In 2008 Anne and I relocated to Springfield, Massachusetts, with the intention of leaving the culture-war battlefield on LGBT issues to launch a more traditional inner-city mission to serve the bottom strata of society in one of the most depressed and decrepit population centers in the country. Springfield was identified by Forbes Magazine that year as “one of the 10 fastest-dying cities in America.” To further this mission I founded a new church under the name Redemption Gate Mission Society, bought and moved into a fixer-upper former crack house in the heart of the worst neighborhood as our personal residence, and acquired an historic building across from the truly historic Springfield Armory (established by George Washington during the Revolutionary War) for our church and ministry operations center.
God – working through my adversaries – had other plans regarding my role in the culture war (“Just when I tried to get out they dragged me back in!”) But we personally led that mission for seven years (one Shemitah cycle, for those who know the biblical time-keeping system) and then turned it over to my ministry partner, Pastor C.S. Cooley, who kept it going for another seven years. I’m writing a book about that amazing ministry right now, under the working title “To Redeem a City.”
Important to this story is the fact that Redemption Gate’s expressly stated mission was to re-Christianize this post-Christian city. I had prayed for the Lord to give me a city to reclaim for Him as we were nearing the end of a foreign mission on that theme, and He sent us to Springfield. Important to the achievement of the mission objective was the choice of the city whether to allow itself to be re-Christianized. And important to that choice was the fact that on April 25, 2011, our Redemption Gate ministry team began circulating a petition in Springfield to have the national motto “In God We Trust” added to the pediment of Springfield City Hall.
Continued….
Approved ~ MJM
