Over a year ago myself and a group of Christian brothers boarded a plane for Dallas, Texas to visit Mercy Street. We had been strategically thinking and praying about how to begin a life on life mentoring program in inner city Birmingham and found out about Mercy Street in Dallas through Dr. Anthony Gordon who was mentoring myself and others. We spent a few days hanging out in Dallas learning from Trey Hill the Executive Director about how they run their program.
Most of the nights were spent talking and praying through how we could bring a program like Mercy Street into our own context of Birmingham. Upon our return we began meeting every few months trying to determine the best strategy for bringing a Christian mentoring program to our community. We included others in our discussion and researched the current mentoring programs already in our city.
What we came up with was the "ASPIRE Movement". Believing that the next generation of urban leaders will come from within the city we put together a structure that will allow us to begin ministering to our young people at an early age. We all agreed that a huge asset in our city is Evangelical Christians who desire more from their Christian life in the way of service.
As we continued discussions with others God led us to Impact Family Counseling where we met with George Casey the Executive Director. He immediately loved the concept and agreed to bring us under their banner as an arm of ministry. Thus the ASPIRE Movement was formed and our website was launched exactly one year to the date of when we visited Mercy Street. There has been much prayer and strategic meetings and while we still don't have all the answers we feel that we are equipped enough to begin placing mentors in the lives of 4th graders this September.
Stay tuned! We are believing God for supernatural favor as we try to reach the urban youth of Birmingham.
In Christ,
Urban Missionary
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