Fresno Urban Immersion

SUBMITTED TO BAKKE GRADUATE UNIVERSITY OF MINISTRY
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE DEGREE REQUIREMENTS OF A
DOCTOR OF MINISTRY
MCC 702/URBAN FIELD EXPERIENCE-FRESNO
MARCH 2011
BY
BRYAN MCCABE

CHAPTER 1
BOOK REVIEWS
I verify that the following list represents all of the books I have read for this course, the
page on which you will find my book review, and the number of pages read for each
book.
BookTitle
Page#of
book
review
#ofpages
read
Street Saints 6 320
Renewing the City 7 240
Churches That Make a Difference 8 336
To Live in Peace 9 261
Transforming Power 10 216
Encounter God in the City 11 191
When Helping Hurts 12 230
Urban Ministry 13 527
Building Communities from the Inside Out 14 376
American Project 15 332
Parish Ministry in a Hispanic Community 16 296
Street Signs 17 285
TOTAL PAGES READ 3610
3

4
Street Saints
by Barbara Elliott
Templeton Foundation Press (2004)
In American cities, Christians are living out their faith and making a difference in
their communities. In Street Saints, Barbara Elliott invests a great deal of time and energy
into comprehensively examining individuals, organizations, and churches that are
involved in many different types of urban ministry. She describes the urban ministry
leaders in her book as street saints, and for good reason. The people she writes about are
giving themselves away for Christ’s sake on behalf of the most vulnerable people in
American society. The “best practices are highlighted for those people who would like to
emulate their success.” (xxv)
The two most interesting chapters to me were the chapter about Brian King, a
former gang member who committed his life to Christ and now leads Street Saints in
Fresno, and the entire chapter that was dedicated to the city of Pittsburgh where I live and
work. During my visit to Fresno for this course, I had the opportunity to meet Brian King.
I witnessed his work first hand. He has a broad vision for the work that goes on in Fresno,
but he also seems like the type of person who is very practical, hands on, and open to
change. Transformation is a process, and my favorite part about his story is that he goes
into great detail about his own journey of transformation. Brian had a dramatic encounter
with Christ, and as he describes, “It was crazy. Ever since, God has been placing me in
spots where people are real broken and hurt, and I work with people coming through the
things I experienced. He gave me a key to go into places where his heart is – with the
poor, in prisons, with widows.” (49) God is patient with us and he works through us in
his own timing. In Pittsburgh, several men had a vision for transformation in the city. A
group of city leaders started praying that Pittsburgh would be more famous for God than
for steel, and over the course of many years the process of transformation took hold in a
wide variety of systems and locations in the city. The Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation
emerged from the original vision for Christians to live out their faith in Pittsburgh. “They
are doing so with teams to meet specific physical and spiritual needs, based on a
Kingdom vision that embraces the city as a whole.” (177)
The Pittsburgh chapter in this book has inspired me to find out more about the
legacy that has been built in my city over time. There are many Christ-centered leaders in
Pittsburgh. My goal is to connect with those leaders intentionally, as a result of this DMin
program at BGU, so that I might be able to learn from them. The head of the Pittsburgh
Leadership Foundation, Dr. John Stahl-Wert, lives close to me. I have had several good
conversations with him, but I am hoping that we will be able to collaborate more often in
the years to come.

5
Renewing the City
by Robert Lupton
InterVarsity Press (2005)
In this book Robert Lupton retells the story of Nehemiah through a process called
midrash, which is an ancient Jewish teaching method using imagination and imagery to
add context to Scriptures. The first part of the book focuses on adding depth to the study
of the biblical book of Nehemiah. The second part of the book draws parallels between
Nehemiah’s community development work in Jerusalem and modern day development
efforts in American inner cities. Contemporary urban ministry principles are compared to
ancient urban ministry principles.
The author argues that the dilemmas facing urban ministry leaders long ago are
relevant in resolving similar dilemmas today. One highlight of the book was a chapter
about gentrification with justice, which argued that what is needed in cities is gentry
“who will use their competencies and connections to ensure that their lower-income
neighbors have a stake in revitalizing their neighborhood.” (124) Christians are called to
care for the poor, and those who move back into the city from the suburbs need to think
strategically about also caring for justice for their neighbors. The book has another great
chapter about vision and risk taking. Lupton speaks clearly and with credibility about the
need for strong visionary leadership from urban leaders. He argues that “Vision that is
divinely authored – the kind that extends me far beyond my own abilities – requires a
frightful level of risk taking. It is fundamentally different from strategy planning and goal
setting. It requires me to let go of the security of predictable outcomes and venture into
uncharted waters with little more than an inaudible internal voice as a guide. Such vision
is not a product of human creativity; it is divinely conceived and implanted in the spirits
of those who are willing to trust miracle over plan.” (151) Nehemiah was a visionary risk
taker, and this is what is needed for all urban ministry leaders today. This is one of the
author’s strongest points. The final chapters focus on different aspects of incarnational
living. Cities may have a romantic appeal on people from an outside perspective (with
their violence, noise, and drama), but everything becomes much more meaningful once
the inner city issues begin impacting one’s family and home. Programs are important, but
good neighbors are much more important to the renewing of the city.
Robert Lupton describes the process of how his ministry became much more
effective once he moved to where he was serving. I hope that I am more effective as an
urban ministry leader now that I have moved to the Homewood neighborhood of
Pittsburgh. Lupton gives many different examples about how his move impacted his
family, and the incarnational move of my family in Pittsburgh has also had a big impact
on the community. Many children in my community spend a great deal of time at our
house, and my family has had to make quite an adjustment.

6
Churches That Make a Difference
by Ron Sider
Baker Books (2002)
This book is about holistic Christian ministry. No matter what level churches or
individual Christians are at in their faith journeys, they could plug into this book to find
out more about how to follow Christ authentically. As the authors state, “The purpose of
this book is to help congregations develop more biblical, effective, dynamic holistic
ministries.” (15) This book goes a long way in connecting people’s Christian faith with
the lives that Gods requires of us. We connect our faith with our actions in a way that
provides hope for our neighborhoods.
Christians can effectively integrate both evangelism and social outreach into their
core mission. In the past, these two concepts have been at odds in many churches. Today,
churches are really starting to connect their faith to both word and deed. “Because many
ministries historically have been conducted in a one-sided manner, new conceptual tools
and models are needed to help church leaders grasp how word and deed effectively work
together in holistic mission.” (104) There is a great deal of creativity in the church, and
innovative outreach efforts are happening all across the world. The authors stressed the
importance of relocation in impacting a community, stating that “The ministry of
relocation is essential to breaking down barriers and developing a healthy sense of
belonging to the community.” (160) One chapter covered the various fears, dealing with
change, and the conflict that results when churches decide to become missional or
externally focused. However, I think that the authors could have spent more time
unpacking those issues. Fear and comfort are two major factors that keep congregations
from impacting their communities. Still, this book is a great tool for Christians who
desire to see their churches impacting their communities and the world. In an
inspirational call to action, the reader learns that “Your church can proclaim the Good
News, comfort the afflicted, build up the cities, and repair the cyclic devastations of
broken communities. If you are willing in obedience and trust to take the first small step
– and then the next and the next – God will take care of the big picture.” (314)
Transformation is a process, and at the end of the day the church needs more guides like
this book to lead us down the path of obedience to the whole gospel message.
There were many things to apply to my ministry context in Pittsburgh from this
book, especially regarding outreach progress and barriers. Specifically, I was encouraged
to continue on with the externally focused vision at North Way Christian Community.
We have made great progress at North Way, but we have also had many barriers to our
church becoming more involved in holistic ministry. As a leader, I must always
remember that “It takes time to wait on the leading of the Holy Spirit.” (290) It takes time
for people to grasp the vision.

7
To Live in Peace
by Mark Gornik
Eerdmans Publishing (2002)
The Sandtown neighborhood in Baltimore is a great example of how Christians
can work together toward the process of transformation. This book documents many
aspects of Sandtown’s story, but the primary purpose of the author “is to consider the
promise and possibility of God’s peace for the changing of the American inner city.” (1)
A wide variety of theological perspectives are covered in order to represent God’s heart
for reaching marginalized people who experience urban poverty. The gospel message is
meant to be lived out in the streets, not exclusively held onto tightly in the quietness of
church sanctuaries.
I loved the thoughts that the author presented about being a church of the streets. I
have found in my work in Homewood that the Holy Spirit is active in the streets of my
neighborhood. We cannot build relationships with the vulnerable people of this world if
we are unwilling to go into the streets where they are and spend time being sensitive to
where the Spirit might be calling us to go. The church in America has often lagged far
behind culture when it comes to diversity. However, I strongly believe that the church
should actually be out in front of culture with regard to reconciliation. “Amidst the deep
structures of division old and new that have formed in our urban world, part of what it
must mean to be a community that bears testimony to Christ is to pursue reconciliation
across boundaries of culture, race, ethnicity, social class, and gender.” (83) Christians
need to figure out a way to build relationships outside the walls of the church at a time
when many Christians are withdrawing from cities and society in general in order to
generate Christian bubbles for ourselves. When Christians engage cities and culture, we
live out the overwhelming joy of sacrificing all for the sake of Christ. I felt that the author
could have developed this point more in the book, although he captured this way of living
well in writing, “It is the living memory of Jesus – the rejected, marginal, but ultimately
resurrected and ascended one – that opens a new narrative, convicting all who follow him
to live vulnerably and passionately for God’s reign.” (236) God desires for us to give
everything we have for his sake, and that is only accomplished with unrelenting passion
and hope that God is ultimately in control of everything.
I saw many parallels to Homewood in Sandtown. Specifically, I live in a house in
Homewood that is a product of Christians in Pittsburgh working together to address
urban blight through housing. The street I live on was once one of the most violent and
chaotic streets in the entire city, and now it is a place of ever-growing shalom. That type
of thing can only happen because of God’s intervention. I have been inspired to become
more involved in the issue of housing in Homewood, where over 48 percent of properties
are vacant.

