Can We Save the Cities? A Testimony of God’s Transforming Work

Can We Save the Cities? A Testimony of God’s Transforming Work

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Aaron Anderson

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 6/30/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, good afternoon and welcome again to Stand in the Gap today. I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell, Director of Church Culture at the American Pastors Network. Many of you know that I’m a city boy born and raised in New York City. And even though much of my ministry career has been in more of a suburban and rural settings, I’m always drawn to the city. I love the energy, the diversity, the collection of offerings that the urban culture provides. Yet I’m fully aware of the struggles, the conflicts, tensions, and pressures involved in city life. You would think that bigger the city, the greater the problems, which is in some cases true, but larger cities get all of the attention, the help, the finances, the publicity. However, you would be surprised to know that a small percentage of cities in America are actually over a hundred tho0 people in population and that the lion’s share of the cities are small and medium in size.

Those smaller cities have the same problems as the large cities do, yet they have far less resources to address the crisis that they are facing. And because of their size, they get less attention, less help. Statistically and realistically, America’s city problems are not just the grand metropolises, but also the mom and pop cities across the nation. Hungry kids, buildings and decay, crime on the rise, school failings. And as we know, government has proven again and again to not be able to fix the problem. Enter the church and God’s people. Could it be that God could unite his church and his people and we could be the soften and light in those cities that the Lord intended us to be? Could it be that we could fulfill Jeremiah 29 and actually seek the welfare of the city and save our small midsize cities? Our guest is convinced that that can happen.

Aaron Anderson is the author of Unlikely Good, a book that tells a story of one of these cities being changed and God’s people being used to make a difference. His hope is that other Christian leaders will grab hold of this vision and we could spark a movement of renewing America’s once, great and flourishing small cities. Aaron, welcome to Stand in the Gap.

Aaron Anderson:

Hey, Jamie, it’s great to be with you. Thanks for having me on here.

Jamie Mitchell:

Aaron, I want to start with you briefly telling your story. Where do you live? What’s happening in your city? And what was it that ignited a passion to do something about what was happening in your city?

Aaron Anderson:

Yeah. Well, I live in York, Pennsylvania. I always have to qualify that, Jamie, by saying it’s not New York. It’s York, Pennsylvania, which is about an hour north of Baltimore, two hours west of Philadelphia. We’re considered what they call the statistical metropolitan areas.

We’re one of those cities, so we’re considered a metropolitan area, but like you said, we’re one of those small cities. In Pennsylvania, I actually call them third class cities, not because they’re less classy, but just because they’re just smaller towns. So York County has about 470,000 people. But in the city that I live in, it’s about 50,000 people. And man, it’s just like you described, these small cities are really unique in the sense that they’re … I like to say they’re big enough to have all the problems that big cities have, but they’re small enough that we should be able to make some substantial change in those cities.

Having lived here now, Jamie, I moved to York in 2004 from Raleigh, North Carolina. I was actually born and raised outside in the suburbs of Chicago. So I’ve been in a big city and I’ve seen some midsize cities and then I’ve lived in small cities as well. What you’d see in York City, if you came here, you’d see the same kind of problems cities have like gang violence, poverty, concentrated poverty. For me, what really sparked things for me personally was living next to a little girl named Darisabel who was two years old, who ended up being beaten to death by her mother’s boyfriend with an Xbox controller. And it was in the middle of me, I was pastoring or I was actually an assistant pastor at a small Presbyterian church and I was considering church planting and looking all over and really, Jamie, I was really focused on going to a big city, looking at Chicago, places like that, Northern Virginia.

And God used that event to say, “Man, Aaron, right here in this tiny little town that’s not really that attractive to you, you have your neighbors need the gospel and they need ministry. Why would you go anywhere else?” And so I mean, that’s just one event, but it was a pretty significant event for me that said, “There is so much need in these little cities. Why don’t you consider staying here in

Jamie Mitchell:

York?” Aaron, we’re going to talk a lot about your book, Unlikely Good. And at the core of your belief is that the church and God’s people can be and must be a solution to this small mid-size city decay problem crisis. Why do you believe that? And again, was there a moment where this truth became so crystal clear to you? We got about two minutes in this segment.

