Urban Tour Report
Building Community and Starting Conversations: The Urban Tour Report
Hugo Saucedo, Glenn Balzer, Marie Voth
November 19, 2010
With input from the Urban Leaders Summit
In September 2009, the One Voice Team, a collaborative group of Mennonite Church USA leaders, commissioned a team of denominational leaders to begin the work of building relationships between conferences, congregations and the denomination. The denominational ministry team was asked to focus on the following: Church Planting, Peace and Justice, Racial/Ethnic relationships, Missional Church and Urban Ministry.
The two of us, Hugo Saucedo, Director, Mennonite Voluntary Service (MVS), and Glenn Balzer, National Director of Discovering Opportunities for Outreach and Reflection (DOOR), were asked to give leadership for the Urban Ministry portion of the Denominational Ministry team. Marie Voth was later added as the third member of this team.
The tour began in January 2010 and wrapped up in September 2010. It included visits with pastors and urban leaders from the following 18 locations/regions:
- Philadelphia, PA
- Denver, CO
- Chicago, IL
- Los Angeles, CA
- Minneapolis/ St. Paul, MN
- Phoenix, AZ
- Raleigh/ Durham, NC
- San Francisco, CA
- Atlanta, GA
- Seattle, WA
- San Antonio, TX
- Dallas, TX
- Tampa/ Sarasota, FL
- New York City, NY
- Hampton/ Newport News, VA
- Washington DC/ Baltimore, MD
- Cleveland, OH
- Portland, OR
During each visit, we asked the following four questions:
- Who are you?
- How are you?
- What are the things that you do well?
- How can Mennonite Church USA be helpful?
We want to remind readers that this report grows out of the stories we heard; we make no claims that this was an objective or scientific study. We believe that there is value in the subjective nature of our tour. By listening to stories, we began to build relationships. Stories have a unique power; they are a gateway of sorts into the soul of the urban community. It was clear that stories and relationships held more value in the urban community than any scientific study.
Continue reading here:UrbanReportv10-Final
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