I don't hear that anymore. Put some respect on his name. Put some respect on his name.
Very little. Are we finished or is we done? We climbing.
I know that's right. Is we finished? I'm climbing with my family. I'm here with my family. And if you don't know who these guys are, you have been living under a rock.
We don't mind a siren behind us because it's a part of urban ministry. That's what we're going to be talking about today. Welcome to Woke Church video series.
Dr. Earn Mason, you know what it is. Pastor Earn, new pastor of one of our daughter churches. over for Pastor Doug Logan.
He's now the pastor of Epiphany Fellowship of Camden, Epiphany Fellowship's first church plant. He's in school right now working on his doctorate, so he's going to be you're going to have to put more respect on his name than you're already putting on his name because you're going to have to call him Dr. E.B.B. Yashay Okanda. Now, my man Doug Logan here, man.
Son of the ministry. This is my grandson in the ministry. Now he works with Acts 29. He's helped start multiple churches with Epiphany Philly. movement leader and doing a lot of great work to see global urban ministry thrive and not just survive and also on the board of thriving with me um also another one of my sons in the ministry ferocious leader you know who he is leader of urban perspective founding pastor of vision rdu i'm excited today for what we're going to talk about because we're going to talk about the spanning of subjects just a few things we want to kind of work through so one of the things we want to talk about is uh urban church planning and it's talking about urban church planting, the role of apologetics in urban church planting, particularly African Americans among poor, inner city African American, if you will, even though some of us have sprinklings of multi-ethnicity, I think that there's a systemic need in our particular communities because where we are ministering, where we have to deal with issues of apologetics, and then just talk about the need and necessity of urban church planting today. So I'm going to start with Pastor Doug Logan.
I want you to just talk. talk about why urban church planning is a need. From there, Pastor Jerome, I want you to talk about why urban church planning, urban apologetics is important in church planning, and you piggyback off that. Boom, you first.
Well, Pastor, I would say when I think about urban church planning and the great need, the great need flows out of the great neglect. So the inner city is one of the most highly neglected area in the world. You know, next to the African-American Latino inner city, you know, the white... white inner city is right along that line of highly neglected. And so that neglect is full-fold.
It's almost neglect of city services. It's neglect of working-class folk. And often the sad is neglect of churches, particularly mainstream churches, coming in and having a desire to plant, start, and engage there.
And so when we find a person crazy enough with the Holy Ghost that is trained, developed, loved and healthy, man, that's always a beautiful, blessed thing to get in there, to be able to get into the nooks and crannies. My son is a contractor, you know your nephew, Bernie, and it's one thing for him to go to new construction and put in a floor. But when you come to Camden, our houses is crooked, the stuff don't work. We used to have, you know, you got to get rid of the roaches and then the rat things, and then the house crooked and old settled. And when you remodel, that and that shows you got some skills to go to.
And so it is with urban church planning. There's so many neglected people and we lack leadership in there to get into the nooks and crannies and the brokenness of it, which is very hard to deal with. And so most importantly, we want Jesus name there to be the most famous name and we want to see converts and we need crazy leaders to learn, develop, go, and then reproduce that in the organization. context.
That's good, that's good. Pastor Jerome. Yeah to piggyback off what Pastor Doug was saying when he talked about those those areas of neglect one of the things we don't want to see is the neglect of lostness within these neighborhoods and so that's where urban apologetics comes in to where it's not any special type of apologetics it's still first Peter 315 this idea of defending the faith but typically what we see in mainstream evangelicalism is the the things that they want to approach apologetically aren't aren't the issues or the idols that we are seeing in inner city neighborhoods. And so Urban Apologetics, we want to focus on some of the things like the Hebrew Israelites, 5% nations of God on earth, just the different various what we would call as Christians doctrines of demons. And so we want to think about how we can be effective, we can be a tangible display of the gospel, where we understand we're indigenous people ourselves from some of these neighborhoods, and how we can preach the gospel in a contextualized way, but also defend the faith at the same time.
So that's just the emphasis of Urban Apologetics. It is still gospel centered but it has a specific target group that we have seen that has been neglected by mainstream evangelicalism. That's good.
Absolutely. Yeah so one of the big things for us especially in Camden is not too narrowly compartmentalizing apologetics. So it's not about simply about verbiage and dealing with religious pluralism but it's also allow actually doing or letting your message be seen in a community that you're in.
That's good. investing into that particular community. So, for example, we have a lot of great relationships with our neighboring schools.
Yeah. So they know that we preach the gospel and we believe in the supremacy of Christ, but that's also evidenced and displayed in how we live our lives in the community. So we've engaged the schools, we've done some rehabs on some teachers'lounges, and now we've built such a rapport and relationship that they're very open to hearing the gospel. And they're very open.