8
Transforming Power
by Robert Linthicum
The main idea in this book is relational power, especially as it relates to the
engagement of Christians in urban ministry and community development. The first part
of the book provides a foundation for a theology of power through such biblical examples
as Nehemiah and Jesus. The second part of the book is more practical with strategies
clearly outlined for people who want to make a difference in their communities.
Linthicum outlines the significance of individual relationships as well as ways for the
church to corporately address systemic oppression.
The author argues that Christians must engage in the proper understanding and
usage of power through relationships, although many evangelical Christians have tended
to shy away from the use of power in the world over the past century. The first couple of
chapters present the various dynamics of healthy and dysfunctional communities. The
next section focuses on specific ways that Christians utilize relational power to engage
broken systems, with Jesus and Paul serving as guides. Linthicum says that Paul was
“very sophisticated in his understanding of and use of power, and that use of power was
built upon a highly developed theology of public life.” (113) From the material that is
presented, the reader gathers that Christians have a crucial role to play in public life in
our modern society. In fact, many aspects of a healthy community, or what the author
describes as shalom in the city, become broken when Christians fail to engage in the use
of power. The remaining chapters in the book focus on the exchange of relational power
through individual meetings, which lead to the mobilization of the broader church, or
body of Christ, en mass in the engagement of relational power. The author also presents
strategies for strengths and weaknesses that can occur when the church becomes
powerful. For instance, Linthicum cites accountability, confrontation, civil disobedience,
negotiation, and agitation as five biblically-based strategies that the church can use to
take on corrupt systems. Of all of these actions, the author argues that confrontation is the
most difficult for the church to utilize because they “believe it to be inconsistent with a
loving, Christ-like faith. But… you can’t hope to bring about change – in a church or in a
Christian organization or the world – and avoid confrontation.” (171)
In Pittsburgh I need to focus on building relational power through individual
meetings, and I would like to be more active in participating with faith-based groups that
are working together to impact systemic failures in my city. I do meet with people
regularly as a part of my job as a pastor, but I know I could be much more strategic in
terms of who I meet with and how the meetings are set up. My goal is to particularly be
more effective at setting one to one meetings with pastors in Homewood and in the east
end of Pittsburgh.

9
Encounter God in the City
by Randy White
Involvement in urban ministry can lead to a process of transformation. However,
that transformation does not just randomly happen. Christians who get involved in cities
need to practice reflection in order to fully experience all that God wants us to learn. That
briefly summarizes Dr. Randy White’s intention in writing this book. There are practical
points within the book, but White also leverages the use of personal stories in order to
“maximize insight into the city through reflection and application.” (16) With
thoughtfulness and humor, White captures both the joys and the pains associated with life
in the center of the city.
I could relate to a lot of Randy’s experiences in urban ministry. His openness
about different situations has actually helped me tremendously in Pittsburgh. What do I
do when a prostitute or a homeless person shows up on my doorstep asking for money or
shelter from the storms of life? How does God want Christians to respond to mentally ill?
What do we do when people steal things from our front porch? I have had to deal with all
of these questions in my journey of moving to Homewood, and the experiences in this
book help to answer those questions. In fact, most of the time the “answer” is that there is
no rational answer to the toughest questions in life. Still, God has equipped all of us to be
creative and find solutions if maybe we made a wrong decision but are willing to learn
from our mistakes. The important thing is that we do not remain paralyzed by inaction or
become overwhelmed by the complexities of modern cities. “There is a reciprocal
relationship between action and understanding. God has designed us in such a way that
we don’t fully know something until we have acted on it. And when we take action,
especially in the form of service, it cements our understanding, sealing the truth in our
souls and leading us to live out God’s love.” (179) Randy emphasizes that transformation
occurs both personally, for the practitioner, as well as corporately in the community
where the work is being done. Urban ministry leaders have a lot to give, but God also has
a lot to teach them along the way. God may choose to change the neighborhood around
through strategic planning and vision, but it is important to understand that God’s plans
are often different than our own agendas.
I am committed to being a better steward of my experiences in Homewood. I
often hold back from sharing my personal experiences in Homewood because I do not
want to make the work that I have been called to sound heroic or even exploitive of the
relationships that God has allowed me to share with kids and their families in my
community. However, if my heart is in the right place in sharing experiences, then other
Christians might be able to take the onramps and become more involved with the
transformation that is taking place in Homewood.

10
When Helping Hurts
by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett
Moody Publishers (2009)
Christians can do great harm or great good while attempting to help vulnerable
people. Many followers of Christ experience a desire to want to help other people, but
“we need the person of Jesus Christ to transform not just the poor but also ourselves.”
(12) The authors of this book present many examples of how Christians have hurt people
while trying to help. However, they do not leave us hanging with that unfortunate
outcome. The authors also present ways for Christians to consider how to serve others so
that positive outcomes for both the poor and themselves might be achieved.
The authors touched on the significance of individual relationships when
Christians seek to serve poor people. “When working at the level of individual poor
people, it is imperative that they and we have a correct understanding of the nature of
God, self, others, and creation and the way that God intends for human beings to relate to
each of them.” (84) Many high risk youth start out in life without an understanding of the
purpose that God has for their lives. Faith-based mentors can help to introduce young
people to how God wants us to interact with each other at a young age. Also, there seems
to be a great debate in America about poverty. The issue of material poverty is even
divisive amongst Christians, usually along conservative and liberal lines. Do oppressive
systems generate material poverty, or does individual sin and bad choices lead people to
live in poverty? I thought the authors did a great job of bridging the divide by pointing
out that “worldviews affect the systems, and the systems affect the worldviews.” (92)
Poverty is a complex issue, especially in cities. And, so, the Christian response should be
equally complex in order to address the issue. We should work systemically and
individually in our efforts to help people in need, using biblical examples such as
Nehemiah and Jesus as our guides. There is no simple solution to the poverty and
brokenness that billions of people in our world experience on a daily basis.
Transformational leaders seek to steward influence and resources in order to help
vulnerable people, not harm them. And, reconciliation occurs as a result. “Development
is not done to people or for people but with people.” (105) Relationships are an important
part of transformation.
I do not ever want to hurt anyone I am trying to help in Pittsburgh, but I know it
has happened and it will happen again. This Doctor of Ministry program has helped me
tremendously to become a more effective urban ministry leader, and this book is just one
example of how Christian leaders from all over the world are learning how to be more
effective at what we do. As a direct result of reading this book, I have reexamined several
things that North Way does in our local outreach efforts. Recently, we have tried to
become more relationship-based.

11
Urban Ministry
by Harvey Conn and Manuel Ortiz
Manuel Ortiz describes this book as “the final work of Dr. Harvey Conn,” (11) the
coauthor who became very ill and died before this work was completed. Dr. Conn wanted
to deliver an urban ministry text book of sorts to students and practitioners in cities
around the world. The authors do a deep dive into how Christians should respond to the
complexities of urban life, covering such topics as the history of urban life, biblical
perspectives on cities, understanding cities through the lens of the social sciences,
community development, and the importance of Christ-centered leadership in mission to
modern urban contexts.
The authors have a wonderful overview of urban ministry. When I first became
involved in urban ministry, I ordered as many books as I could about the subject in order
to understand if I was being effective as a Christian leader or not. Although I never read
the entire book at the time, many sections and excerpts helped me to engage my urban
context appropriately. Now that I have had the opportunity to work through the whole
book, I am even more appreciative of the scope of this work. The connection of
sociological research to biblical perspectives was particularly helpful. “Use of the social
sciences can make Christian mission activities both more effective and more fluid. We
are able to plan and strategize better when we gain an accurate understanding of the
dynamics of culture and geography in an area.” (256) Modern cities change rapidly, and
demographic information is crucial for urban ministry leaders. Yes, individual
relationships should always play a significant role in planning, but we should not be
afraid to utilize social science tools that are available to us. Problems develop when
Christian leaders spend too much time staring at demographic studies, and not enough
time out and about in the community building relationships. The section on mentoring the
urban leader was also an important part of this book. Over the past five years, I have
sought out mentors to help me navigate the challenges of urban ministry. In the same
way, I have given myself away on behalf of many young people in my community in
order to help them progress as the urban leaders of the future in Homewood. “Mentoring
is one of the most effective ways to disciple new Christians to maturity in Christ.
Mentoring is also the best way to develop urban leaders.” (429)
I heard from a U.S. census worker that only 3 percent of the people in my
neighborhood of Homewood in Pittsburgh actually completed the recent census forms.
When I pulled data recently to learn more about Pittsburgh, I noticed that the statistics
seemed to be largely off base. Homewood statistics were nearly nonexistent in the
research. That is why it is important for me, as a Christian leader in Homewood, to not
emphasize demographic studies so much as spend time out in my community getting to
know my neighbors even if they are not counted in census studies.

