Take oral Bible stories where physical Bibles can’t go!
I was 10 years old when I first got a glimpse of this thing called agape love. It was the 1960s, and my family lived in the Robert Taylor Homes development, one of the many housing projects in Chicago. Like many tenements in the city, the residents lived with fear of rival gangs and other forms of violence. It was a place where you had to learn to be tough enough not to be bullied.
“The unprovoked attack prompted my father to drive me to and from school with a pistol sitting on the front seat between us.”
As I approached adolescence, local gang members began recruiting me, and it wasn’t long before violence visited me when a classmate named Moses punched me in the head. The unprovoked attack prompted my father to drive me to and from school with a pistol sitting on the front seat between us.
My parents also encouraged me to seek after-school and extracurricular activities that would guide me in a positive direction, as opposed to hanging around the streets. By divine intervention, our apartment was across the parking lot from a neighborhood church.
The leaders at Berean Baptist Church were following Jesus by reaching out with the gospel to the children and families in the “projects.” They faithfully modeled Jesus through vacation Bible school, recreational activities outside the church, and visits to our apartments.
In addition to the special outreaches, the church operated a “social center,” an after-school program that provided learning enrichment and a safe place to gather and formulate positive friendships. Looking back, many of the programs offered then had the same elements as those we now offer at the Agape Center, the specialized Roseland community center operated by Cru® Inner City.
The Agape Center is the site of one of 70 S.A.Y. Yes! Centers for Youth Development™ offered across the globe, serving more than 2,000 children. Our Inner City team provides training, guidance and the curriculum for S.A.Y. Yes!™ to local church partners who host and operate the after-school programs. Through S.A.Y. Yes!, neighborhood children receive homework assistance, mentoring, Bible instruction, activities, and snacks.
That was the same stability offered to me through the Berean Baptist Church all those years ago. I’ll never forget one afternoon when we were walking in nearby Washington Park. One of the kids in our group got the idea that we should stop to pray. So we all got down on our stomachs, lying together in a circle. Everyone else was praying, but I didn't know what to say or how to even say it. I simply listened. While the outward voices continued to pray, I heard what I now understand to be God's voice whispering, “You need to get to know me.”
My young heart thought baptism was the answer to getting to know Him, but it wasn’t. Despite that early exposure from the local church, my conversion as a Christ-follower followed a winding path. From that point, through most of my teens, my focus was on the things of this world, leaving spiritual matters back when I was first exposed to them at Berean.
“Young man, you shouldn't put anything before the Lord.”
At age 17, a neighborhood couple came to the door to promote a local revival. They clearly explained the gospel message, but I respectfully rejected the good news because I knew I still wanted to have fun, which at that point was going after girls, partying with friends, and using drugs.
Three years later, I was working at a local hospital when I made plans with a Christian friend, a nice young man on whom I was a bad influence. While I and another friend waited for him to get ready, his aunt invited us to church. The young man who was with me rudely waved her off, saying, “I ain’t got time for church.”
The aunt didn't miss a beat. She simply looked directly at both of us and said, ”Young man, you shouldn't put anything before the Lord.” That's all she said, but it bounced off of him like a torpedo, missing its target and coming after me, the real target. It burrowed deep into my heart. Mentally, I thought, “Man, I put everything before God.”
Her words stayed with me even as I went off to smoke pot and drink beer with her nephew. Amid the haze of smoke, I couldn’t shake her words. I turned to my buddy, who was mid-gulp with his beer.
“Hey, man,” I blurted. “What is Jesus, the God in the Bible, all about?”
“The curriculum was the Bible, but the agenda was my questions.”
Even as his face bore the look of “Are we really going to do this now?” he pulled out his Bible. The resulting conversations over the next few days led to my conversion to Christ.
My transformation story didn’t end there. A faithful deacon, Euel Bunton, became my discipler for years. I met him every Saturday morning for an entire year. The curriculum was the Bible, but the agenda was my questions. Through his faithfulness to God and me, I experienced the first stages of life change. Supplementing that, other faithful men and women poured into my life.
Years ago, as I officially accepted the reins as director of the local Chicago ministry team, another man of God shared these words: “Milty, God honors faithfulness.” In 2018, the Cru organization named me Executive Director/Steward of Inner City.
The obedience of these men and women of God helped bring me to this current stage of ministry for our King, serving all of our Cru Inner City teams.
The result has been bushels of fruit.
Recently, I took a call from Jesse, who grew up as an only child a few blocks from the Agape Center. Since his single mom worked several jobs, Jesse began attending the Agape Center at age 12. The center gave him a sense of family. He felt genuinely cared for and loved. His call came at a time when I could use encouragement.
Now 53 and living out of state, Jesse said he was grateful to the center for helping him work through being diagnosed with a learning disability. After exposing him to a variety of skill sets, Jesse discovered he excelled at all things technical. Soon, he was setting up and maintaining the center’s first-ever computer.
“I was comfortable and safe there,” Jesse told me. “You all accepted me for who I was. I learned about God, His love for me, and how He cared for me. You all showed me and all the kids who came there that God does not make a difference between us.”
Today, Jesse is an office manager for a tax company. He has two adult daughters and still pursues God.
“I appreciate you,” Jesse shared with me. “Out of everything I’ve experienced in life, you’ve been the only consistent person. You have never wavered in your faith, what you teach, or how you treat people. Thank you for always being consistent.”
Jesse’s story is a good reminder that none of this — my exposure to Christ and ultimate conversion, a commitment to missions, relationship building, youth mentoring, and discipleship — would have come to fruition if it weren’t for the love and obedience of a local church.
“To this kid from the projects, their intentional, faithful, and faith-filled witness in my life uniquely prepared me for the ministry here in the Inner City.”
That church made an imprint because it embraced the ordained marriage between the Great Commandment and the Great Commission and then lived out that tenet in personal and meaningful ways. To this kid from the projects, their intentional, faithful, and faith-filled witness in my life uniquely prepared me for the ministry here at Inner City.
"You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you" (John 15:16, New King James Version).
For more than 40 years, that love, obedience, and faithfulness have anchored the South Side ministry for both my wife, Cynthia, and me. Although there have been plenty of valleys, it has mostly been hills. One of those mountaintop moments came when I was asked to preach at Berean — the same neighborhood church that had baptized me 50 years earlier.
I share this not to boast but to reiterate how these three common threads of love, obedience and faithfulness — under the direction of God’s anointed hand — establish supernatural transformation that is at the center of what we do: Supporting the local church and missions that live around and minister to the very people we are trying to reach: The underserved and marginalized.
This Inner City commitment is spelled out in our mission statement, which states, “Living out the Great Commandment and Great Commission with churches in the inner city,” a simple but clear declaration of our obedience through Christ.
The late Eugene Peterson talked about this concept when he described faith as a “Long Obedience in the Same Direction,” the title of one of his many books. That obedience means following His commandments even when we'd rather choose a more comfortable path.
That is my prayer for Cru Inner City and you, that our obedience yields the potential to “do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen" (Ephesians 3:20-21, NKJV).
Milton Massie and his wife, Cynthia, have served with Cru Inner City since 1986. After leading the Chicago team for 19 years, Milton was named executive director/steward of the entire Inner City division in 2018..
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