They say stuff like, hey, why don't you just come in and talk to our kids? And... Talk that Jesus stuff that you've been talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they seem that not only are we doing it with the orthodoxy and defending the faith, but it's very clear with our orthopraxy as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How important with the Boys Club stuff, y'all done a lot of stuff with the Boys Club, Pastor Jerome, how has that been Urban Apologetics for that, basically that Titus 314 that we always talk about? We teach our people to learn.
earn to meet present needs in order that they may not be found unfruitful. How have you mobilized Vision Church to be able to be a ministry of peace to your city, particularly in Southeast Raleigh and that area? Yes, what we did is we looked at our city and we came through and we just asked questions.
We didn't want to assume the needs of the city. We wanted to assess the needs of the city. And we wanted to do that by talking to people that are already there, existing churches, existing nonprofits. And as we went in, we saw four primary areas of concern for 27610, the poor zip code in my city of Raleigh.
And that was the poor, prisoner, single parents, and unborn. And so when we look at those four areas of outreach, a natural partnership for us was the Boys Club, Raleigh Boys Club. And we went in and we met with Darrell.
Petway the director there and you got a thousand members there but she got upwards of 60 percent of these little young boys are single-parent moms and so from that we wanted to say how can we help how can we come and actually be a tangible display of the gospel that's something we a phrase we kind of coin all the time and for us we started a mentorship program and that mentorship program is the bear necessities and bear stands for behavior attitude responsibility and entrepreneurship and what we want to do with that is allow these boys many Many whose fathers could be there but have chosen not to, they get to see men who look like them that are choosing to be in their lives. So in some cases, it's not even necessarily we're dealing with a religious pluralism. We're just giving them the ministry of presence. And then our presence is an apologetic within itself.
And so we're doing things like that with the teen center right down the street. The ladies of our church started something called Project Promise where we're doing free prom. dresses but it's a day of just affirming their identity in the Lord not their identity that's being connected to a man a boyfriend marriage just them knowing who they are affirming their model day in the mood that way we're unleashing out women to be theological beasts and be a tangible display of the gospel as well so those some of the things that we were doing there and as a result of that we got several plumb lines and one of our plumb lines is if you give the city your ear they'll then want to hear your voice and so as we've given them our ear The Boys Club literally reached out to us asking us to do our services in their gym because we're in this process of looking for more space. So as you build those relationships, we consider it a win when the city is asking the church for their assistance. And that's what we feel like.
We want vision, and vision closed its doors with the city notice. And we think we've built enough relationships that they would. Now, Pastor Doug, you was on my staff for a while. while, served with me as an elder, helped shepherd Epiphany through some challenging seasons, and then planted Epiphany Camden post your strategic startup ministries. The strategic startup ministries are the ministries pre-launch that you work through in order to make sure that there is gospel sustainability in doing discipleship and mission on a basic level until the church can go to the next level.
Next stages in its growth and impact in the city. What were, talk to me, I want you to talk to me about the eSpot, the impact of the eSpot. I want you to talk about Monthly Manor and any other initiative that y'all did that now he's living, he helped do, but he lives in the left. of that gets to push that on and then how the city began to connect with you and seeing man a inner city church you know tucked in not a mega church like but inner city church that's doing significant ministry like people think they gotta be a mega they got when i when i get them like y'all were murdering it like 61 people when it was 60 when it was 61 people and um getting on the news and you know all of that and i'm not saying that that's what it's for but they saw you guys as significant gospel engineers within that city without being the largest church in the city So talk to me about some of that, what you guys did and how that impacted and how that gave you voice on almost on a legislative level in the city. Yeah, well, Pastor, I would say this, that the platform for us with our startup ministries came from you setting me up as Connections Pastor in Philly.
So while I was at Epiphany Philly, I was doing all the Connections stuff because you made me the Connections Pastor, which was the. pre-setup, you set me up to walk those same strategies right into Camden. So I was already accustomed to them, already built teams. Some people from the connections team came with me.
Now, you took everybody. He's a thief, by the way. Just a few, just a few.
Just a little folk, man. These church plants, I declare them a little thief, man. So we rolled into connections, and we, much like Pastor Jerome, we wanted to assess.
You taught us that. We do assessments. One thing we did in Philly right before I went over was we did these town hall meetings where we would go to meetings. where we asked the community what they needed to assess and not aggressively just go in there and tell them what they need. And so once we got there, a thing we saw was we would assess based on problems.