12
Building Communities from the Inside Out
by John McKnight and Jody Kretzman
ACTA Publishing (1997)
Most efforts to alleviate poverty around the world during recent generations have
focused on the needs of vulnerable populations. Recently, great strides have been made to
develop communities around assets instead of needs. This book serves as a practical,
basic guide to asset-based community development, because “Each community boasts a
unique combination of assets upon which to build its future.” (6) Through this process of
asset building, individuals, organizations, and the community in general mobilize their
collective power to build better neighborhoods. The organizing process can dramatically
transform the lives of people experiencing the struggles associated with troubled urban
environments.
One of the highlights of this book for me was the section on releasing the
individual capacities of young people in troubled neighborhoods. As the coordinator of a
mentoring program, and as a mentor myself, I have learned to seek out and build upon
potential in the lives of young people instead of being just one more adult who focuses on
what is wrong with them. This thought process is something that is built over time,
however. “At the present time many of the most innovative community leaders are
rediscovering that youth can be essential contributors to the well-being and vitality of the
community. Projects that connect young people productively with other youth and adults
are seen to be the foundations upon which healthy communities can be built.” (29) The
authors did give some general disclaimers about how asset-based community
development can be quite challenging, but I do not think the authors mentioned enough
about the complexities involved in trying to reach cities. Many community development
efforts fail for a wide variety of reasons. However, we can learn a lot from failure. And,
there is rarely such thing as a complete failure with urban development. New
relationships are often a positive takeaway, even if the tangible outcomes of development
efforts do not come as fast as expected or even at all. As Christian leaders, we can learn a
great deal from the tension that exists with the process of transformation in complex
urban environments. Ultimately, we know that God is in control and that we cannot rely
on human effort to achieve sustainable change in this world. This is why the role of
churches, and Christians in all sectors of society, is so crucial to the process of asset-
based community development in cities.
I have had some experience with asset-based community development in
Homewood, but as a direct result from this class I have become more deeply involved.
Community organizers from the Homewood Children’s Village and Operation Better
Block have been making significant strides in our neighborhood in recent years, and I can
certainly contribute more to those efforts. We are considering working with Operation
Better Block to start organizing with our neighbors on our street. Our homes are assets,
the school right next to us is an asset, and the people living on my street are tremendous
assets to Homewood.

13
American Project
by Sudhir Venkatesh
Harvard Press (2000)
Many forces beyond people’s control lead to the problems facing residents in
America’s inner city projects and blighted neighborhoods. This book documents that
reality through the lens of Chicago’s Robert Taylor housing projects. When it comes to
social programs or government policies that are intended to help the poor, program
participants are often harmed more than they are served. “Indeed, the high-rise public
housing complex has become a contemporary mirror for American self-examination;” (5)
All of us, especially leaders within the Christian church, must examine how we try to
serve the poor.
I thought that the history of the projects in Chicago served as a powerful tale to
anybody who might want to attempt to engineer society for the materially poor through
housing or government programs. Sustainability should be considered in all systemic
efforts to alleviate suffering, even though most people do not tend to consider the long
term effectiveness of projects. It would be easy to target slow-moving government
institutions, such as the ones described in this book, as the culprits in fumbling efforts to
help the poor. Sadly, churches all across America systematically fail to support people
living in poverty. We love compassion, but we become uncomfortable and disoriented
when it comes to justice. As an example, “The institutions that make up the state are
forever concerned with managing space, planning and re-zoning, efficient and rational
usage of territories, and so on. Their logic – that of ‘abstract space’ – runs counter to that
of the people who live in the space and who may value a particular territory for reasons
that have little to do with its planning or economic development potential, but that have
more to do with their connectedness to it.” (39) That does not sound too far from the
church’s mission sometimes. As governments are often more concerned with space more
than the people, churches are often more concerned with maintaining programs or
effectively using internal church space than on supporting the sustainable transformation
of the lives of the people attending the church. Effective urban ministry leaders are able
to keep their focus more on people than on buildings or programs.
In Homewood, even though many of the children I interact with do not live in
housing projects like Robert Taylor, they experience the negative effects of government
programs gone awry that were intended to actually help their families. For instance,
several of my mentees have a troubled relationship with their fathers because the
government support for their moms systematically keeps men from living in the same
house as the mother and her children. I can mentor these kids, but I should also work to
help change the systems in Homewood so that families can be restored.

14
Parish Ministry in a Hispanic Community
by Charles Dahm
Paulist Press (2004)
One of the things I really love about Bakke Graduate University is that we do not
simply learn about theory. We learn to become hands on practitioners of urban ministry,
and we reflect on history. That is what kept jumping out at me with this book. The author
wrote about his experiences in urban ministry at a church in the inner city of Chicago,
mostly “pastoral ministry in a predominantly Mexican Catholic parish, a community at
prayer and in service, a community of faith that celebrates life even as it struggles for a
better life for its people.” (1)
From the time that I was a teacher at a school district in California with an 80
percent Hispanic population, I have been interested in the Mexican-American experience.
This book encouraged me to reflect more deeply about my experiences from this course
in Fresno, and even more so on my time spent in Costa Rica and Mexico City during
Overture II. I love the concept of the parish community, and I hope to be that kind of a
pastor in my neighborhood. I have learned to appreciate the sensory aspect of Hispanic
faith. “Mexicans resist the dichotomy between the sacred and secular. God is present in
this world in countless ways, and because they are a physical people, they can reach out
and touch God through myriad sacramentals: water and candles, medals and rosaries,
icons and statues, incense and song, processions and meals. These sensory objects and
actions not only remind people of but also connect people to God.” (285) I have long felt
that American evangelical Christianity has neglected the sensory component of our
connection with God. Many American Christians try to experience God on Sunday
mornings, and then our faith has little relevance to our lives throughout the week. As I
read through the pages of this book, all I could focus on was how important the Christian
faith was to the fabric of the community and the daily lives of the Mexican immigrants
struggling for survival in a foreign land. Their faith was far from the faith of comfort and
prosperity that has become so popular in many Christian circles in the United States.
Many parts of the Christian faith described over many years in this community in
Chicago were lived out in the streets in powerful ways.
In the book Dahm described what he called street mass. Street mass occurred
when the church held Mass in the location of gang shootings or in places where other
violence occurred in the neighborhood. This was a significant take away for me in my
work in Homewood. There is a lot of violence and illegal activity in my neighborhood.
Many Christians in Pittsburgh run away from that violence, but I think the best place for
Christian leaders to be is running into those places of violence. God is a God of
restoration, and followers of Christ bring light into dark situations.

15
Street Signs
by Ray Bakke and Jon Sharpe
New Hope Publishers (2006)
This book on urban ministry has two sections. In the first section, Ray Bakke
gives an overview of his journey in urban ministry over the past fifty years. He also
provides some basic urban ministry concepts to guide contemporary Christian leaders in
areas such as the processes of urbanization, embracing the city as a parish, the importance
of searching for signs of hope in modern cities, and a basic overview of the urban
consultation process in community development. Jon Sharpe describes his urban ministry
journey, followed by an overview of the leadership style of Barnabas and how that
impacts city consultations.
Ray Bakke argues that “fundamentally, for Christians, especially for church and
mission leaders, we need a new way of thinking about missions, a new worldview or
paradigm, if you please.” (83) He goes on to state that “Missions is no longer across the
ocean and geographically distant: it is across the street and is culturally distant, in our
cities and in cities on all six continents.” (83) Christian leaders need to adjust their
worldview to “incorporate thinking globally while living locally.” (83) Bakke’s insight
into missions is extremely important for modern Christians to understand. Many churches
and mission organizations are still operating under outdated and ineffective ministry
models. People seem to be more than willing to take the time and spend the resources to
take short term international mission trips, but they are far less willing to reach people
living right in their own cities. Missional leaders that make this adjustment will be ahead
of the curve in the United States for years to come. Jon Sharpe describes a powerful
process of city consultations, in which “the best consultations come as a result of a long-
term networking effort by trusted facilitators and the input of an outsider. The outsider
brings a listening ear, a desire to learn from the city, and his or her power to convene the
leadership of a city – social, political, and religious.” (216) In essence, Christian leaders
in cities all over the world need to understand who needs to be at the table, what will be
consulted upon, and how the strategies will be implemented. The whole process is very
clearly articulated in this book, although I must admit that the consultation process still
seems very overwhelming to me.
One of the things I have learned about urban ministry in Pittsburgh is that many
leaders are willing to partner for the betterment of the city. Organizations from all over
the city, including the Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation, the Pittsburgh Board of
Education, nonprofit organizations, and churches have displayed a willingness to work
together for positive outcomes on the overall development of the city. With so many
people willing to partner, including organizations that are non-Christian, there are many
opportunities for city consultations in Pittsburgh. Perhaps I might be able to partner on a
consultation in Homewood some day.

