WORLD IMPACT’S URBAN MINISTRY AND CHURCH PLANTING MODEL STARTS WITH TRAINING GIFTED LEADERS FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE.
Did you know that 95% of today’s church leaders are not trained for pastoral ministry? This deficit can lead urban pastors to frustration, cynicism, and burnout. These leaders deserve the resources and support needed to establish healthy churches and help neighborhoods flourish.
That’s why everything we do at World Impact is focused on training and discipling leaders for urban ministry. Because when people in under-resourced communities experience trauma, the local church can be a beacon of hope.
In this article, we’ll explore the ways World Impact has seen that come to life in urban churches. But first, let’s unpack the subject of church planting from the Scriptures.
CHURCH PLANTING IN THE BIBLE
The mandate to go and multiply is commanded by Jesus and modeled throughout the New Testament.
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” -Matthew 28:19-20
And Matthew recounts a parable of Jesus that illustrates how church planters transform communities:
“He told them still another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.’” -Matthew 13:33
The training, preparation, and work aren’t easy, but the motivation to continue is found right here in the Scriptures. The difficult piece is resolving to move forward knowing the resources are few. Thankfully, after more than 50 years in service, World Impact has developed an effective urban ministry model.
WORLD IMPACT’S URBAN MINISTRY MODEL
With training and support made available through 5 different paths, listed below, urban leaders are being identified and equipped to plant healthy churches in every community of poverty.
Let’s explore the paths and their impact in the lives of individuals today.
1. Church-Based Seminary
The Urban Ministry Institute resources and trains urban church leaders. We provide affordable and accessible seminary-level training for men and women in communities of poverty everywhere.
STORY OF IMPACT
In this video, we meet Juan Pablo with World Impact as he visits Guadalajara, Mexico. In the community, Pastor Victor is overseeing a new church construction — the first Christian church to ever be built in that area! The plan is for the new facility to also serve as a training site for leaders so that even more churches can be planted in the future.
THE WORLD IMPACT MODEL
For people who might not otherwise have access to a seminary education to prepare them for ministry, we provide a quality theological, practical education.
“[We want to] equip leaders in the Word of God to advance the Kingdom in their churches in order to expand God’s Kingdom in the neighborhoods where they are. If we allow, God will raise up men and women … leaders from the city who are well equipped in the Word of God, whose character and commitment to Christ is clear, that they can be used in a dramatic way regardless of their background or where they’re from, or their academic training.” Rev. Dr. Ron L. Davis
The model has four components:
The model has four components:
-
- World Impact partners with churches, organizations, or denominations to identify emerging leaders.
- Training centers for learning are established
- Students complete their training and certification.
- Graduates champion renewal and spiritual growth in their communities.
This model is meant to perpetuate and multiply churches. In fact, Pastor Victor is a graduate of Church-Based Seminary. His motivation to pastor the new church in Guadalajara includes the desire to continue training and planting more churches.
2. Church Planting
World Impact’s Evangel School of Urban Church Planting trains Christian workers to plant healthy churches among the urban poor. Unlike other training experiences, Evangel is specifically designed to equip teams to reach under-resourced communities.
STORY OF IMPACT
Our vision includes teaching pastors about the power and support of collaboration. Too many church planters go it alone.
Church plant coach, Cynthia Peters, recalls a conversation with a student who was about to graduate when he had a revelation. She remembers him saying:
“Why didn’t I have this before? I’ve been struggling. I’ve been staying up late at night thinking about what I’m doing wrong? What’s happening? My church isn’t doing well. And when I attended the Evangel School of Urban Church Planting, I found out what I was missing. I found out what God was trying to tell me — I found out that I needed somebody to work alongside me to work out some of those areas that were theologically difficult…”
This is exactly why our unique approach to training urban ministers for church planting is tailor-made to fit their needs, which includes the need for a solid team of supporters and leaders.
3. Leadership Retreats
At World Impact, we believe that retreats can be a rich environment for urban leaders to experience training and refreshment. Our retreats are offered in Spanish and English and provide ways to connect with other workers, forge friendships, share best practices, receive powerful teaching, and find encouragement.
Leaders who live and minister in communities of poverty deserve the encouragement, community, and training they need to sustain their ministries.
STORY OF IMPACT
When Yareli first attended a World Impact retreat, she was living with her boyfriend but experiencing strife and confusion in her life and in their relationship. She recalls the impact of the first leadership retreat:
“That retreat was the push I needed to take God seriously. It affected [my boyfriend] too because I came back a different person and he saw the effect it had on me … he started taking God seriously and he started serving in church with me. Thank the Lord we’re now married for two years.”
Three years later, Yareli was serving as one of the camp coordinators, and she was thrilled to be following in the footsteps of those who’d served her that first year:
“Those women that helped and served like they were serving the Lord — I’m excited to have that impact on these women like those women had on me.”