So we saw the basketball court near my house. It was a problem. It was drugs, young kids having sex because the overgrown brush had taken over, all type of madness, jokers practicing shooting, which is right on the corner from my house. So based on that problem, we assessed that. hey man we wanted to talk to some folk on the block and see what would it look like if we did that block how would y'all feel about that they were like oh that'd be dope we want to do that so um so that's the one phase but in that phase apart because i want to make sure i make say that succinctly a part of what you did for me i sought to do that with pastor erm pastor erm was with me from the door so just like you set me up walked me through and got me in when we talk about um that initial church planning strategy it has to be with the team that's going to be there.
It's got to be with them before ordination, before anything. Pastor Earn was a scientist, and he was driving down. He wasn't no elder or nothing, but he needed to smell the herbs and spices of those early years, just like you did with me, driving me. And so Pastor Earn is with me.
We go, and we say we're going to do this. We talk with the people. And then we put together about $30,000 to redo a basketball court right by my house, which we call the E-Spot. call it Epiphany because the mayor said, no, you ain't going to call it the church.
So we'll just call it E. We don't know what the E is. Y'all don't got to know what the E is. And the spot stands for safe place for our teens. And so as we begin to jump into that, when we talk about connecting the city now, we're plowing.
We got our partner churches coming down. We've raised some money. Thugs off the block saying, yo, Diddy. Everybody calls me Diddy.
So it's like, yo, Diddy, man, here's a couple dollars. So from thugs to gangsters was bringing some money. The city brought me a case of water, amen, a case of water. And so that was so pivotal in that. So we redid a court.
We took away four trash trucks loads of brush and trash. Wow. We put a resealer on the court, new rims, new backboards, new bushes, new brush. The ladies from the church. put a rose bush out, we just reorganized the whole thing.
But the apologetic for us was, we just weren't preachers. We were gardeners, court redoers, and all of that, and we were investing into the city. And so that investment sent the mayor over and said, hey man, I heard you're doing this, what can we do? And so when I said that to her, she unleashed backhoes, trucks.
Free this, free that, this and that. And it was so crazy because we hadn't had overtime in Canada for so long. So they was high fiving me and like, yo, Pastor Thanks, we got overtime. And so it was a whole connecting thing.
So the people from the block felt blessed. The people from the city, cuz they got overtime was blessed. The mayor felt she had a partner. And then by the time we opened up to start preaching, which was in my yard, it was easy for thugs. gangsters, non-believers to walk down and see.
And it also thwarted a lot of the Hebrew Israelite, the 5% nation that might want to argue. Now they're saying you know preachers just want to preach. All they want is your money.
Well we did the court. We made the e-spot. We gave out 100 pizzas.
We fed that time. So all of those impactful things laid the foundation for the city and for the people in the city and the city the municipal from that point on the city said, oh, okay. The people on the block was like, Diddy, we with you.
Second thing, the city department of public works said, what you need, we got you. The mayor said, come join my team. We got you.
That in and of itself, which he came to worship with us right after the East Spot was done, which opened up the door for the whole city so much so all the way down till today. And that was in 2011 that we did that. So, yeah, so it is vital and important from the East Spot to Pastor Earn's impact. And. in the baseball league, in the Latino community, to the schools that we've done.
All of those, we've always included the city, the mayor, municipal, and the people on the block. And we tried to do that in one fell swoop. And so that investment, I think, has cemented a way, by God's grace, not by Doug, but by God's grace for Pastor Earn as lead pastor to just walk on air and they say, because people say, ain't that Diddy basketball? court they in other words what they're they're tying renewal with the church not pimping with the church not stealing with the church so by the time we open up and say Jesus saves they have identified that with investment not with consumer now all of us all of our churches by God's grace has been able to secure property yes now I know we got house church movements and that's everything. I'm not against that.
I just personally don't necessarily think Incarnationally it necessary is the best option for inner city ministry because we know the building isn't the church But we but we understand that building Communicates certain things to the community and the city How would you guys say that facility space has played a role in you being an urban apologetic? for the neighborhood. I mean, what has it been for you guys? Start with you, Pastor.
I mean, it's been a big blessing for us. So we have a large warehouse type of building. It used to be an old recording studio. In the front, we had a boxing gym. And a boxing gym.
What's y'all doing with that ring, by the way? They broke it down and took it. They took it. They snuck in late one night and took that joint. That's all they took, though.
