For 15 years I’ve lived one block from the Harambee Center in Pasadena, Calif., where we do long-term youth ministry discipleship among urban children.

Lots of people come and go in the hood: government programs, church pastors, evangelism initiatives, school teachers, and fathers and mothers. But Jesus didn’t leave the city. He did his ministry of incarnation by becoming one of us and living for more than 30 years in a single place — our planet!

If Jesus stayed put, maybe we should stay put, too. And those who do so see that the gospel provides an exciting plan for urban ills called discipleship.

So I’ve stayed put, and I’ve learned a lot of things the hard way. But upon reflection, I don’t think these lessons are necessarily “urban” or “minority” lessons. I think they apply no matter who or where you are. They are true, and their truths have been confirmed by the Word and by my experiences with the human beings who live in our hood.

The Value of Long-Term Presence
At Harambee, we’ve won awards for our programs, we’ve experienced periods of great outreach, and we’ve seen many lives changed. But there’s much that’s
happened simply because we’ve remained in one place for a long time.

We know our neighbors and neighborhood well. I feel like I can see through a person to his or her motives. We can gauge with a reasonable amount of certainty whether an initiative will succeed or fail. We know when a conflict will resolve itself or if we need to intervene.

We’ve been able to expand our presence, too. We control six properties, have lots of programs, and serve a steady stream of children, youth, and families in
our various programs and youth trips. We’ve come to be seen as the old-timers in the neighborhood. And because of that, a lot of people tend to respect us
more, listen to us more, and follow our leadership more.

I’ve never worked on a church staff, but I would imagine that the phenomenon is similar. Assuming you are a person who gets along with most folks, your
accumulated wisdom and track record might accord you greater respect than a less-experienced person would receive.

Hire Teenagers
The number one thing you can do to build goodwill in your community is to hire a teenager. Everyone wants to see something good happen with youth. Some communities need it more desperately than others, but the inner city certainly needs doses of good news. Many youth would like to work, whether to get money or simply to have something respectable to do.

If you hire youth, train them well and help them to develop as people and leaders. In our context, people nearly lose their minds with gratitude because we
hire teenagers. Parents want their kids off the streets, and a few bucks in their pockets is a bonus.

Flex with Whomever God Sends
When I came to Harambee in 1990, I thought I was “Super-Mex.” I was God’s Mexican gift to Harambee. The entire staff was either black or white, with no
Latinos — even though the community was at least 30 percent Latino. They needed me, I thought. I believed God had uniquely gifted me, sent me to Stanford
University, given me great learning experiences, all so that I could be a blessing among my own people — Mexicans.

Soon after arriving at Harambee, I selected a group of four young Latino boys as my ministry target group and invested in them. After a while, I got a feeling that they weren’t very interested. I had to chase after them to find them.

Then one day, as I stood thinking about these boys, a little black kid came up to me and said, “Rudy,” trying to get my attention. He was bugging me, and I
was preoccupied with my thoughts about how to reach these Latino boys. But the little boy continued, “Rudy. Watch me. Watch this. Rudy. Rudy.”

He tugged at my shirt. I looked down. “Watch this,” he repeated. Then he did something, a jump, a kick, a spin — I don’t really remember. What I do remember is that he wanted my attention. He wanted me. In fact, he wanted me much more than the boys I had been working so hard to impact.

Now I believe God has called me to chase after any kids who come my way. What about you? Are you so focused on one group that you might be missing someone else who is tugging on your sleeve?

Listen to see who God is asking you to serve. If He sends someone who is not interesting to you or has no interest in being a part of your personal vision or is
someone you just don’t like, then pray for the grace to be obedient to the people He is asking you to serve.

Take Trips
After all these years, all the drama of establishing a ministry in an inner-city neighborhood, all the Bible studies and programs and jobs, what do children
remember once they are adults? The trips.

One kid at Harambee has visited 32 of the 50 states on Harambee trips. This same kid graduated from high school having never slept in a bed of his own.
His family is poor; and the house was always full of relatives and friends, so he slept on the couch for 18 years.

When you ask this guy about his time at Harambee, he says, “We went to New York. Oh, yeah, we put out a fire in that barn in Iowa. You made us take a
Greyhound bus cross-country. We climbed the pyramid in Mexico City.” I know this because I had some donors meet this kid; and I was hoping he would say,
“God. Bible studies. Discipleship.” Instead, he talked on and on about the trips.

When there is a tough kid who is very interested in your message or life with Christ — you know, the kid you are about to give up on — a trip will plant that
proverbial seed that can be nurtured later on by you or perhaps someone else.

What Lasts
We all want to do ministry that lasts. Perhaps you are discouraged if you know that you will only be in your current position for a short period of time. If that’s your situation, consider all of the above as “seed-planting” activities.

I believe you will have relationships and friends for a lifetime when you stay close to where the action is. Heck, you could even ask your pastor if you could
live at the church.

If you do that, you will probably see stranger things than you could ever imagine. But even more important, you will get to see all kinds of wonderful, and
maybe even miraculous, things happen through this kind of incarnational ministry that you could never witness if you just commuted to your ministry.

Hey, maybe Jesus knew what He was doing after all.

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Rudy Carrasco, is the executive director of Harambee (that’s Swahili for Let’s Get Together and Push) Ministries in Pasadena, California.