Lausanne World Pulse – Perspectives Articles – Urban Impact Ministry in New York City

By Larry Holcomb
April 2006

Children from 10/40 Window countries participate in Vacation Bible Schools.

During the summer, teams help host eight weeks of outdoor children’s Vacation Bible School (VBS) programs. There are sometimes up to six simultaneous VBSs going on involving hundreds of 10/40 Window kids. Around the holidays we enlist teams to help with special outreach events like our annual Thanksgiving evangelistic dinner. Teams come from all over the country throughout December to host our “Home for Christmas” programs in the homes of Arabic, Bengali or African Muslims. The teams hosting these parties bring gifts for the kids and use nativity sets or books to tell the Christmas story and share the gospel with the children and their invited neighbors.

Many teams help out with light construction and rehab work. Our missionary apartments are in very old buildings and are always in need of repair. Teams also help us with repair work in some of the very needy tenement buildings in Brooklyn. Over a three month period, visiting teams helped us gut and restore our new “African Friendship Center.”

Churches, ministries and individuals also help by providing website services, serving on our board of directors, sending financial support and mailing school supplies, backpacks or clothing for young immigrants. 

We are excited about reaching the far corners of the earth in New York City. Unfortunately, there are still thousands of Muslims arriving in New York City and other American urban centers every year who do not get even one chance to hear the gospel. Because there are so few missions-minded Christians in our inner cities, many Muslim immigrants could possibly have had a better chance of hearing the gospel if they had stayed in their own remote country. By remaining in their closed countries, at least Christians might be prayerfully aware of their plight and need for the gospel and have a strategy to reach them. I have met many Muslims who have been in the US for five years or more and still only speak Arabic or Bengali. They have little chance of ever “stumbling onto” a Christian witness here in their language.

The African Friendship Centers seeks to reach out to Africans and Bangladeshis.

Urban Impact is working to change this. Last year we established the first of five Urban Impact Muslim Evangelism Centers in New York City. This center, called the “African Friendship Center,” focuses on evangelizing West Africans, North African Arabs and Bangladeshis in Brooklyn. We are scheduled to open one new center per year. The second center is scheduled to open spring 2006 and will focus on ministry to Indians and South Asians in Queens. 

We are convinced that even if someone is able to “escape” and crawl through the 10/40 Window, God still wants him or her to hear the gospel. And we are convinced that God has called Urban Impact to take a lead role in exposing the need to reach America’s 10/40 Window immigrants…and inspiring others to help us in addressing these needs.

Larry Holcomb is a missions speaker and director of Urban Impact.  He has served in San Francisco, California; Birmingham, Alabama; and New York City (USA). Larry, wife Linda and their four children live in an immigrant neighborhood of Queens.