If you'd like to support this ministry trip please check out our Go Fund Me page: https://www.gofundme.com/.../brooklyn-teen-challenge-visit.
In July 2024, we are looking to take a team of three from our church to visit Brooklyn New York for one week.
The plan is to spend some time with folks from Brooklyn Teen Challenge, and other churches and ministries who are working with people in addiction and on the margins.
The itinerary is still in its early stages, but we are in talks about our team serving at a local outreaches and we are looking to develop other opportunities, and develop new partnerships.
Over the last year, we have been running a recovery group, a free community café, and working alongside the local Teen Challenge ministry in supporting a number of individuals into rehab. We are just about to enter a partnership with Street Connect to launch a street ministry and drop in in Stirling.
We hope this trip will help inspire us, and help us catch the ethos of those working in urban ministry. Our heart is to listen, observe, serve and learn and hopefully return to urban Scotland with fresh vision and passion for our own urban context.
Your gift will go towards covering the costs of our trip (a team of three). Anything we raise over and above the needed amount will be donated into recovery work.
We are also not wanting to be a burden on anyone in the US, our flights and hotels are in the process of being paid for by local support here in Scotland. We are not on a fundraising tour. My heart is simply to connect, learn, catch vision, and serve. I hope what we encounter in NY will have a lasting impact upon our current ministry both in the prison, and amongst those caught in addiction and poverty in urban Scotland.
Brooklyn Teen Challenge is the heartland of where the ministry began through David Wilkerson. The story of Nicky Cruz and David Wilkerson continues to impact the lives of Scottish prisoners, young offenders and addicts to this day. This in many ways is at the heart of our plans to come to Brooklyn. And as much as we are inspired by what God did in the past, we appreciate that the greatest impact will be to learn from what God is doing through Brooklyn TC and other ministries in the present.
Whilst in NY, I’m also keen to connect with Times Square Church, Brooklyn Tabernacle, but also other smaller churches in the area who are having an impact where the gospel is needed most, amongst the broken.
More importantly, we want to draw alongside those who are on the streets ministering to the homeless and lost. If we can be of service to any grassroots ministry on the streets, we would come to NY for that alone.
Testimony
Only last Friday did I share with some of the team the idea of visiting Brooklyn Teen Challenge.
The first encouragement is we managed to secure a crazy flight and hotel deal.
The second encouragement is that financial provision came in straight away. The entire trip for the three of us will cost approximately five to six thousand and already around three thousand has come in within a couple of days. We sense the Lord's hand on this.
The second encouragement is that financial provision came in straight away.
If you’d like to help us raise the remaining amount, drop me a PM or a comment. Many thanks.
If you would like to contribute to this trip you can donate through go fund me: https://www.gofundme.com/.../brooklyn-teen-challenge-visit.
Any amount is a blessing!
Many thanks for your partnership in the gospel.