Aaron Anderson:

You said it in the intro, that Jeremiah 29 passage where God tells the people they’re in exile to seek the peace and prosperity of Babylon. Man, I am convinced we are strangers and aliens on this earth, but I don’t think God intends for us just to live for heaven. I think we’re meant to do good as we’re passing through this place. I think that’s a great reminder for us. And you see it. It’s interesting also, the book of Jonah, Jonah actually is called to go and do good to Nineveh. I think it says 60,000 people or something like that at the end of the book of Jonah. And Jonah doesn’t want, he wants fireworks for the city. He wants to see an end of a burn, but God has compassion even on the cattle in that city, which is just so striking to me. That was a big city back then and now it would be like a York size.

Nineveh would be like a York-sized city. So I think the scripture really points us to it. My own experience has been that you give 20 years, and we’ve been here over 20 years, you give 20 years to a city, what you’ll see happen, it’ll be seeds will start getting planted. And that’s been a vision for me is just to see, man, just see seed planted for change. It’s going to probably take generations to make a difference. But like somebody said, somebody said, “When was the best time to plant a tree?” Probably 20 or 30 years ago, now when’s the best time to plant a tree? Probably today.

Jamie Mitchell:

Amen. Hey, when you look throughout the historical narratives and that biblical character, is it clear to see that God has a way of touching one person who will follow God’s lead and begin to make a difference. I think we were going to see that in this story of urban renewal for small cities. When we come back, I want Aaron to outline what exactly are the problems facing small cities and then we can dig in on some of the solutions. Today we’re talking about how to bring renewal into the urban setting through God’s period. Welcome back. My guest today is Aaron Anderson, author of Unlikely Good and we’re discussing the plight of small cities in America. And how do you unite to make a change? Aaron, your book states that small cities have big city problems. We’ve lightly touched on it. We mentioned them, but can you help our audience understand what the problems and the crises facing these cities are today?

How immense are these issues?

Aaron Anderson:

Well, I think, like I said, I think they’re very similar to what you would see in big cities. The city of York, for instance, has a poverty percentage that’s probably somewhere in the 21 to 24% range. The school that I run, Logos Academy in New York City, it’s in a set of zip codes that are considered some of the most under-resourced zip codes in the country. That’s according to a Harvard Link study. York PA is a top five and most under-resourced just behind a city like Detroit, Michigan. So poverty is significant. What I think you also see in these small cities is that you don’t have the same kind of economic investment that you see happening in bigger places. Most of the venture capital in the country is going to large urban centers. It’s not coming to cities to these small and mid-sized cities. So especially a town like York that was heavily manufacturing, most of your audience will probably know things like York Peppermint Patties, York Barbell, York Air Conditioning, those things.

Harley Davidson, big factories here, Caterpillar used to be here. A lot of those manufacturing jobs have moved and there’s just not the same kind of investment, not that there’s no economic investment, but it’s just not at the scale. You don’t see these big corporations moving in. And so from an economic standpoint, there’s not great jobs, great economics, not a big tax base to move the needle so that the government can solve a lot of the challenges. And so therefore you have high poverty rates, like I said, almost at 25% and with that comes all the problems that with poverty from nutrition to housing to violence, gangs, you name it, all those things kind of run rampant without a lot of hope that there’s going to be improvement on those issues. Aaron,

Jamie Mitchell:

I want you to be able to explain this though to our people. When you say things like under-resourced, what does that mean? And the other question came to my mind is, are manufacturing businesses and people moving out of places like York because there aren’t opportunities or are there social and cultural things that are driving them out?

Aaron Anderson:

It’s probably a complex answer on that question. I’ll tackle that one first. I think a lot of it has to do with labor force. Can you find qualified … Manufacturing has changed. Can you find qualified workers? Manufacturing is not the same old what we would think of as like the old, dirty factories, factories that are messy that’s not the same. Manufacturing has changed quite a bit. So the need for technical skills and operating robotic machinery, things like that, those have changed. So when you have a workforce that can’t keep up with that, yeah, of course there probably are other things. Northern states, I grew up in Illinois where Caterpillar was and I just remember watching union workers striking all the time. A lot of those manufacturers moved out of those states where there were heavy, strong unions. They moved down south to states that weren’t union dominated.