When practical training is paired with community — like the community experience at leadership retreats — leaders are emboldened to serve in extraordinary ways. This element is vital to a healthy leader’s rhythm.
4. Prison Ministry
World Impact helps thousands of inmates receive effective training and gain vital urban ministry and church leadership knowledge through Prison Ministry.
We do this first by establishing church-based seminaries inside prison walls. Then, we equip churches and ministries to come alongside released prisoners, provide discipleship, and empower them to do effective ministry in some of the most forgotten places in our cities.
STORY OF IMPACT
Carlos and Martin first met while they were both serving life sentences in the California State Prison system and living in neighboring cells.
Martin was a new believer at the time and said, “It was in this desire to grow in my faith that brought Carlos and me together.” He began attending Bible studies that Carlos conducted, and soon Carlos began discipling Martin in the “dayroom” of their housing unit.
This was a significant step of faith for both men. Martin states, “In the prison system…the mixing of races is a taboo that has led to…riots and even death. So, for Carlos to conduct a Bible study on the Black side of the dayroom spoke volumes of his faith in God.”
A NEW PATH
Carlos and Martin served the Lord together from 1997–2000 and again from 2010–2015 when Carlos was paroled to San Diego.
In 2012, Martin was ordained as the yard pastor and began attending Church-Based Seminary classes until he was paroled in 2017. When Martin was paroled to San Diego, it was Carlos who picked him up at the train station and blessed him with his first meal as a free man.
Soon after Martin was paroled, he attended World Impact’s School of Urban Church Planting, where Pillar of Fire Church was chartered. Martin and Danny, who are also former “lifers” and seminary graduates, now serve as pastors of this church.
A BRIGHT FUTURE
Carlos recently joined the Pillar of Fire leadership team, and his wife, Hanna, is the worship leader for the church. The church is adding more leaders by God’s grace, and it has grown from its original three-member team to around 25. Carlos has also started a re-entry home called Bethel House, for men re-entering the outside world.
God’s sovereign hand has been on Carlos and Martin’s lives, inside prison and out, for over 20 years. Through their ministry, lives are being impacted and changed for the better in San Diego.
It all started with Carlos starting a Bible study within the prison walls — thanks to World Impact’s Prison Ministry.
Learn 3 Inspiring Prison Ministry Lessons From The Book of Philemon
5. Trauma Healing
Our Trauma Healing program, made possible through our partnership with American Bible Society’s Trauma Healing Institute, equips urban ministry workers and leaders to facilitate Bible-based healing groups. Participants can then choose to become certified to lead their own healing groups, which multiplies the ministry.
When our urban church leaders encounter neighbors suffering from trauma, they need to be equipped to provide basic trauma care so that every barrier to engaging with God is removed.
STORY OF IMPACT
In Canada, “refugees” are called “protected persons,” and there are a lot of them. The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada defines a protected person as “a person who has reason to fear persecution in his or her country of origin due to race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political opinion.”
Since 2011, millions of Syrians have fled the civil war that has ravaged their homes and killed hundreds of thousands of people. Since 2015, there have been about 45,000 Syrians resettled throughout Canada, compared with the ~21,000 welcomed by the United States during the same time.
A VISION FOR HEALING
Raffi, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, was confronted with this overwhelming migration of traumatized Syrian families. He started to search online for ways to address severe trauma from war. He found World Impact’s Trauma Healing training and decided to attend a training group in Wichita.
Upon returning to Canada, he worked with his colleague, Majd, at Canadian Bible Society to translate World Impact’s Trauma Healing material into Arabic. He hosted two healing groups, came back for the advanced training, and moved his ministry even further forward. Today, World Impact partners with Canadian Bible Society to offer healing groups in all their outreach to newcomers.
TRAUMA HEALING IS TRANSFORMATIVE
Not only are Raffi and Majd using healing groups with newcomers, but they are also hosting training for psychologists, psychiatrists, Christian counselors, and more. About half of those trained are in “diaspora churches,” which are churches established by refugees.
Majd recounts a recent Facebook message he received from a pastor (Lee) of a diaspora church from a Southeast Asian country. The pastor got a phone call from a church member who was planning suicide. “He had even prepared a suicide letter,” Lee explained. Lee, who had recently gone through Trauma Healing training, reported that he could use some of the tools he had gained to extend hope to the person on the other end of the phone. Because of the hope extended to him, the person decided he wanted to live.
This is the power of healing from trauma and helping others do the same.
URBAN MINISTRY
These are just a few of the powerful stories of urban ministry, church planting, and trauma healing that have been motivated by the ministries of World Impact.
Whether a leader is trained in a traditional setting or with us and whether they received a calling for ministry as a child or while they were incarcerated, World Impact has developed paths to help that leader succeed. And when a leader succeeds, it means that healthy urban churches are being developed in more communities around the globe, and more people are learning about the transformative grace of God.