CHAPTER 2
JOURNAL
Day 1: March 14, 2011
Everyone arrived in Fresno today, and we spent most of the day getting to know
one another. Dr. Randy White lectured for a while about how Christians can be engaged
in the process of transformation in complex urban environments. He shared a lot about
his personal story where he moved his family into a high crime and high poverty area of
Fresno back in the early 1990s. His family had to learn how to work with prostitutes,
homeless people, the mentally ill, gang violence, dysfunctional public schools, and a
whole host of other issues. A great deal of transformation has occurred in the
neighborhood since they moved, but Randy does not take the credit for it. God is moving
here, and many people have contributed to how things are being turned around.
There are no experts when it comes to urban ministry. The problems are just too
complex, and things change all the time in cities. Leaders may be able to develop some
effective strategies that work in certain situations, but anyone who says that they have
community development all figured out really does not know what they are talking about.
Urban ministers must consistently reinvent themselves and learn new skill sets to take on
a wide variety of complex issues. To be an effective urban ministry leader, you have to
commit to three things. You commit to a feeling of being in over your head and off
balance most of the time because that is your new normal. Second, you commit to
bringing what you do have, and not being paralyzed by what you do not have. Third, you
16

17
commit to learning what you do not know. Urban ministry leaders face many situations
and tasks that they know nothing about, but they must have the willingness to learn about
those things so that the good work can continue.
Tonight I am spending the night with one of the thirty families who have moved
here to the Lowell neighborhood of Fresno. It would be amazing if that many families
ever moved to Homewood. But the work of community transformation is not just about
outsiders moving in. It is also about insiders, the people who already live in the
neighborhood, also working together to improve everything. My roommate for the week
is Keith. He is a youth pastor from Florida. We have had a good time getting to know one
another, and I am looking forward to a great week with all of my new friends.
It is great to finally spend some extended time here in Fresno with Dr. White. I
am really looking forward to this week. Things have been very intense in Pittsburgh over
the past couple of months, so this is a much needed break from the day to day life of
urban ministry in my context. Randy’s introduction to Fresno was somewhat of a repeat
for me because I have spent previous time with him, but, yet, I still learned a great deal
from thoughts that I have not previously heard. Randy is a lifelong learner, and he is
constantly adapting to new ideas and challenges that he experiences as a part of his work
as an urban practitioner. That is why he has so many different thoughts about complex
issues that are facing modern cities. I hope to be able to learn and reflect like that as I go
through this Doctor of Ministry program and for many years beyond the completion of
this degree.
I was once again encouraged that there are so many different people taking this
class with me. This course has students from many different parts of America, Thailand,

18
and even as far away as Ethiopia. We also have students at many different stages of the
graduate education journey, so there are many perspectives represented here. As I looked
through the syllabus for this week, I noticed that we will be traveling to many different
parts of Fresno and learning from a wide variety of leaders. This is a significant reason
why I enrolled in this course. I know that transformation did not happen in Fresno simply
because of one dynamic leader, but many people and organizations worked together
toward common goals. What leaders will I meet this week? What surprises will God have
for us? I cannot wait to find out.
I am already planning to apply what I learned today about the three principles of
urban ministry. I am definitely committed to being over my head most of the time in
Homewood. I am committed to bringing what I do have to the table, and not being
paralyzed by indecision. And, I am committed to learning what I do not know about
urban ministry in Pittsburgh. There are many things that I do not know about Homewood,
but I am working hard to learn the community. One thing that I’m learning is that God
seems to set up divine appointments with people who can teach me things about
Homewood when I have an attitude of humility and I am intentional about learning more
from my context. This concept will be especially important now that I am leading a new
campus of North Way in the east end of the city. I definitely need to make sure that I do
not arrive on the scene thinking that I somehow have all of the answers. I have been
called to lead in the neighborhood, but my first steps in the community are important. I
need to apply the principles of urban ministry that I learned about today in Fresno.
Day 2: March 15, 2011

19
Wow! What a day! This morning started out at Randy White’s home. From there,
we walked all around the Lowell neighborhood. We met strategic neighbors. They are
folks who moved to Lowell to help transform the community while living in Christian
community with one another. Our walking tour of the neighborhood was encouraging and
discouraging at the same time. I saw many signs of hope and also many signs of need.
Many Christian community developers have been working in Lowell for the past twenty
years or so, and there is still so much to be done. That is why it is so important for people
working in inner city communities to understand the nature of the process, and not
necessarily obsessing about outcomes. It is important to learn from mistakes, and plenty
of mistakes are made. It is also important to learn from what is working, and do our best
to replicate those efforts. Still, the work takes time.
There are many signs of need in Fresno. Today we experienced the ramifications
of extreme poverty, prostitutes, boarded up homes, violence, graffiti, spiritual warfare,
mental illness, homelessness, drug addiction, gang activity, immigration, and much more.
I saw many signs of hope, such as amazing collaboration, strategic partnerships,
missional churches, tutoring programs, computer and job training, youth centers, new
playgrounds, and community gardens. The BGU courses really do a great job of exposing
urban ministry leaders to the realities of the urban lab. I see many similarities with my
neighborhood in Pittsburgh, and also many differences.
Christian community development is a process that empowers a community to
achieve increasing levels of shalom. Shalom has a broad meaning, and it would be
impossible to find one single English language word to describe it. It involves the health
of a community on many different levels. Anybody who wants to make a difference in

20
their city must first have their heart break for what is going on there. Just like we did a
walking tour of a city today, Paul did a walking tour in Athens and it helped him to
understand the dynamics of the city. In my context in Pittsburgh, there are many people
who want to try to impact the city without taking the risk to go and walk around in the
struggling urban environments. Outsiders can only help so much. People must take the
time to enter into the context that they want to impact when it comes to transforming
cities.
Today was incredible! To think, the last time I was in Fresno I was in the high
places playing professional football at Selland Arena, earning a Masters Degree at Fresno
State University, and hanging out with friends in the nice and clean affluent parts of
town. For the past couple of days, I have intentionally gone to parts of Fresno that many
people try to avoid. I spent today in parts of the city that experience extreme poverty, and
I would not trade the experience for any of the things I experienced when I was here in
my twenties.
What are the systems in Pittsburgh that are undermining shalom? There are
breakdowns in a lot of systems in Pittsburgh that contribute to cycles of poverty and
brokenness. The government does some good things, but they also contribute to
problems. There are some great things about the school district in Pittsburgh, but there
are also many problems that they are working hard to reform. The steel industry leaving
Pittsburgh led to a huge break down in the economic systems that still impact life today.
Again, people are working hard to adjust but the process takes time and people in power
are not always willing to upset the status quo. There are plenty of slumlords in
Homewood, people that are trying to make money on real estate while crushing and

21
taking advantage of the poor. A lot of the slumlords in Homewood actually live in places
like New York or California, but they also live in affluent parts of Pittsburgh. I wonder if
slumlords go to their churches on Sunday morning and tithe off of the income they make
off the backs of the people they oppress in Homewood. And some churches contribute to
the systemic break downs in Pittsburgh by avoiding complex urban problems, running
away from the issues, or actually endorsing the oppressive structures that keep people
living in cycles of poverty. Thankfully, there are some churches and Christians in general
who care about the shalom of the city and are engaging in meaningful efforts to restore
the community to health. Christians sin when they fail to act when it comes to injustices
and systemic oppression.
I learned some great ideas from the ministry Street Saints with regard to helping
parents get involved in the work that is affecting their children. Also, they started a
recording studio because so many kids want to rap. But, if the kids want to use the
recording studio they are not allowed to go in there and say anything they want. They
have to write the raps out before they record, and if they cannot write then tutors are
available to help them. They have to learn how to use the equipment, and also learn how
to take care of it all. In the end, the kids get to rap, but it is also an educational experience
that empowers them and teaches them responsibility and the power of positive words. In
Homewood, the kids are always asking me to record them rapping. Now, I have a
strategy for how to make the experience more transformational for the kids than just
mixing beats and trying not to curse in my living room. It is going to be fun to try when I
get back.
Day 3: March 16, 2011

22
This morning we started the day by debriefing about the previous day’s
experiences. We talked for a while about the concept of mission drift, which occurs when
people involved in missional activity begin to lose their focus because the needs in
communities become so overwhelming. It could also happen when organizations pursue
funding that might not be related to their mission, but they go after it anyway because
they need the resources so desperately. Collaboration with other organizations helps us to
avoid mission drift. Partnerships are also important because often silos develop in
Christian ministry. It happens because a passionate Christian leader builds an
organization around a cause, they begin to compete with other organizations for
resources, and suddenly all of those organizations isolate themselves from others in order
to survive. The silo philosophy is unhealthy in organizations and churches.
The issue of desperation came up multiple times today. The basic thinking there is
that in cities, the problems are often hidden to people. City and church leaders are often
unwilling to act until they have reached a point of desperation, which generates the
passion needed to mobilize help. For instance, the issue of urban blight is not an issue to
many business owners until the blight starts moving toward their businesses. Suddenly,
they have a new interest in how to deal with complex urban issues. For people like me
who are charged with coming alongside Christians to encourage them to get involved in
the city, a big part of my role involves helping people to see how desperate things are in
Homewood and in other parts of the city. Our hearts must break before we can act.
We spent some time today with the director of planning and revitalization of the
city of Fresno, Keith Bergthold, a pastor named Eli Loera who heads up a pastors cluster
that organizes nearly 200 pastors, the F.U.N.D. organization that works on housing in