There probably are a host of kind of different types of factors for why manufacturers aren’t here, but a lot of it has to do with workforce and the ability to attract workers. So when you look, you think like when Apple, the phone people, the computer people, when they’re going to build a new campus, they’re going to go into a place and look and see, can we draw workers here? And also, can we attract workers from around the country to come to this place because they’ll want to live here. There’s a reason why they’re building a campus in Raleigh and not a campus in York, Pennsylvania.

Jamie Mitchell:

Yeah. I see that here. I’m in West Lafayette, the home of Purdue University and we have manufacturing blowing up all around here because they have a college campus to draw their workers to in places like pharmaceuticals or chip or this or that. And so yeah, that’s exactly it. But also there is this sense of the social cultural safety nets and the things that are in that area drawing them and wanting to keep people. And if some of those things start to go on decline both morally and socially, it makes it very hard for a city to economically recover. Aaron, one of the added dilemmas that I see, and as I was reading your book and just thinking about this, is both the failure of government to be able to arrest some of these problems and some of the systematic problems that will arise that the population or the people who live there are always looking for the government to solve these problems.

Can you speak to that issue of the failure of government to do it, but also the habitual problem of us always looking for the government to fix our problems?

Aaron Anderson:

Yeah. I mean, that’s a perpetual … As you know, that’s a perpetual problem. I do think, Jamie, there are things the government can influence and I think there are policies that are good policies to stimulate economic growth and things like that. But something has happened in our country where we expect the government to do a lot more than it was really created to do, even what Go created to do. We see that here in our work, maybe we’ll touch on that some with our work with local police. Our local police right now are pleading with us. We’ve got a minister’s group that’s been meeting with them for about 10 years with all of our county police chiefs. I mean, they are pleading with the church right now to say, “We need you guys to help us on a problem that we’re encountering. Here’s what they’re encountering in our community.

They’re encountering an increasing number of kids that are being charged with sexting with child porn charges. Well, a 40% increase in one particular region, 40% increase in kids being charged because they’re on phones with sexting, sending inappropriate messages. And these kids are getting hit with child porn charges and the police are saying, we have to stop this somehow.” And it’s one of those things where, man, this is where you actually, you have to have the family involved and you probably need churches involved. Parents need to be better in touch. So here’s a great example of where the government, and by that, where I’m talking about the police in this case can’t solve, they can’t solve the issue. Police are not, they’re not a social services institution in terms of like solving these kinds of social problems, but for a long time we have looked to the government to do things.

Now I will say on the other side in New York, Pennsylvania and in Pennsylvania, one of the things the government could solve is that our housing policy in Pennsylvania will put, you’ll end up, if you’re poor, you really have to live in a community that you can afford. And so the housing policy ends up creating these communities or people can only live, for instance, in York City. And so the York City schools, they have an 80% poverty rate and therefore a 62% high school graduation rate. I think there are ways the government could solve and help tackle that, but that we have to start trekking into things about affordable housing and all that. So I think it’s a both and. I don’t think this is an either or issue. I think there are good things the government can do, but there are a lot of things, churches and families I would say the vast majority of things that families, strong families and churches would make a huge difference on the social dilemmas that we have.

Jamie Mitchell:

And see, Aaron, what you just said there, my guess is the lion’s share of pastors have never had a conversation with a police chief, have never talked with their mayor, don’t even know who’s on their city council and therefore they can’t build that rapport to both know what’s wrong with their city and some of the issues that the city and the government are facing and they feel hamstring. So part of this is Christians need to be able to know what is actually happening. Is their city? Isn’t that even a greater issue?

Aaron Anderson:

I’ll tell you, Jamie, that’s so much of why I wrote the book was not because I thought I had all the answers, but I just said, having invested my own time in meeting with those people and being involved in those people and actually being, I sat on the city’s redevelopment authority for almost 15 years, just being involved and I was welcomed in those spaces. I was not pushed out. These people wanted pastors involved. And Jesus said we have to be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves. So we have to approach these topics with wisdom, but it did put me in proximity with the challenges York County was facing and in relationship with the people where we could actually, we could be at the table during these vitally important conversations our community’s having.

