My patient wife had waited six years before she finally got the chance to live in her favorite city in the United States. The reason we moved to New Orleans was to pioneer a new kind of missions training school with YWAM. God has been stirring in our hearts over the past eight years a passion for the people inside of urban environments. So we partnered with urban guru Brad Stanley. Brad has been ministering with YWAM in Chicago for the past 28 years. Often times when we think of “urban missions” we tend to focus on the poor African American  kid with a needle in his arm and a shaky family life. While this is a true face of missions inside the city there’s another angle we often forget. The immigrant and the refugee; the faces that add diversity to the city. Which we are thankful for as two major fans of Thai food! In Chicago alone, over 176 immigrants move to the city each day. Out of that 176 more then 80 of them are from “unreached” or least evangelized nations. These are nations were U.S. Passports have trouble going or places that often times restrict and persecute Christians. Just within five miles of our YWAM campus in Chicago there are over 300k people. One out of three are foreign born, this means they weren’t born in the United States. This is diversity like we have never seen before, also a population migration greater then anything in history. With all of this information I’ve come to the understanding that urbanization offers an opportunity for evangelism like we have never seen before. I’m submitting to you that if we has the church in North America can see urbanization as gift to the church; then we will be able to reach hard to access nations and minister cross culturally daily.

Katrina, Brad, and I have now completed two successful UDTS’s over the past year. New Orleans was a perfect testing and developing location. Plus, the warm, relational culture of New Orleans created an open, but still challenging place to teach and learn evangelism. We saw God mend broken hearts, rescue youth from homelessness and drug abuse, we also saw God’s super natural healing ability heal people right in the middle of the French Quarter. I lead two eight week UDTS outreaches this past year. The first was to the Seven major cities of the United States. We ministered in Houston, Dallas, D.C., New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and LA. The second outreach we took the UDTS to Madrid and Barcelona Spain. It has been so encouraging and faith building seeing God move in young adults and overflowing into major urban cities.