So we got this huge barbed wire. So one of the big things that I learned, especially in the second chair at the church, is how to use and leverage some of the relationships we have with partner churches in order to bless the community. So when our partner churches would come, we would do a training for them to let them know that the best way that they can service our community is not coming in at the golden rule, the people with the gold make the rules, but rather coming in and serving under the minority leadership that's gonna be here long after you're gone. So we have a great partner church that's in Doylestown that came in and bought some book bags. They bought book bags.
sneakers, uniforms. So we said, you know what, we're going to use this as an opportunity to have a large book bag drive or a festival where we're going to connect our church, we're going to connect the community with resources that they might not have. So we had free barbering, free styling, we had schools come out, charter schools come out there.
This last one we had someone that does human sex trafficking awareness. The came to the event and was able to minister to people. So we were trying to leverage our relationships and resources from churches that are at polar opposite contexts so that we can help aid the underprivileged in our city.
And we wouldn't have been able to do that a lot of the way if we didn't have a building or a space where that could be clearly displayed. Because at the end of the day, once we turn on the music, once we got that Christian music, Christian hip-hop playing, people just come right across the street from the projects, they go on Instagram, they go on Facebook Live, and all of a sudden everyone is... From the community the police show up the mayor shows up the firefighters show up and it becomes a big ordeal So without without a property, I don't know how we could leverage what it is that we have for the community.
Yeah, that's good Yeah, I'll say God God definitely blessed us in terms of a building being gifted to us. And I think especially when you're in the south, the building kind of tends to communicate something to people, both believers and nonbelievers. And so there's not that we need it in terms of. of our walk with Christ but in terms of the community and their perception it gives you a degree of credibility and so when God blessed us and we made this transition from a theater to to the building we were able to leverage that and one of the things I said is I want this building to be a discipleship factory and so with that we're able to have ministries where the building enables us to have stuff specifically for teens have stuff for preteens being able to grow those that want to gain deeper knowledge in terms of theater ideology, provide a space for training for internships, provide stuff for group exegesis for those that want to grow in these areas. And so it just provides you with that.
We got a fellowship hall that we're right now in the process of transforming that into a daycare. So that can be an income generating building for more ministry. Yeah. So just having that space enables you to do more for the gospel and for your city. Yeah, that's what's up.
That's incredible that that type of ministry. It's. is being done through that facility space.
Because one of the things that we talk to our guys about, all eight or so of our plants, we talk to them about trying to get a stable meeting space as quickly as possible. Just so that you can have a, because people talk about incarnational ministry. When we write that book, we'll talk about that.
But one of the things that is important is, it's not just your house being the center of incarnational ministry. It's about the community being a community of communities. The church. community being an incarnational ministry itself.
And so, because sometimes incarnational ministry will fall on the pastor and he's not able to do what Acts 6 tells us we're supposed to be doing because we're trying to do everything, particularly in churches that aren't megachurches. And so one of the things that we have to always be committed to is how to spread our vision into the congregation and how to God's vision, and then also how to raise up leaders who are torch carriers of different aspects of the vision when leadership in the church goes from generalist to specialist. So talk to me about a bit now about where do you believe guys can start? Because, you know, we get all of us get bombarded with guys that want to be in urban ministry.
Yeah. And where what are some ways and some good ways and some entry points where guys can start? Well, I would say, Pastor, that the way I've had to do it at the end, because so many people have their.
agendas yeah mixed in with guys who just really love Jesus yeah and want to serve yeah so my I connect with them on a relational level yeah over the first two months and throw them around when I was on pastor of camp of course I have them hanging around us the elders and laughing joke have them at the yard you know always got a cookout going at the yard and see just how to interact with us and with the community and then based on that hear their heart and try to plug them in their passion is but I but to connect with them just so I could filter out the dude that has an agenda yeah to become you know the next big thing and the guy that has an agenda to become the next little thing to do a big thing for God yeah and so in that I man I bring them with me one thing I cheat with is I help them I always ask them to travel with me especially if somebody else is paying for my second ticket You taught me that. And if they travel with me, now I can get them assisting. Not on no armor bearer, pimping them out, none of that. Bringing your Bible to the fore.
Come on, Doug. Pour more. Pour more into the pig. Put him in the spring.
And so those levels of airport, Uber, and all of that really shows forth a servant's heart. Yeah. And an ability to engage with me.
When they're grown, probably with a degree, and I'm asking them to do stuff that may not be preaching, teaching, and all of that. And so that's a place I start. Yeah, and I think just to make it practical in terms of people looking for a list, essentially what you're saying, Pastor, is you need to be a member before you still hop out there trying to pastor something. Let's just make sure we put that out there. We just need to make sure we say it plain.
You need to be a member. member of a church And serve, I want to see who you serving under before I know who you're leading. So I think you know guys need to come in with the humility to serve in the context that they feel called to.