Jamie Mitchell:

Look, friends, we can complain that the government is not doing their job, but the real problem is that failure is occurring because we’re not doing our job as God’s people. We’re not asking the questions. We’re not building the relationships. We’re almost sitting there with our hands on our ears, our eyes, and our mouths, like the three little monkeys. Next up, for renewal to work, there has to be some collaboration. We need to work together. That means God’s people working together. Can we do it and what will it take? Stay with us as we continue to find solutions for our cities. We are focused on the small and medium cities in America and how to turn them around from decline and decay and get them back to thriving actually seeing the needs of those cities and their people met. Aaron Anderson is doing that and encouraging pastors and Christian leaders to band together.

Aaron, at the core of what you’re advocating is that the church, God’s people must work together for the common good and a goal to see their city renewed. It sounds good, but I know that it’s not easy what we’re saying. Let me ask you this. Why is it so hard for Christian leaders and churches and ministries to work together and what in general is hindering this from occurring?

Aaron Anderson:

Well, I think there are probably a variety of things, but I think part of it, what I would say that I see as a pastor, I pastor a large congregation in York called Living Word Community Church and I also serve as a CEO at Logos Academy. So I actually see this problem. It’s not just a church problem, it’s a nonprofit problem as well is that I think we all are busy and we get focused in kind of our lane or our silo, whichever image you want to pick there and pastors are doing their thing. They’re busy writing sermons, they’re busy visiting hospitals, caring for people, working with the boards, nonprofits are busy doing all the things that they do, usually raising money and worrying about money. And so it just is very easy that it not be a priority to get out of your church building, to get out of your nonprofit and go sit and be with other leaders.

I think that’s the starting point. I think it’s a time priority. For me, one of the things I did early on was just to say, “Man, I know I have to be connected with other people because I know how interconnected the issues are that we’re trying to solve.” And so just making a priority of getting out of my church, out of my office and going and being involved in the local community, that was one of the things I don’t sense as much. I do sense, Jamie, that churches sometimes can have turf, what I call a turf wars where we kind of want to protect our congregation, our turf, and we may not work with other people because there’s a fear of my people will leave and go to that church. I don’t sense that deeply, but I know it’s present. I wouldn’t say it’s present in a really significant way, but I know it’s there and I see that by the way.

I see it in white churches, black churches, Latino churches in my own community. It’s present, but by and large, we’ve been able to overcome that here.

Jamie Mitchell:

Aaron, how about the issue and this is what I’ve heard from pastors over the years is that, well, we got too many theological differences and my church may not want to mix it up with other believing churches but who believe differently about things. Did you see any of that theological roadblocks when you have been collaborating, bringing people together as you have? Well,

Aaron Anderson:

They’re present. I think we’d be naive not to recognize that when you bring together a variety of people, especially if you’re somebody from an evangelical tradition, you’re going to work with … In cities, you’re likely going to work with Pentecostals depending on how willing you are to work, maybe Catholics, you get across that spread, mainline Protestant groups. I mean, it’s real. It’s there. I think you have to look at what you’re doing so often. I would say churches, as I’ve watched around the country, churches, when they come together, the first thing they want to tend to do is like, “Let’s get together and have prayer services. Let’s get together and do church worship services.” That, Jamie, I would look at and say, “Man, if you’re looking to create a collision on theology, you just stepped into the zone.” But what we’ve been able to do at the school, at Logos Academy, where two thirds of our kids are kids that live in poverty, that’s our bylaws stipulate that will only serve that’s a hard line for us.