23
Fresno, and Hope Now For Youth which is an organization that reaches out to youth in
gangs to provide jobs. We also stopped by the house of H Spees, vice president of
Leadership Foundations of America, who lectured for a little while about the dynamics of
cities and his experiences in the urban transformation of Fresno.
All of the site visits today were valuable. I was probably most impacted by the
visit to Hope Now for Youth. We heard several testimonies of staff members working
there about how they were able to escape the gang life and join mainstream society as
productive workers with solid family lives. I would have liked to have stayed there to
learn more about what they are doing, but perhaps I will have to contact them at some
point down the road.
The time spent with Keith Bergthold was extremely insightful. He spoke a lot
about how much the world is changing, and how Christians should be prepared to
respond to the new complexities associated with urbanization and globalization. He feels
that most of the systems, or institutions, in America have become too big and slow
moving, so they are less and less able to meet peoples’ needs. If we would have had more
time there, I would have asked him to unpack that statement a little bit. For instance,
many parts of federal, state, and local governments have experienced financial distress
recently and they are cutting services. How can the church step in effectively to fill in
where the government services were cut? Is that an opportunity for the church, or will
people view those issues as burdens that the churches who are struggling themselves
might not be able to have the capacity to take on?
I have seen how mission drift has impacted my work in Homewood. Our central
focus should be on mentoring, but the kids and families have so many needs sometimes

24
that I often end up getting pulled into many different unexpected directions. While a
certain degree of flexibility is to be admired in urban ministry, it should not take us off of
the mission to which we have been called.
When I return to Pittsburgh, I need to learn more about which networks of
Christian leaders are gathering together regularly so that I could possibly join in with
them. I know that there is a legacy of pastors and Christian leaders gathering together
through organizations such as Serving Leaders and Pittsburgh Youth Network. I am sure
I will be able to find some leads. One thing that the leader of the pastors cluster shared
with us today was that they do not just pray and socialize when they get together. They
all have issues that they bring to the table, and they work hard at taking on those issues
together. I have been to “collaborative” gatherings of leaders in Pittsburgh before where I
basically showed up and the person who organized the meeting talked for the whole time
while we all sat and listened to their vision. Those types of meetings are not really
sustainable over a very long period of time. For that matter, I need to examine how I
structure collaborative gatherings when I pull leaders together. There is a fine line
between providing solid leadership and bogging people down with my own agenda.
Day 4: March 17, 2011
Today we spent most of the morning with relocators, or what Randy White calls
strategic neighbors. These are folks who have moved into the Lowell Neighborhood in
Fresno over the past twenty years. Each of them moved to the neighborhood for different
reasons, but they all share the same common bond of seeking God’s shalom in the city.
They meet together as neighbors each week in order to develop community with one
another. They work on improving the neighborhood together. I enjoyed hearing so many

25
different perspectives on incarnational ministry. It was encouraging for me to hear about
how other people seem to handle crazy neighborhood situations and boundaries with kids
and people who stop by to visit all the time.
This afternoon we ate lunch at the No Name Fellowship, a gathering of Christian
leaders from all over the city of Fresno. The police chief gave a great presentation about
how the church and faith-based community can support the work of the police. After that,
we visited a pastor named Jeff Harrington who leads a multicultural church in Fresno that
is doing many great things to impact the community. Around 35 percent of the people
attending the church are Hispanic, 35 percent are Caucasian, 15 percent are African-
American, and 15 percent are Asian-American. He talked to us for a while about how to
be intentional about diversity in the church. For our last stop in the day we visited the
Mayor of Fresno, Ashley Swearingen. She is a strong Christian, and she shared with us
about how God works through her to steward resources and influence on behalf of the
people living in the city. It was a great opportunity to hear about faith and power in the
public square.
One of the unique things about BGU is that they intentionally expose students to
many different types of people in many different types of positions in society. The stories
of the incarnational leaders we met this morning were very powerful, and I also learned a
great deal from the police chief and mayor. No matter what position God has placed us in
life, we all have the ability to either be good stewards or poor stewards. The work that the
mayor is doing in “powerful” places is just as valuable as the work that relocators are
doing in “powerless” places. Transformational leaders are able to build bridges between

26
the powerless and the powerful, and I met several significant transformational leaders
today.
In terms of some things that were unexpected, the No Name Fellowship was not
quite as collaborative as I had expected. The police chief gave an inspiring speech, and a
passionate appeal for the faith community to become more involved with the police, but
his invitation to help was largely open ended. Randy explained to us afterward that the
No Name Fellowship meetings are generally much more collaborative and productive
than that, but on this particular occasion we got to see how sometimes meetings can be
well-intentioned without the results that could have been achieved.
Also, this morning at Youth for Christ we heard a presentation about how they
reach urban kids in Fresno. They were doing some great programming to reach kids, but
some of the programs seemed to be manipulative in terms of evangelization. For instance,
every Saturday morning they do a youth sports outreach that is informal and open to any
kids from the neighborhood. Lots of kids show up, and they play games for about an hour
or so. Then, they tell the kids that if they want to eat lunch then they have to stay and sit
through a gospel message. The kids have the option to leave before the message is given,
but they are not permitted to eat lunch. I have no problem with sharing Christ with kids,
but there was just something about that particular strategy that seemed overly
manipulative to me when they tied it to the lunch.
I learned several things today that I would like to apply in Pittsburgh. For
instance, many people who know me know that I am very interested in cross-cultural
church. I think that the church should be out in front of culture when it comes to figuring
out how to be more racially and socioeconomically diverse. Instead, the church is usually

27
dragging their feet and seemingly remaining segregated without much thought to how
churches could be more diverse. Jeff Harrington’s church inspired me because it is an
example that it can be done. If Christian leaders are intentional about reaching diverse
groups of people, then it can be accomplished. Of course, there is much more to it than
that, and each context is different. Still, I want to keep trying to figure out cross-cultural
church in the urban lab of Pittsburgh.
Also, in the No Name Fellowship I saw an example of how Christian leaders
across many different sectors and institutions in a big city can come together with the
commonality of Christ to work toward the holistic transformation of the community. In
Pittsburgh, I am going to be much more intentional about joining with other Christians to
work toward the shalom of my city. Collaboration and partnership is the key when it
comes to change, but leadership is required for those things to happen. Perhaps God is
calling me to become more involved in leadership in mobilizing city leaders in
Pittsburgh. We will have to see where all of this leads!
Day 5: March 18, 2011
This morning we visited with Dina Gonzales-Pina from Fresno Pacific University.
She is the director of spiritual development at the university, and she also is involved in
leading a scholarship program that helps the children of undocumented immigrants to
attend the school. We met one of the scholars and got to hear about her journey. Then
Dina talked to us for a while about the issue of immigration in America. She is a big
advocate for helping to find a sensible path to citizenship for the 12 million
undocumented immigrants and their families living in America. Our group discussed

28
comprehensive immigration reform for a while, and a lot of the policy changes that were
recommended seemed to make sense.
Next we went to the Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministry, or F.I.R.M.,
an organization that serves the large refugee population in Fresno that has entered the San
Joaquin Valley because of the agricultural economic opportunities. A large Hmong and
Laotian refugee community of over 30,000 people live in the area. F.I.R.M. supports
refugees and provides services to help them adjust to life in a new culture. We visited
with some refugees at the center who were in an English language class, and I helped a
few people with a project they were working on. After that we ate a traditional Laotian
meal, and we even participated in a Laotian dance together. I must admit that I just do not
have any dance skills!
In the afternoon we went to Evangelicals for Social Action and Love, Inc. They
work in the area to collaborate with churches and help Christians to become involved in
transforming their communities by loving the city. Love, Inc. serves as a clearinghouse
for churches with people that come to them to meet material needs. The churches refer
individuals to Love, Inc., where they are screened to make sure the needs are legitimate.
They then cooperate with the churches to provide care and aftercare for the individuals. It
was a unique way for churches to have a resource that helps them to serve people in need
more effectively.
In the evening the Fresno City Summit started, and we had the opportunity to hear
from Noel Castellanos who is the president of a national organization called the Christian
Community Development Association. He was a very dynamic speaker who motivated
the audience to get more involved in development work in their communities. He used a

29
lot of Scripture to provide a biblical foundation for Christians to become active in
reaching people outside the walls of their churches. We also networked with Christian
leaders from all over Fresno who are interested in making a difference in Fresno.
The immigration discussion at Fresno Pacific was probably one of the most
compelling parts of this day. The immigration issue is very polarizing politically in the
United States. My position is that I think that our demonstration of the love of God
trumps any government policies that are currently in place. In other words, even if people
have come to the United States illegally, they still deserve to be loved as neighbors and
children of God. Then, when it comes to policy, I am a supporter of comprehensive
immigration reform that provides a path to citizenship that makes sense. I am not an
advocate of amnesty, nor am I an advocate of mass deportation of millions of people or
building a bigger wall between the United States and Mexico. Comprehensive
immigration reform understands that the current immigration system is broken and has
been broken for a long time.
The immigration issue is not a neutral issue for churches in America. We should
get involved to help bring about solutions to the modern complexities involving
stakeholders. The important thing for me is that, in Pittsburgh, we should not lose sight of
the stories of how families are being impacted by the brokenness of the current system.
Actually meeting and spending time with undocumented people in Pittsburgh, just like
we did in Fresno, would go a long way in helping to shape my capacity as a leader on
comprehensive immigration reform.
When I return to Pittsburgh, I plan to investigate whether or not my city has a
system like Love, Inc. to help churches meet needs without causing harm and

