Urban Promise

A couple of years ago, one of our college students went to work in Camden, New Jersey for a week with Urban Promise. I’ll bet that she didn’t have a clue what God would birth out of that solitary week. She came back with a passion that was probably already there, but which had become much stronger. She spent the next summer working with a new Urban Promise camp here in northwest Toronto, in what is now the most violent community in Toronto. She couldn’t sleep a lot of nights thinking about the kids (“my kids,” she calls them). The church that hosted the camp was unavailable last summer. She asked if they could use our church building. Umm, yeah! Not a hard choice. They came, they sometimes destroyed the building, but they also opened our eyes. It was obvious that this was something that God was doing, and we were privileged to be along for the ride. We began to look for ways to partner with Urban Promise Toronto. Today, I sat around a table with Colin McCartney, the Executive Director of Urban Promise, some staff, pastors, and social workers. There were only ten of us. I don’t know if there was an agenda, but we ended up spending most of the time talking about what God has been doing. At one point, Colin said, “We don’t control; we’ve given up. God’s in control.” They’re not trying to build a ministry or churches. Story after story came out – sometimes with laughter, sometimes with tears, about what God has been doing with some of the most overlooked people in Toronto – overlooked, often, not just by society, but also by the church. When it was my turn to speak, I simply said that Urban Promise is not just a ministry to the kids and parents they serve. It’s a ministry to us. It’s helped to move me, to move Richview, out of our insulated lives to where Jesus is walking. It’s started to move us out of the Christian ghetto back to the places where Jesus liked to hang out when he walked this earth. We’re only starting, but we are on our way. It all started with one of our college students, and who knows where it will end. Colin repeated his core belief a few times: “Love God, love people, nothing else matters.” That’s happening today in three camps across the city, and it’s exciting that we get to play a small part in that.