Neighborhood Ministries SUMMER 2004
thank you for PRAYING with us

Dear Praying Friends,

Last night Wayne and I attended the end of the year school arts concert at a charter school where many of the children from our ministry attend. Juanita (our 13 year old N.M. kid) who lives with us was performing. We sat with her sister. Behind us and in front of us were numerous families from the ministry, moms and step dads, siblings and aunts, cousins and friends of these precious, gifted and loved kids. 

Juanita’s oldest sister is one of my dearest friends. I have known her since she was very young. I felt like a grandmother when her first child was born almost five years ago. She, Juanita, and their siblings lived with us for an entire summer, almost eight years ago. The stories of our collective lives entwined seemed to be in the room last night, at least for Wayne and I. As I sat there, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a world-renowned urban leader last month. 

I will often tell people that our ministry is "relationship driven" vs. "program driven." I’m not always sure everyone knows what that means, but I’ll throw it out anyway, because it is the way God has designed this work. I was to find out that this leader has also been at their core driven by a relationship modality. Her stories weave back all the way to the sixties, where she was banging out her convictions in newly forming theologies. She responded with the most interesting comeback, "How and when did you find the words to say this!" Her affirmation meant so much to me, for I have so much respect for her. 

There is a really long answer to that question. The shorter one for today’s prayer letter has to do simply with the love of God. How does God enter a community? With messages he writes on the hearts of his love bearers. These messages say, “you matter”, “you are valuable”, “you have potential”, “you are not a mistake”, “you are worth the sacrifice of the cross” … Over the years we fell in love with people whose names and lives became known to us. Their life’s circumstances broke our hearts and drove us to action. They were the point! When our response looked like sacrifice to others, it didn’t feel like that to us necessarily, it was the way the Father loved. You bet, programs developed, and when versions of those programs failed, new ones took their place because the love of God compelled us to do it a little better. When new people came into this “communion” the first ones weren’t replaced … the ministry just got bigger. When new programs were birthed, it was because the lives we loved needed the next thing, for our city hadn’t yet responded to those needs adequately. And when someone wanted to take a look at a new program idea or revise an existing one we only wanted to remind them that programs are only a response to a person, to their children, to their circumstance … and we have known that person a long time. “You see,” we often say, “we are relationship driven, not program driven.”

I am telling this story because summer is here, in full swing and we traditionally ask you for prayer all summer long because we are going to be loving a lot of people (in programs). The tradition of the summer is that we’ll meet a new kid and they will get wrapped into almost twenty years of the way you get wrapped in around here. We’ll watch a young person become a leader for the first time, someone who was a kid in the summer programs not too long ago. We’ll graft in someone from the outside who will notice how much someone is known and loved and be surprised about how much history and family members we share together. In the end, a lot of growth takes place with one more summer filled with stories we now all have in common which are written in the family album. 

We are thankful for the programs that have grown up in this work. But the glue in these programs is the love of God, shared sacrificially and exorbitantly, with joy and with intention, with each other. If you come and visit us, you might poke your head into the pre-school class at Kids Club and hear someone tell you that their mom is working with the junior-highers as a leader. She was a Kids Club kid herself not that long ago, and is now giving back. Another young leader will have just returned from an “I Can Do It” trip and is on board this year as a summer intern. You’ll realize our NM high-schoolers are everywhere, serving in both Kids Clubs and then again in Mexico. Many of their junior high counterparts might look a little young to you to be taking on jobs … but they have a leadership class during their Kids Club so they can serve in the bigger Kids Club. Everywhere you look will be our neighborhood moms. Some are from Moms Place or the Parent Volunteers and they are working hard, taking care of something. 

Pray for us, that these programs will be strengthened, that the relationships embedded in these programs will bring transformation. Pray for the love of God that gets exchanged this summer, through ordinary people giving their lives away so that someone else might come to know Him better. Thank you for your compassionate heart for all of us, because prayer is hard work! 

God Bless you, 
Kit 

THE PROGRAMS:

• Summer Intern Team (May 24-August 5)
• Junior High Kids Club (June 14-18)
• Kids Club (June 28-July 9)
• I Can Do It Trips (throughout the summer)
• Mexico (July 18-23)
• Kids Camp (July 25-30)
• Moms At Play (June 19, August 7)
• Back to School Activities (early August)

Prayer Requests:

• That God in his loving-kindness would meet us: staff and kids (Psalm 59:10)
• That the workers hearts would trust in Him and be helped (Psalm 28:7)
• That there would be deliverance from the adversary (Psalm 60:12)
• That there would be provision for the poor, like a plentiful rain (Psalm 68:9,10)
• That there would be help in all preparations (Psalm 63:7)
• That there would be love for one another so that people would know we are His (John 13:35)