30
dependency. I do not know if a clearinghouse for specific requests exists in Pittsburgh or
not. If something like that does exist, I would love to connect North Way with that
resource. If it does not exist, it would be great to get some churches on board to get
something like that going in our region.
Day 6: March 19, 2011
Today we started by discussing our class projects for this course. Everyone shared
about their project ideas, and the topics being considered should lead to a lot of good
work in cities all around the world. I am planning to write about the concept of
transformational mentoring based on the eight transformational leadership perspectives of
Bakke Graduate University. I will incorporate much of what we have learned in Fresno
this week into the final project for this course.
After our time of discussing projects, we attended the rest of the Fresno City
Summit. Noel Castellanos from CCDA shared about what it means to love a city from a
Latino theological perspective. It is always great to hear from so many different types of
leaders, and Noel’s thoughts really helped me to see Christian community development
from a different perspective. For the remainder of the day I attended workshops about
different methods of community development that should prove to be useful with some of
the things I am involved with in Pittsburgh.
The city summit was good, although many of the concepts were basic. That was
intentional, however, because the leaders who organized the event wanted to set it up as
an onramp for Christians who are interested in reaching people in their city. They wanted
to involve young people in the event, and from what I experienced they managed to hit
their target audience. I met young people from all over the city of Fresno who had some

31
great ideas about how they could impact their communities and neighborhoods. Randy
had told us ahead of time that the material would be pretty basic, so I paid attention to
how the event was organized and how I could set up this type of event back in Pittsburgh.
I learned about some great ideas.
In terms of application to my context, I was really able to gain an understanding
of asset-based community development from the time that I spent in the workshops. That
methodology involves building on the assets in troubled communities instead of on needs
and problems. For instance, in Homewood there are many needs that I see as I spend time
in the neighborhood interacting with people. But, there are also many assets in
Homewood. The kids are resilient and resourceful. Homewood has a great library that is a
tremendous resource for the community. The Homewood-Brushton YMCA is a huge
asset, and I have been involved in basketball outreach there on Tuesday and Thursday
nights (my wife, Julie, and I also work out there because it is one of the best work out
facilities in Pittsburgh). The Faison Primary School is a huge asset in Homewood because
it is a relatively new building that serves as a hub of activity for the community. I am so
thankful for the partnership that North Way has with the Faison Schools through LAMP,
and even our mentoring matches serve as assets in the community. There are many assets
that can be discovered and built upon in Homewood, and I am looking forward to being
involved in that work for a long time.
This course in Fresno has been amazing! I will miss all of my new friends and
colleagues, but I am also ready to see my family and friends back in Pittsburgh. God is
moving in Fresno, but he is also moving in many remarkable ways in Pittsburgh. The
transformation in Pittsburgh is a fun thing to be a part of, because I get to watch God do

32
things that only he can do. I am leaving California refreshed and energized. I am ready to
jump back into the good work that is going on. I am ready to love my city!

CHAPTER 3
TRANSFORMATIONAL MENTORING
Bakke Graduate University has eight leadership perspectives that are a significant
part of every course. The perspectives are calling-based leadership, incarnational
leadership, reflective leadership, servant leadership, contextual leadership, global
leadership, shalom leadership, and prophetic leadership. Through this urban immersion
course in Fresno, I had the opportunity to witness first hand how transformational leaders
impact complex urban environments by implementing each of the various leadership
perspectives at different times depending on what is needed in certain contexts. In
contemplating how I might apply what I have learned in Fresno to my context in
Homewood, it became apparent to me that these same eight leadership perspectives might
also be applied to help make faith-based mentoring more effective in Pittsburgh. Hence,
the purpose of this project is to examine how the eight perspectives of transformational
leadership at Bakke Graduate University inform the practices of faith-based mentoring as
a means of transforming the lives of at-risk youth. The eight leadership perspectives
could enhance faith-based mentoring relationships so that both mentors and mentees
experience exponential development in their lives. This concept could be described as
transformational mentoring.
Research Methods
I chose two methods of research for this project. First, I have documented the past
five years of mentoring experiences that I have had with my own LAMP mentees in the
33

34
Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The Learning and Mentoring Partnership, or
LAMP, is a faith-based mentoring initiative in Pittsburgh that matches churches with
public schools for the sake of matching mentors with at-risk youth. Formal
documentation of my matches has occurred through regular, monthly reports to my
mentoring supervisor, and I have also documented my mentoring experiences through
journal entries in my blog. In this project, each mentee, or group of mentees, represents a
different case study with regard to the examination of transformational mentoring.
Second, North Way Christian Community has matched over 200 mentors with LAMP
mentees in Homewood over the past five years. I sent a questionnaire out electronically
to all active LAMP mentors from North Way. Overall around 40 percent of the active
LAMP mentors at North Way completed the survey about transformational mentoring for
this project, so I was able to gain unique insight into faith-based mentoring. Each section
of this project represents an overview of the eight perspectives on transformational
mentoring, including a broad definition of the type of mentoring supported by reading
materials for this course, case studies from my personal mentoring experiences, and
interpretation of the results from the mentor survey.
Calling-based Mentoring
The calling-based leader “seeks to understand God-given gifts, experiences, and
opportunities in understanding his/her unique role as a called instrument of Christ’s
transforming work in and above world cultures.”1
Calling-based mentors are committed
to spending time with their mentees in spite of the outcomes of the relationship because
mentoring is something that God has called them to see through to the finish. When the
calling to mentor comes from and is sustained by Christ, the mentoring becomes even
1
Randy White, Urban Field Experience-Fresno Course Syllabus, 2.

35
more transformational for both the mentor and the mentee because the match lasts longer
and the mentor may be more resilient to persevere when the match experiences struggles.
Calling plays an important role in the lives of Christians. Mentoring is about one
adult spending quality time with one child. Entire churches may not be called to get
involved in mentoring, but individuals can be called. Robert Lupton concedes that “the
church as an institution must be vested in its own self-preservation; otherwise it would
not survive. The church universal, on the other hand, survives only by giving itself away.
If you would save your life, the Jesus principle goes, you will lose it. But if you lose it for
my sake, then will you find it. I suspect that an institution can’t do that. Only people.”2
Mentoring high risk youth is a difficult undertaking, especially when one
considers that most matches are cross-cultural. Mentoring costs us something. That is
why we must be called to it. Calling can make all of the difference between a match
closing and a long-term transformational relationship. “When we build relationships with
people who are in some way oppressed by life, when we work with the powerless,
marginalized and exploited to form themselves into people of power, and when we
embrace with them the values of a just, equitable and relational culture, we are
participating in resurrection power. We are sharing in the resurrection of individuals and
their neighborhood, community or city. That is the spirituality of relational power.”3
Faith-based mentoring is a wonderful example of relational power at work.
LAMP mentors are called to go into complex urban environments in order to
build relationships with high risk youth, regardless of whether or not they are familiar
with cities. This work is characteristic of a movement of Christians around the world who
2
Robert Lupton, Renewing The City (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 214.
3
Robert Linthicum, Transforming Power (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 190.

36
are being called to cities. “The city needs a growing cadre of young leaders – both
college and graduate students as well as those already in the marketplace – who will link
their skills, their privileges and their sense of well-being to the well-being of the city. In
today’s globalized world, to shape the city is to shape the way people experience life
itself.”4
Mentoring is an incredible way for Christians to invest in the life of a city, and it
is a calling from a biblical perspective. All throughout Scriptures, God has given us
examples of how we should give ourselves away to others through the building of
meaningful relationships. “Any approach to ministry that involves the church should be
based on a biblical theological foundation. Mentoring is certainly not a new approach to
training. It has clear roots in the Old and New Testaments.”5
Just as in any other part of
life, mentors can search the Bible for inspiration to keep them going in a committed
mentoring relationship.
A Case Study in Calling-based Mentoring: Rafael
Rafael was referred to the LAMP program five years ago by several staff
members at his school in Homewood. When I first met him I noticed that he had
significant anger issues, his grades were terrible, and he was extremely disruptive at
school. He did not have a relationship with his father who is serving a life sentence in
prison for murder. The other male influences in his life, his older brother and his uncle,
were both heavily involved in gang activity and drug dealing. Mentoring Rafael was
rough for the first couple of years. Sometimes we would connect and enjoy one another’s
company, and sometimes his anger would escalate and he would try to sabotage our
4
Randy White, Encounter God in the City (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 17.
5
Harvey Conn and Manuel Ortiz, Urban Ministry (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001),
430.

