christ was the recruitment and empowerment of marginalized and indigenous leaders who he invited to join him in the work of transformation. I believe we underestimate the level at which Christ developed first an inner circle and then, after his resurrection, inspired thousands of perceived problem people to participate in life and community transformation.
I am amazed at how the Bible presents stories of God using the least, the last, and the lost to bring hope and justice into the world. This tremendous theme in Scripture guides the work of World Impact. It is why for over 40 years we have been in under-resourced urban communities and recently have developed partnerships in prisons and county jails.
When we look into the lives of the least of these we see future church planters, evangelists, missionaries, teachers, social workers, and business owners. We see men and women who have the potential to take responsibility for the transformation of their own communities. We not only see it, we have witnessed it. We have seen the incarcerated and the homeless become pastors. We have seen the broken rebuild stable families. We can testify that the answers to the problems in the city are not outside of the city, but in the city. This is why we are about the work of evangelism, discipleship, leadership development, and church planting in the city. This is why we come alongside and serve under existing urban churches. We ultimately are about the empowerment of indigenous urban Christian leaders because in the souls of the poor, the incarcerated, and the marginalized are potential transformers who God can use to bring healing, truth, life transformation, and new community.
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