Celebrating 10 Years of Service

Ten years ago we launched a ministry with a mission to rebuild, restore and renew hearts and homes in the Harrisburg community, across the nation, and around the world.

When we started in September of 2004, in a renovated warehouse on Seventh Street in uptown Harrisburg, our hearts were filled with excitement. We spent six months in prayer and strategic preparation before we opened our doors to a full house on Good Friday on March 25, 2005. It was a celebration of praise and worship. Then on Resurrection Sunday, March 27, 2005, we held our first Sunday service.

Six months later, in September of 2005, our overseers, Bishop Raphael and Pastor Brenda Green, came to Harrisburg to officially install us as the Senior Pastor and First Lady over the church. Little did we know, that just like Jesus was acknowledged by His Father during His water Baptism and led into a season of trial and testing, we were about to walk the same path.

However, today we can proclaim, ‘To God be the Glory for the things He has done!’ God gave us grace after our failures, wisdom to navigate treacherous passages, favor to overcome opposition, comfort for our seasons of mourning, consolation for our process of grief, light in our darkness, joy  in the midst of disappointments, and a new closeness with the Holy Spirit that we could never have imagined if we had not crossed through the wilderness.

In spite of attacks from the evil spiritual forces that seek to control the hearts and homes of this region, the Lord our God still caused our paths to cross with each of you. All that was intended for evil, God has used it for our good.

From chance meetings on our jobs, to unexplainable connections on the internet, God has brought people in and out of our lives and brought this congregation together, one person at a time. We have met in hotel conference rooms, a local church’s classroom, the pastor’s living room, and now we meet in our own space in the United Church Center. It never really matters WHERE we meet. It’s all about the wonderful experience that we share WHEN we meet.

We have laughed together, cried together, danced together, worked together, had our moments of disagreements or misunderstandings, and managed to keep moving forward. We are not a large gathering, but somehow, that really doesn’t matter. We’re doing more than building a big ministry. We’re building people who will do big things for God.

Back in 2012 we took a poll and asked our volunteer team at that time, “What is the one thing that Urban Life is really good at doing? What is the one hallmark of this ministry? The response was unanimous. It’s RELATIONAL. People matter. People feel welcomed. They feel that they belong.

So after ten years, the foundation has been set. The standard of God’s unconditional love has been cemented in our church family. WE have become an assembly where the atmosphere is safe for those who are searching, thirsting and longing for more than what religion has to offer.

In the Bible, the number TEN signifies testimony, law, responsibility and the completeness of order. We believe that as we come to the end of ten years of service, God is calling us to reflect upon and reveal the testimony of the Lord in our lives. We are called to keep His commandments in this new season. We called to a new level of responsibility. We’re being called into the completeness of order. We have been a ministry of order and balance from our first day and this anniversary is a landmark of the completeness of that order.

As we prepare for this weekend of celebration and impartation, the Lord gave us Luke 16:10 as our theme scripture. It reads: He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much.

They may sound like a very harsh and strong word for an anniversary theme, but we see it as a promise from God when we are faithful to serve Him, with the right motivation in our hearts.
 

As we move into another year of obeying our assignment in Harrisburg, we are preparing our hearts and homes for more responsibility.

We’ll begin the weekend with a special dinner this Saturday evening at 6:30PM. We’ll meet in the dining hall of the United Church Center. That night will include wonderful fellowship, testimonies, music and a special greeting from our Bishop via video.

On Sunday, God has directed us to invite Abby Abildness to share the word with us. Abby is the executive director of Healing Tree international and the visionary of the Unite to Restore America movement. You don’t want to miss this very special woman of God as she pours out a wealth of wisdom with us to help us in the journey that is ahead of us.

We’ll be getting started promptly at 11:00am in our Ministry Suite (144B), so we can have her standing before us by 11:30AM. She has a flight to catch and we want to give her plenty of time.

We’re very excited about this year’s anniversary gatherings and we look forward to celebrating together!

Responding to the Cry for Help

Two nights ago, I attended a town hall meeting in Harrisburg. It was organized and hosted by Harrisburg Hope, an initiative from the office of Representative Patty Kim. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss some of the ways Harrisburg can avoid becoming the next Ferguson, MO. The meeting had a panel which included several key players of the Harrisburg landscape.

One the panelist was a young minister from St. Louis. Of course I was pleasantly surprised. He graduated from the same high school as the police shooting victim, Michael Brown. It is the same high school where one of my sisters-in-law teaches. This minister graduated from there in 1998 and came to Pennsylvania for college.  After his college graduation, he moved to Lancaster, PA.

His comments, during the discussion, kept taking the conversation back to the realities of an American system in which our nation profits from the poverty of the least of its citizens (minorities, children, elderly, disabled, etc). I was very impressed with him and I was also impressed with Representative Kim because she boldly called out and challenged the Dauphin County leadership for how they have treated African American men and boys.

Up until that meeting, I have always wanted to learn who are the people that genuinely have the best interest of Harrisburg in their hearts.  That night I discovered some of them. In the midst of the typical posturing and rhetoric, these two stood out, head and shoulders, above the group. I must admit that I don’t know these people and I have never been involved in their organizations, so I cannot make a judgment concerning any of them. But from the comments that were made in that meeting, I have a much clearer understanding of Harrisburg.

The largest portion of the meeting was given to allow comments and questions from the audience. Obviously, there was a lot of frustration and anger expressed from most of them. They challenged the unfair treatment of community by the police and the horrible practices within the school system that includes drugging the children and criminalizing the behavior of the Black male children in particular.

Some people stood and expressed desperate pleas for funding and volunteers in their individual efforts to provide activities and programs for youth and children. All throughout the session, I kept hearing a consistent theme: We need someone to help us!

After the event, I made my way to meet the young minister and to meet Representative Patty Kim. I expressed to both of them how much this was needed. I asked one of the panelists if this meeting was the first one with true intention to bring everyone to the table for solutions and he confirmed that my assessment was true. I told Representative Kim that if this kind of meeting had been offered in St. Louis, then the Ferguson incident might never have happened.

I didn’t hand out my business cards to anyone that night and I made no political or religious contacts or connections. My purpose in going was to watch and observe. I came away from that meeting with clear vision. It gave me an understanding of our times and the wisdom to know what we must do.

I heard a community crying out for help. I saw disconnected and disjointed efforts by many individuals to provide help. I saw all kinds of people with all kinds of strategies to meet all kinds of needs. Each one, in his own way was saying, come over here and help me provide the help. 

However, not one person said, "I will connect what I’m doing with what you’re doing." Not one person said, "I’ll connect my program with your program and pool our resources to make a bigger impact." 

Instead I observed the continuation of the problem in which everyone wants to be the boss, but no one wants to follow. Some call it the Messiah Syndrome because each one wants to be the savior for Harrisburg.

So now I have a better understanding of why God has us here in Harrisburg at this time. God has allowed my hometown to become a central theme of major problems in our country and right here in Harrisburg, people are crying out for help to try to avoid a similar social upheaval. Now we're all faced with the one question: How will we do it?

OUR first order of business is to seek God for the way He wants us to respond to that cry for help. 

I don’t know when we’ll be able to make connections with the various people on that panel. I certainly desire to do so. In the meantime, we are getting ourselves prepared. We are doing what we can for now.

We’re going to do our part in the upcoming street outreach in south Harrisburg and we’re going to prepare ourselves for harvest. We’re going to prepare out nets for a great catch of fish. We’re going to be ready to serve and minister to others in these perilous times and we’re going to fulfill God’s purpose for our ministry in this community, in this nation and in this world.

Are you ready to respond to the cry for help?