37
relationship. He did not know how to respond to a positive male role model in his life,
and I did not really know how to respond to him. We both thought about ending the
relationship many times. I think I stuck with this match because I knew God had called
me to be Rafael’s mentor.
Our relationship changed when Rafael accepted Christ. He was able to turn over a
great deal of his pain and anger to the Lord, and I actually started to see a bright future
for him. I could see Christ shining through in the midst of extreme brokenness. During
our third year together, Rafael and his family had to flee the state because of his brother’s
drug debts. His brother and his uncle were murdered within one week of each other.
When he moved back to Pittsburgh, the first phone call he made was to me. He started
calling me every day, and I made sure to spend a lot of time with him considering
everything he was going through. This was quite a strain, but it was something I was
definitely called to do. God is slowly healing his heart, and I know God is working
through me to reach him. If I viewed mentoring as just another program, then I am sure
that I would have quit on Rafael long ago. However, I know that mentoring Rafael is
much more than participation in a program to mentor high risk youth. I have been called
to build a long term relationship with him as one of the only positive male role models in
his life. That is indeed a high calling.
LAMP Mentor Survey Results: Calling-based Mentoring
In the survey given to current LAMP mentors, 95 percent of LAMP mentors
surveyed expressed a strong calling to be become a mentor. A strong calling from God is
what might separate faith-based mentoring programs from traditional mentoring

38
programs over time. Good citizenship should inform our decision to become a mentor,
but in the long run a calling from God to mentor may be more powerful than a decision to
simply volunteer in the community. Mentoring high risk youth can be extremely difficult,
and without a strong calling a mentor would have a tough time maintaining a match over
time.
There were no significant variances in the survey responses that would indicate
that the mentees felt that their mentors were called to spend time with them. This might
be because LAMP mentors do not spend a whole lot of time talking to their mentees
about their calling. As a support person for the mentors at North Way, I should encourage
the mentors to talk to their mentees more about their calling to mentor. Many high risk
youth experience poverty in which they often go through their lives in reaction mode. It is
hard to think about giving back to other people when you are living in reaction mode.
Through mentoring, mentors are role modeling for their mentees how God calls us to do
hard things sometimes in order to fulfill an important role in God’s mission to redeem the
world. A strong calling from the Lord provides great purpose and meaning in our lives,
and mentors have the opportunity to help their mentees understand how a person can live
out a calling in life.
Incarnational Mentoring
The incarnational leader “pursues shared experiences, shared plights, shared
hopes, in addition to shared knowledge and tasks.”6
Incarnational mentors intentionally
spend a significant amount of time with their mentees in the mentee’s neighborhood and
6

39
environment. Many mentoring programs encourage the mentors to take the kids out of
their neighborhood because those neighborhoods are perceived to be bad. Mentors are
encouraged to give their mentees new life experiences by trying new things. This may
include such things as sporting events, museums, going to the mentor’s home in a
different neighborhood, and many other new experiences for the mentee. While it is
important to show kids new things, mentors should be careful not to reinforce the concept
that for mentees to have a good life, they must escape their dysfunctional home life or
neighborhood in order to make it. In the minds of the children, the “good life” then
becomes “out there” somewhere in a place that is definitely not to be discovered in their
own environment.
An incarnational mentor spends time with their mentees in their context, helping
them to have a positive vision for their lives within their own surroundings. Just as Jesus
entered into many messy situations, so we as mentors who follow Christ should also be
willing to meet our mentees where they are. High risk youth do not need to be rescued
from their environments, as tempting as that may be for the mentor. They may choose to
leave their neighborhoods one day, but they also have a need to be developed as leaders
who may contribute back into the community. There are always assets that can be built
upon in blighted urban neighborhoods, and the young people in those communities may
be the biggest assets to future generations. The leader in the LAMP mentoring initiative
in Pittsburgh is the Pittsburgh Public Schools. Pittsburgh Public Schools is a large, urban
school district, and a healthy school system is an important part of any community or
city. Through LAMP, churches can help to make sure that Pittsburgh has a healthier
public school district. This is an example of what Ray Bakke calls common grace in the

40
city. “Common grace includes a transit system, a health-care system, and educational
system, or a sewer system. The city is a gift of common grace.”7
A healthy urban school
district and a healthy city of Pittsburgh in general are mutually beneficial for both urban
and suburban Christians. LAMP mentors engage culture by becoming incarnational
leaders in the midst of broken, urban systems.
When mentors spend time with mentees in their mentee’s community, they begin
to have a shared hope that the neighborhood will be transformed. Christian mentors can
have profound hope in the midst of difficult circumstances, and they can readily share
that hope with their mentees. “Hope proclaims – against all the relentless claims that a
meaningful future is not possible, and against the constant agonies of suffering – that
because of the cross and the resurrection, tomorrow can be different from today. This is
the work of the Spirit of life, who draws all of us toward the renewal of life.”8
Life for
many LAMP mentees is a profound struggle to thrive in the midst of poverty, and
incarnational mentors are able to help their mentees find hope in the midst of brokenness.
Incarnational mentors are also able to invite mentees into their own context in order for
their mentees to experience new things, just as they are also able to enter incarnationally
into their mentee’s context in order to learn from their mentees. “Whole-life relationships
must go both ways. Just as we enter into the everyday life of others, we should also allow
others to see our daily life and family interaction.”9
A Case Study in Incarnational Mentoring: Tyran
7
Ray Bakke and John Sharpe, Street Signs (Birmingham: New Hope Publishers, 2006), 113.
8
Mark Gornik, To Live in Peace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2002), 234.
9
440.

41
Tyran is a sixteen year old mentee in the LAMP program. He lives in Homewood,
and he is essentially homeless because he bounces around from house to house finding
shelter with various friends and relatives. He is resourceful, resilient, creative, and he has
a great outgoing personality that attracts people to him as a leader. In the past, Tyran has
used those natural leadership skills in negative ways in order to meet his own needs. At
one point he sold drugs, stole property, and vandalized vacant buildings. He led other
kids in the neighborhood to get caught up in those things. Since Tyran spends so much
time walking around his neighborhood, and bouncing around between friends, he comes
into contact with many men in his neighborhood who have sought to involve him in
leadership in the local gangs. He has seemingly constant pressure on him to sell and use
drugs, simply because so many of his friends and relatives are fully immersed in the drug
culture in Homewood.
When I first started mentoring Tyran, it was nearly impossible to keep up with
him on a weekly basis. He missed a lot of school, so it was never a sure bet that he was
going to be there on our mentoring days for me to pick him up. He did not have a cell
phone, and there was no way to reach him by phone at any of the houses that he
commonly slept at. Dropping him off after the mentoring time was another significant
challenge. He seemed to want to be dropped off at a different house every week. It has
always been my practice as a mentor to make sure the mentees actually make it into their
houses after I drop them off, and with Tyran he would often be turned away from the
houses he asked me to try to take him to. Eventually somebody would end up taking him
in, but there was rarely any consistency in his life.

42
Two significant breakthroughs happened in my mentoring relationship with
Tyran. First, he was able to get a cell phone so that when I needed to contact him he
would be available to tell me where I could find him. It was still difficult to track him
down, though, so the second breakthrough happened when I moved to Homewood. Tyran
was now able to walk to my house, which helped us tremendously in being more
consistent with spending time together. As an incarnational mentor, I also tried to be
more intentional about finding him in his neighborhood and spending time with him
there. We started utilizing the Homewood YMCA. My goal was simply to spend time
with Tyran in his context as much as I could so that I could connect with him more often.
That strategy really paid off. He has shown remarkable progress with his life. He is doing
well in school, staying out of trouble, and he has accepted Christ into his life.
LAMP Mentor Survey Results: Incarnational Mentoring
In the survey, 58 percent of LAMP mentors did not spend any time in their
mentee’s neighborhood, while 16 percent of the mentors frequently spend time in their
mentee’s neighborhood. Incarnational mentors spend time with their mentees in the
mentees’ neighborhood, so this is an area that could definitely be emphasized and
improved upon in the LAMP program. Just like Jesus, incarnational mentors are willing
to go into places where many people are unwilling to go. American cultural Christianity
may encourage Christians to withdraw from society and culture, setting up what may be
considered a Christian bubble of sorts. When we isolate ourselves from people in need,
we end up running in the complete opposite direction of Christ’s call to serve hurting
people in their own context just as he did.

43
There were no significant indicators of whether mentees spent a lot of time in
their mentor’s neighborhood. School-based mentors spend time with their mentees in the
school building, so it would be impossible for those mentees to spend time in their
mentor’s neighborhood. One-to-one and family-to-one mentors have the option to take
their mentees to their homes, but some of them actually do that often and some do not.
The survey findings showed that family-to-one mentors took their mentees to their homes
more often, and I would suggest that happens because it is simply more convenient and
less costly for family-to-one mentors to spend time with their mentees in the family home
as opposed to at sporting events or museums with additional costs. Another factor might
be the distance of the mentor’s home from where their mentee lives. In LAMP, many
mentors travel to Homewood from suburban or rural parts of Pittsburgh that can be thirty
to sixty minutes away. In that scenario, many of the mentors prefer to spend time with
their mentees in places closer to Homewood instead of driving all the way back to where
they live.
Reflective Mentoring
The reflective leader “lives in reality, reflects on its meaning, and catalyzes others
with the courage, symbols, and example to make meaning in their own lives.”10
Reflective mentors are able to move beyond programs and activities to focus mentoring
experiences on the meaning that is found within the relationship. Some mentors quit
because they do not feel like they are getting anything out of the program. Other mentors
quit because their mentees seem to be unresponsive or unappreciative of the mentoring
activities. Reflective mentors invest in the relationship by helping their mentees unpack
what they are experiencing during the time spent together. Reflective mentors also reflect
10

44
on the meaning of the mentoring experiences in terms of how God is intending for their
lives to be transformed according to His purposes. Sometimes God will require us to do
things that do not make sense at the time, and only upon reflection are we able to
understand God’s purposes. That is why it is so important for transformational mentors to
be reflective.
One of the best things about reflective mentoring is that it has the power to
accelerate transformation in the lives of the mentors. Many volunteers go into mentoring
thinking that they are going to change a child’s life, but along the journey the mentors are
drawn closer to Christ. In Churches that Make a Difference, the authors noted that “The
goal of the church’s holistic outreach is the transformation of people, communities, and
society for the glory of God. For God to work through us in this mission requires that we
first, and continually, allow him to transform us.”11
Sure, many mentees experience the
joys of transformation in their own lives, but the mentors experience it for sure. “Strange,
isn’t it, how we feel called to a mission of saving others, only to discover that the calling
ends up being at least as much about our own salvation?”12
Reflection is an absolutely critical component of effective mentoring. All mentors
carry with them many gaps in their worldview when they enter into the mentoring
relationship. “Deeply held prejudices and fears are often shaped over time, and therefore
time is required to dismantle them.”13
Thankfully, mentors make a commitment to
entering into a long term relationship so they have plenty of time to work through issues
that arise. That is why most mentors describe that they experience dramatic
11
Ron Sider, Churches That Make a Difference (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 142.
12
Robert Lupton, Renewing the City (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 240.
13
Randy White, Encounter God in the City (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 31.

