Over the past few weeks Pastor Justin has been sharing with us some exciting opportunities to expand our church’s ministry, both inside and outside of our congregation, through this year’s Christmas Offering. We’ve heard about ministry opportunities with Redeemer City to City in Monterrey, Mexico; expanding our benevolence as we grow our Mercy Ministry; broadening our City Pres Kids and Youth and ministries both inside and outside the doors of our building; and expanding our Admin Team to help facilitate all of this. Exciting stuff!

This week, I want to share with you another opportunity that this year’s Christmas Offering is looking to support: Hope for the City ABQ. As a church, it’s our mission to be a faithful presence of the love of Jesus in the absences of our city. The gospel provides an unending fount of hope and healing for those who are experiencing the harmful effects of life lived in those absences. Part of living out our mission is to find specific ways to bring that gospel healing to our neighborhood.

Our neighborhood (87108) has a 34% below-poverty level income rate, a 42% local high school drop-out rate, as well as many ethnic and familial challenges. The absences that people are living in are many. Hope for the City ABQ would be a Christian non-profit that works with church-trained business and educational leaders to develop gospel-oriented mentoring programs that encompass life skills, educational development, as well as job training/placement co-operatives with local for-profit businesses. These mentorship programs would be specifically geared for the at-risk youth (16 & up) in our neighborhood.

Many of us have never experienced a non-flourishing life; a life where the entry-barriers are too high for us to surmount, where we don’t even realize that we can dream something and pursue that dream. The gospel provides hope in such darkness. The Church carries that hope forward into the darkness. Our prayer is that God will use Hope for the City ABQ to begin to break down some of those barriers, encourage bigger dreams, and see holistic flourishing take root in the young men and women of this neighborhood.

~ Rev. Daniel Gettemy