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

By Larry Holcomb
April 2006

Sharing the gospel with these Muslims can be a long and tedious process. Most must overcome a lifetime of misinformation and doctrinal inoculation against Christianity. Often it takes months for them to verbalize their many questions and objections. In Brooklyn, we are now meeting weekly with a group of twelve Fulani men to discuss Christian ideas. We watch a short video clip, and then use the video and a selected Bible verse as the theme of the discussion. We also conduct an annual men’s retreat, where we take groups of Muslim men on weekend retreats to the beach to further teach them about the Bible and the gospel.

Urban Impact Missionaries
Dedicated missionaries and workers of all ages and from all areas of the US are the foundation of what we do. We have also had missionaries from Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Guyana.

Some serve a week or a day; others serve a summer, semester or one-year term. Short-term workers raise support to pay costs of room and board in New York. Missionaries who come for three months or longer are required to come as “tentmaker missionaries” and work a job in the community so as to assure both their daily involvement with their focus group and their financial stability. Missionaries work in teams, live in UI missionary apartment/houses and have weekly meetings for prayer, fellowship, planning and training. We currently have five missionary apartments in Queens and Brooklyn with two more to be added in June. Summer 2006 we will have twelve to fifteen new missionaries serving amongst the 10/40 Window peoples of New York.

Help from the Outside
Many Christians and churches from around the US have a strong burden for reaching the 10/40 Window for Christ. Hundreds of groups have worked with Urban Impact during the past three years to share the gospel with New York’s unreached peoples. Teams have come to us from all over the US and Canada. They come as youth groups, senior adult groups, singles groups, families, choirs, seminary teams and through many other Christian organizations. 

Mission teams help our ministry in many ways. Many groups do direct evangelism with immigrants on the streets, while others help run various weekly outreach programs or other special events. 

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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.