NACSC 2020 Statement in Response to Racism

We as the YWAM North American Cities Servants Circle team are united together in the pursuit of equal rights and justice for all people. 

We realign ourselves to make it our ambition and intention to see and affirm the imago Dei—the image of God—in all individuals, in our teams, training schools, leadership structures, neighborhoods, community involvement, and outreach. We stand with people of color and Indigenous communities’ desire to create space for their voices and support their God-given rights for equality and justice in our nations. We acknowledge and repent of our failure to engage in these issues to the depth that they have required.  We acknowledge that in the land now known as North America, we are part of a variety of covenants with Indigenous peoples, covenants which we’ve not honored. We acknowledge that we have benefited from a system built on stolen land and slave labor that persists even today. In the spirit of repentance, we commit ourselves to the work of laying a new foundation in keeping with the kingdom of God. 

As a mission agency made up of people from many nations and denominations, we recognize our unique responsibility to practice what we preach and ensure that our beliefs are outworked in our structures, theologies, relationships, and practices in both suburban and urban contexts. Being “diverse” and committed to celebrating culture in and of itself doesn’t make us anti-racist. It’s a start, but we believe there’s more work to be done in listening, learning, examining, readjusting our posture, repenting, and acting justly. 

Jesus intimately bore the pain of injustice intimately and our hope is that we will always be found in His footsteps joining in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed, doing our part to see the “Kingdom Come” on earth as it is in heaven. Black lives ARE sacred. Indigenous lives ARE sacred. 

Our commitment requires a continuing dialogue and engagement with our YWAM family as well as the communities we serve. It is a journey on which we travel as partners, based on shared values and a vision in which current and future generations have equal opportunities to thrive.

This is a living document. We all grow and learn. We welcome your questions and input anytime. 

See Clearly 20/20 His Kingdom on Earth

Jesus began his ministry by calling everyone to repent, for the Kingdom of God is near. To repent, metanoïa in Greek, is to change our way of seeing the world. That new way of seeing is described in His first recorded teaching in Matthew 5, beginning with the Beatitudes. We find out that the Kingdom of God belongs to the poor in spirit, to those who aren’t pretentious enough to believe that they’ve got it all figured out. Jesus follows up the beatitudes by repeating (emphasizing) six times, “You have heard that it was said, but now I tell you.” You have heard it said so many times that you believe a particular interpretation of the law, but Jesus then radicalizes each notion that we had believed was gospel Truth. He wants us to really change our way of seeing! To see differently and more deeply the law that we accommodated and domesticated to fit our expectations. This is at the beginning of the gospel of Matthew, at the beginning of the NT. It sets down what is to come. So how does Jesus continue to emphasize how we are to see differently the Kingdom in our midst and the fields ripe for Harvest? The sub-theme to our conference is for us to hear minority voices. Giving ear to minority voices will always help us to see the Kingdom of God that is always present, there where we don’t expect it.

(1) Jesus was Himself a minority voice.

He was an itinerant preacher with no place to lay his head.

He came from some hick town called Nazareth lost somewhere in the backwoods of Galilee.

Those with the voice of authority sought to disqualify His voice by questioning with what authority He spoke?

He had no formal education.

(2) Jesus consistently undermined those who were the official, authorized and dominant voice, the voice of the hierarchy, the scribes and the Pharisees.

At no time did He associate the Kingdom of God with those in office, the apparently legitimate voices of the Israeli people. He went out of His way to circumvent these in order to reveal the Kingdom to and amongst the lowly.

(3) Jesus consistently gave voice to the minority, the poor, the impure or the outcasts.

And in this way revealed the Kingdom of God in the most obscure places where no one would have looked.

- the Roman centurion believer, certainly a minority within the Roman army and without voice in the Jewish community;

- the Samaritan woman;

- the woman sick for 12 years who was bold enough to touch Jesus’ tunic;

- the poor woman who gave a 2-cents offering;

- the fisherman called Peter;

- the woman whom he treated as a dog who’s faith permitted the healing of her daughter.

I invite you to join us in Baltimore in late April so that we might together See Clearly 20/20 His Kingdom on Earth.

Pierre LeBel

Pierre LeBel is a member of YWAM'S Canadian Eldership as well as its' North American Cities Leadership Team. His primary role is the interpretation of Christian faith and spirituality in the context of secular, urban and post-Christian society and culture.