45
transformation in their lives before their mentees experience transformation. In fact,
many mentees actually get worse once they are matched with a mentor. That is why
commitment is so important to mentoring, because God wants to work through us to help
us grow as we build an authentic relationship. Mentoring matches often fail because the
mentor enters into a superficial friendship with their mentee, and they never actually
engage and share their lives with the younger person. In order for a mentor to be
successful, “The mentor must enter into the life of the mentoree. The mentor cannot be
distant. A friend in biblical terms is one who becomes a soul partner, one who shares
intimately with another. This is very difficult for many who have never learned to
develop friendship. Friends need each other; friends are willing to confess to each other;
friends have conflict but are willing to reconcile; friends are vulnerable to each other;
friends learn from each other; friends never allow for superior-inferior dimensions. This
is a very supportive role for both as they engage in the mentoring process.”14
A Case Study in Reflective Mentoring: Andrew and Tyree
Just like any group of people in society, high risk youth have a wide variety of
unique personalities. Hence, some LAMP mentees are extremely outgoing, some are
extremely introverted, and others are every other type of personality in between. Andrew
is an example of a mentee who happens to be extremely extroverted. He talks a lot, and
when he is with a group of kids he is usually the conversation starter and center of
attention. One of Andrew’s best friends, Tyree, is introverted. He does not talk very
14
441.

46
much, although every once in a while in a group setting he will jump in with a comment.
For the past three years I have served as a school-based mentor to Andrew and Tyree. I
try to be intentional about spending one on one mentoring time with each of them, but I
also like to spend time with them together during lunch time at their school.
Reflection is a crucial component of the time that I spend with both Andrew and
Tyree. Since Andrew is so outgoing, he verbally processes through the experiences that
happen to him in his life. If he is having family problems or struggles with his
relationships at school, when he spends time with me he just starts running on and on
about those issues. I listen to what he is saying, and I help him to reflect on what he is
dealing with in his life. I ask him reflective questions that make him think more deeply.
We often stumble upon teachable moments when I practice reflective mentoring with
him. On the other hand, if I did not pay attention during my time with Tyree we would
probably go months without having any meaningful reflection time about life. So, I ask
him open ended questions to help him to reflect about the meaning of the things he
experiences. The quality mentoring moments can be discovered with enough
intentionality on my part as the mentor. If I viewed our mentoring relationship as simply
a program or a way to give back to the community, as many mentoring programs do, I
might have become frustrated with both of these mentoring matches and given up
prematurely. Instead, I discovered that proactive reflective mentoring has led to a more
transformational mentoring experience for both mentors and mentees.
Beyond helping mentees to reflect, it is also important for mentors to reflect on
how the mentoring experience might be transforming their own lives. When we give
ourselves away to others in service for Christ, we are stretched in many good ways.

47
Without reflection, as mentors, we might become overwhelmed by the match pressures.
Although mentors should not try to control the outcomes of the match, mentors can be
more or less effective depending on their own consistent behavior over time. Just as with
any long term relationship, change is necessary over time. Reflective mentors navigate
the ever changing dynamics of mentoring relationships with high risk youth because they
regularly assess how they are connecting with their mentee.
LAMP Mentor Survey Results: Reflective Mentoring
The survey determined that 90 percent of LAMP mentors reflect often on their
mentoring experiences. This was one of the strongest findings in the survey. Since many
of the LAMP matches are cross-cultural and the mentees often experience intense
struggles in life, it is important for mentors to constantly examine how the matches are
progressing. Mentees change over time, and mentors change over time, so reflection is
necessary in order to navigate the changes involved in a long term mentoring
relationship. Often, experiences that may occur over the course of the relationship may
appear to be one way, but after reflection the mentor is able to see circumstances from a
different perspective. Reflection on the part of the mentors may open the door for the
Holy Spirit to speak into how mentors might impact their mentees.
About 60 percent of the mentors thought that their mentees reflected on the
meaning of the mentoring experiences only on occasion. This can be a frustrating part of
the mentoring process for the mentors. Many kids have a difficult time showing emotion
or engaging in the mentoring activities in more meaningful ways. When mentees seem to
behave in a more neutral way to the mentoring experiences, mentors might assume that

48
the mentees are disinterested or dissatisfied with how the match is progressing. To avoid
that type of frustration, mentors can help their mentees to reflect by asking good, open-
ended questions about activities or things that the mentee is going through in life. The
process requires a lot of active listening skills and patience on the part of the mentor, but
there is usually time for reflection during the mentoring time together. That is particularly
true for one-to-one mentors, who usually have a car ride back to the mentee’s house to
utilize for reflection time. While reflection is good, mentors should be careful to avoid
overwhelming their mentees with questions and advice. Sometimes mentees are not in a
place to open up about certain subjects, or they may just want to be quiet if they are
experiencing a lot of difficulties in life.
Servant Mentoring
The servant “leader’s behavior and priority is on servanthood first. In the style of
Jesus, the leader leads by serving and serves by leading.”15
Servant mentors become
involved in mentoring because they want to serve God, and as a result, serve their
mentees. There is no agenda to fix individuals through human efforts in servant
mentoring. It is often quite a sacrifice for busy adults to carve out time to spend with a
high risk youth, but servant mentors are successful because they understand that this is an
area of their lives where God is calling them to serve another person selflessly. Mentors
struggle when they enter into a match with a top-down mentality, as if they are going to
teach some troubled kid about how they might be able to lift themselves up by their
bootstraps and improve their lives with enough effort. The savior mentality is prominent
in many mentoring circles. Mentors think that if they try hard enough, and prescribe
enough good advice, that they can save their mentees from poverty. This type of thinking
15

49
almost always undermines the friendship, because nobody wants to be friends with
someone who is constantly trying to fix them according to their advice which may or may
not be applicable to their life. Mentors do not save their mentees. Only Jesus saves
mentees. And in following the model of Jesus’ servanthood to all, transformational
mentors will find that their matches are more effective when the mentors die to
themselves and serve as Christ served us.
Followers of Christ should always have a heart for serving the most vulnerable
people in society. “The most compelling motivation for compassion is faith in God.
People of faith reach out to others because they have received divine love and they share
it with others in gratitude. Those who do so enter into a reciprocal relationship that
changes not only the person who receives, but also the one who gives.”16
Clearly, God
desires for us to give ourselves away to one another. Mentoring is a great way to do just
that, and in doing so we help to establish authentic Christian community. “The Christian
faith envisions a communal life. Christ calls people to a life of sharing and caring in
community, and the church exists to facilitate this process.”17
A Case Study in Servant Mentoring: Catrell
Catrell was the first mentee I was matched with in Homewood. He had shown
some signs of being somewhat disruptive at his school, so the staff recommended him to
LAMP. For our first few months together, I was actually wondering why he needed a
mentor. His grades seemed to be good, and his behavior was not too bad relative to some
of the other boys I had met in his school. We met every week over the summer, and one
16
Barbara Elliot, Street Saints (West Conshohocken: Templeton Foundation Press, 2004), 255.
17
Charles Dahm, Parish Ministry in a Hispanic Community (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2004), 68.

50
of the things I noticed was that he never thanked me for spending time with him. When I
would drop him off at his apartment, he would just get out of the car and walk to his
house without ever looking back. When the school year started, I actually thought that my
influence on him was making him worse. He was suspended for nine days during that
fifth grade year of school, and his grades dropped dramatically from what they had been
before he was matched with me. I was not sure if he would want to go on for another year
when it came time for our one year celebration. I did not know if he enjoyed our time
together or not because he rarely showed any kind of appreciation. Still, I did not feel
released from our match. God had called me to mentor Catrell, and as a servant of the
Lord I was called to serve him with my time and energy. The second year of the match
was even worse. His grades dropped even more, and he was in danger of being held back
because of the number of days he was suspended that year. I still could not tell if he liked
having a mentor or not. I felt like a failure.
At one point during our third year together, Catrell got into a fight while playing
laser tag with one of the other boys in the LAMP program. I had to take him home, and
on the car ride to his house I remember thinking that it was not worth it to mentor him
anymore. It was just too much trouble. He was very upset with me for taking him home
after the fight, and he kept telling me, “I hate you. I hate this mentoring program. I never
want to see you again.” When we got to his house, he slammed the car door and stormed
into his house. I called my mentoring supervisor to explain what had happened, and I
informed her that this was probably the end of the match. It was apparent to me that
Catrell did not want anything to do with this relationship. In my mind, mentoring him
was a thankless task and it was only making him worse, anyway. A funny thing

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