Jay Height

Tired From Life

For the girl, whose mother abandoned and father decided that he wanted his girlfriend more than his daughter....

For the father who lost his job, the bills have piled up, and the landlord says they will have to move....

For the child, who knows hands that bring about hurt, not love. Whose pain reflects the attention of a father.....

To the mother, who is trying to hold it together.  Rejected in love and overwhelmed in responsibility.....

There is hope.

Yet, that hope does not come in the next government initiative.  Not in the next bill passed by Congress.

There will be no answers arriving, hot off the press from Washington D.C.

The Power of Vision

Ministry in the city, among the wounded and broken, is not for the meek. No person can undertake this ministry - and certainly no one can persist in it - without courage, hope, and and vision. But it is the vision that may embolden our courage and lift our hope.

Especially in the city our vision may be captured by the fear, despair, and disappointment that surround us. Perhaps in the suburban communities where prosperity and human possibilities seem to be dominant and endless we might escape the need for vision and its power. But not in the city.

"I will lift up my eyes to the hills," the Psalmist wrote "where my help comes from." In the city our eyes need to focus often on the hills, the horizon of God's redemptive possibilities that will speak the final word.

It is reminder that urban ministry is not finally about civic policy or economic theory. The answer to discouragement and weariness is not new initiatives or strategic alliances. It is renewal of the vision that draws and renews us. God's Kingdom - His final victory - which is our future.

The Challenge for the Urban Church

As we move closer to the year 2025, predictions are that half of the world population will live in urban centers throughout the world. Faced with that information, the church must have an aggressive plan to meet the growing challenge of developing vibrant and sustainable urban churches.

Long the tradition in the Nazarene church, we have followed in the path blazed by John Wesley to, in the words of Phineas Bresee, “take the Gospel to the neglected quarters of the city.” Following our centennial celebration, it is the call to once again figure out what Bresee's words mean for today and move aggressively to accomplish that goal.