Dear Baltimore City,

Dear Baltimore City,

I was driving down North Ave. yesterday showing you off to an out of town guest. I was telling her about both your pain and your beauty. They mingle together on every street corner and city block. I know lately you’ve been given a bad wrap, an extra dose of political narrative, structured to manipulate the media, promote an agenda and give street cred to, well, to those who have a very limited perspective of you. I know you have rats. I can attest. I basically have 411 on speed dial scheduling rat abatement monthly in the warm, sweltering summer. But, we also have mice in the cupboard and our staff are blessed with roaches in their row home. I’ve wrestled with bed bugs that found a ride on the backpack of a middle schooler. But, isn’t this city life?

City life. You serve up a mix of diversity, tension, pain, life resuscitating hope and an honest picture of humanity. I am privileged to call you home.

My roots grow deep and find their start here both in the ovens at Bethlehem Steel as well as in the engineering of the 95 tunnel and 695 beltway. They also held a red pen that lined out the city and it’s housing deeds, making sure people of color never owned property in some of your neighborhoods. My husband’s family got their start right off the boat in Locust Point, as they made America their new home, changed their Jewish surname to one a bit more innocuous to avoid persecution and started a family on the east side. My identity was forged in the fires of this city.

My neighbors make up a micro picture of the rest of your neighborhoods. One family grew up off Reisterstown Rd. in the heart of the ghetto. They struggled to pull some money together to buy a house in my part of the city, a part that feels safer and nicer. We haven’t escaped your issues though. Just last Friday night I witnessed four prostitutes get into four cars in one fell swoop on my street corner as they were being monitored by their pimps. I’ve known some of these women and men by name and even fed them food over the years. Our other neighbors are from Ecuador. My son escorted their daughter to her quinceañera this past weekend. We attended and celebrated with them. The next day they bought my husband a birthday cake to celebrate him.

My kids have cut their teeth on keeping their eyes open for needles in the street while playing kick ball, being vigilant of their surroundings and learning, all too early, why there are teeny tiny ziploc bags found in our yard. They’ve witnessed third grade stabbings, middle school pregnancies and visited friends who survived suicide attempts. They’ve fed countless homeless people, made space in their rooms and sometimes given up their own bed, for asylum seekers and drug addicts. They know our door is always open to a stranger, but locked at night for protection. As they enter adulthood, they’re beginning to learn what a gift it is that they were a minority here. A gift most white kids will never know. They have cuts and scars to show for their life here in Baltimore but they also have a resilience that is afforded to your children.

Baltimore, I love the smell of fresh bread wafting from H&S Bakery in Fells Point, the smile of Ms. Brenda when I see her on the corner of 21st and Charles, the loud motors of the dirt bikes that hail the beginning of summer and the long lines for mushroom fritters under the 83. Your colorful murals are ever before me and I discover new ones on the daily. Turning on Washington, seeing neighbors on their stoop and folks out cleaning their cars, there’s familiarity on every corner. I just found out Jabreel got a house! He’s no longer on the street and his foot has been treated. He needs a bed, but we have an extra so we’ll get it to him later this week.

Thank you Baltimore for being my home, my family. Thank you for showing me what it means to have endless hope, tenacity to see the day through, faith to know that my neighbors can be family and for teaching me that truth is worth pursuing. You are honest. What you see is what you get. You don’t have any pretense, there’s no time for that kind of white wash. It’s refreshing!

I’m inviting some friends here next spring. I want them to get to know you the way that I know you. I know they will leave here changed, different. You have that effect on people. I know that they will feel what I feel, the rumbling under the soil of this city. It’s not the rumble of uprising, but of revival. All those seeds planted under the soil of this city, watered with our tears and whispered to, in our depression, are responding. The sun is coming out and the banks of our waterways about to overflow. I want them to take home the real story of Baltimore, to hear the real sound of life. I want them to go back to our sister cities armed with the truth, the truth that there is more to you than the current narrative.

Thank you for opening your arms to me and my family.

I sincerely love you,

Your daughter

Kristin Potler is a writer, artist and director of YWAM Baltimore. She is also a mama to 5, wife to a chef and builder and in pursuit of truth and beauty in her home city of Baltimore.