October Update
October 5, 2004
Don’t confuse the means with the end! Our mission is the transformation of Montrose. We believe that our part in that transformation is to equip followers of Jesus to be able to offer unconditional love to people in the darkest and most broken parts of our community. The “street kid” community of Montrose is one of the darkest and most broken places around and God has blessed an initial effort to establish a beach head in that sub-culture.
This past Friday we had a day full of activity. Complete with U-haul, strained muscles and the normal chaos of moving, the Yupon Street ministry house for young girls and their children is officially opened. Join us in giving thanks for Loren and Tanya Gardner and their son, Aiden (age 15 months) for the courage to serve as the anchor family for this ministry. Give thanks for Pastor Robin Martin’s visionary leadership in this effort. Join us in honoring the Castle Court house church community who is serving this vision in a thousand different ways.
Please pray for Jessica (age 21) and her son, Christopher (14 months), and Amanda (age 20) and her daughter, Bailey (3 months). They are the first residents of the house. In the days ahead a third resident and her baby will join us. We are deeply committed to helping these new friends come to know Jesus deeply and to find a life of purpose that “pays forward” what has been given to them.
But the ministry house is not the end. It is a means to a larger end. We want to see the street culture in Montrose changed. We want to plant churches and create systems that penetrate this culture so that isolation, death and destruction are replaced with connection, life, and redemption. We see a day when dozens of discipleship houses target other groups of people from the streets of Montrose. We see a day when an indigenous church is started and is led by those who once lived on the streets. We see a day when, because of what God is doing through us, children will not grow up on the street . . . crime will be reduced . . . families will be reconciled . . . and disciples who have grown up in Montrose will multiply themselves to dark places in communities across this city.
Will you pray for the success of the Yupon Street ministry house? And will you pray that we work diligently to honor and obey the Lord as we focus on this “means” while not loosing sight of a much larger "end!" Join us in believing God for the transformation of Montrose.