So serving under an urban practitioner and then from there growing to being able to be a leader then from a leader to some type of ministry head and then from there you're talking with you in conjunction because you need to be sent hands should be laid on you you should be confirmed in some way being sent by a church And then we talk about church planning. But let's first start with being a member. Amen.
And faithfully serving and then from there. And so because guys want to go straight from seminary to church planning. You know what I'm saying? That's a recipe for disaster. You need to faithfully serve as an urban practitioner.
And add to that, from church leadership at another church to join our church and think they're supposed to automatically be stepped up. No, that's not how we come. Because the urban church is a step down.
Of course. my exaltation should be a step up from where I was. Absolutely. I let Varsity come to JV.
I'm the captain. You ain't! That's right. We always said, Pastor Jerome and I were talking in the back, and we just looking for faithful, available, and teachable.
If you become a member, I want to see how you're discipling somebody, how you're investing your life into another family, how you are inviting people to dinner and hanging out, how well are you mixing into the congregation, or are you on some more separatist stuff where you just... want to be with the leadership of the church all the time because you get some folks that want to come to the church and join the church but they want to hang out the elders all the time or they want to hang out with the influential folk no like how do you get along with regular old folks in the congregation just like one of us that's amazing one thing I'm proud of all three of these guys with his own pastor earn has become an accomplished writer and he's doing a lot of great great great great writing he's written several articles for president today. A couple went viral and even engaged some celebrities that we're praying about their contact with in relation to how he's able to engage them lovingly with the gospel without judgment.
Doug Logan has On the Block, one of the first urban ministry books in probably two decades written by an African-American through a major publisher, which is a major feat because a lot of the urban ministry books that have been written have been written by non-African Americans and so that is a major feat that he's put out and then Pastor Jerome wrote the book I'm about to say he wrote the book of Ruth laughter Nah I can't take that laughter but um nah he wrote the book on renewal on the book of Ruth and took a risk and put I don't know why it's a risk, it's crazy instead of whitewashing his cover laughter by making a Moabitess, a white woman, he put a black woman on the cover. And I like the way that just that image is restoring the dignity of the black woman in a powerful way and shows how Christianity wants to restore dignity. And somebody's going to be watching me, why does color matter? Well, we say, why do you paint everything white if it doesn't matter? So anyway, we say that because I think one of the things that we need in urban ministry are not subpar leaders.
who are coming into urban ministry to do urban ministry because it seems easier. If any of us recognize what urban ministry is like, urban ministry is a ferociously beastly ministry. And it's not the place where you send your least valuable committed leaders. It's where you go with the most ferocious leaders to the glory of God through Jesus Christ.
If you want to have a Bible translator going to another country, that person needs to understand exegesis. They need to understand etymology. They need to understand how to create phonetics for a language. And they need to understand Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic. in order to be able to translate the Bible into those people's language and create a written form of their language if that country does not have a language.
No matter how poor and perverse and broken it is, they deserve the Bible in their language done in a scholarly and effective way, the same way urban ministries across these here yet-to-be, like you said, United States, deserves urban ministry leadership that gets trained, urban leadership that's sent, not went, urban leadership that has spent time walking in... patients in order to be developing character, competency, commitment, and compatibility, and to be able to be sent in a way that shows that there has been comprehensive care and help put into it. So that's the end of our video on this item, but we'll be back with more videos. And I'm so excited to provide you, we're thriving, want to provide you with godly and great content, particularly for ethnic minorities in urban ministry who are trying to do, I would say, just like... We talk black excellence.
We talk about urban. Ministry excellence here. That's what we wanna do. We wanna see things done in urban ministry excellence. And we want character, we want competency, we want commitment, and we want compatibility.
This ends this show. I'm excited also to announce Thriving. This year is gonna be October.
25th, 26th, and 27th at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. We are excited, excited, excited, excited about it. And it's going to be all about all Jesus everything.
That is the theme for this year. We already got my father to manage. Locked in Dr. Tony Evans.
We got my brother from another mother, Matt Chandler. We also have Dr. Crawford, the Ritz and more. So it's going to be a monster.
Rasta this year and we got so many beastly women that's going to be doing premium sessions. Dr. Syrita Lines going to be doing sessions. We got others who are going to be doing. It's going to be crazy.
So you all do not want to miss it. We also got both Jackie Hill Perry who's going to be doing a premium session. as well. It's just going to be off the charts. Of course, we're going to be having an on-the-block collective doing their thing and rolling this out.
And it's going to be a massive opportunity for us to see ministry in an urban context go from what? Surviving to thriving. Be steadfast and immovable. Always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your work in the Lord is never in vain. God bless you.