The focus is on the kids that don’t have resources that are impoverished, who need Christ-centered education. And when the focus is around serving those kids and getting kids that education, we’ve been able to bring together those evangelicals, Pentecostals, Episcopal churches, Lutheran churches, even Roman Catholics and people that are Orthodox around that mission. And yeah, we have to draw some boundaries around what’s the core. So much for us has been like the Apostles Creed as a core and then just kind of trying to be generous with each other outside of that boundary to say on some secondary matters, maybe we’re not going to talk about those things or maybe if we do talk about them, we’re going to try to talk about those things charitably and not have a war with each other. Can we be respectful on those spaces? I know that’s getting harder and harder to do in our country, but we have been able to do it now for almost 30 years at Los Academy and we’ve been able to bring together people that ordinarily wouldn’t be able to be in a room together.

Jamie Mitchell:

Aaron, I want you to speak about something that was in your book that I found fascinating. You talk about storms and specifically leadership, community, financial storms that you face. Can you briefly explain that and how do they play a role in possibly hindering collaboration with other organizations and churches and ministries?

Aaron Anderson:

Well, when you have a passion, at the heart of the book I said, we should be looking for the things that break our hearts because they probably break God’s heart. When you see kids that are uneducated, kids that are 62% graduation rate, kids that I’ve played basketball with Jamie that are now dead because they died of begun violence. When you see that stuff and it breaks your heart, you want to start moving and getting something done. And so just as soon as you start getting things moving and you start doing something good, the reality is with your church or nonprofit, there just are all kinds of storms that start brewing all around you that you just don’t have control over. They can be, like you said, they could be, I mentioned leadership storms, that’s like the challenges of keeping people together, keeping them focused and aligned on a mission.

They could be for a nonprofit, those could be financial storms That’s often the case in nonprofits that are trying to do good. They’re struggling to raise money. I mean, in York County, for instance, Jamie, 40% of York’s nonprofits are completely volunteer run, meaning they have no paid employees. There just are limitations on what you can do as a volunteer organization. I’m not putting those organizations down. I’m just saying there just are challenges when you’re strictly volunteer run. The community storms are all the stuff that stirs in your community all the time. The news cycle is turning so fast in our communities that there are constantly culture wars, battles brewing, political things that are happening and those things they can end up just being storms that kind of knock you off your feet as you’re trying to do the work and you have to pay as much attention to those things as you do to just trying to run a healthy, you’re trying to run a healthy nonprofit, a healthy church and all those things are constantly brewing and crashing in and that’s just a reality for anyone that’s trying to do good work.

Jamie Mitchell:

Aaron, a pastor is listening and he’s saying, “Okay, I get it. I think I need to get in the game.” What on or two things would you tell a pastor right now if he wants to start moving in this idea of collaboration, how would you encourage leaders to try to forge some unity in their community?

Aaron Anderson:

Yeah, where I started in the book, Jamie, is I’d say I probably would begin either meeting with some people in your congregation or meeting people that you know and trust in your community that are connected to what’s going on and start praying, first of all, because I do believe you pray. I think the Lord will show you what’s burning in your heart? What’s the thing you’re looking at in your heart and saying, “Man, it just kills me to see the number of homeless people that are in our community.” Or to see kids not getting a quality education or people not having access to the kind of housing that they should pay attention to those things. And maybe there are things in your own congregation that are plaguing people in your congregation, start listening, start praying, start meeting with people, start showing up to events, even just throwing up and just man, maybe Maybe for the first year you’re doing nothing but a listening tour where you just are going around the community praying, listening, going on prayer walks through your community, whatever it is, it starts to just move in your heart and see what the Holy Spirit would start to do and see if there’s not some particular thing, maybe one thing that you’d look at and say, “We really want to be involved in this particular issue.” I know, for instance, in my county right now, Jamie, we’re right now talking with pastors.

There aren’t great parenting resources and parents are struggling with this generation to know how to raise them with smartphones and all that. And you can see it’s creating social issues and challenges. Literally, we had a kid killed the other night in a park from a fight that started on social media. This is the kind of stuff that we’re seeing. I would encourage pastors just to start listening and paying attention and saying, “We’re going to pick something that God’s moving us on that we’re going to get involved in. ” And I would say for the sake of doing good, but also I think this is one of those ways. The Bible says, “Do good works before men. They’ll praise your Father in heaven.” Good works. They’re not just social justice. It actually is a way that we do mission and can do evangelism in our communities is just by showing people what God is like.

Jamie Mitchell:

Hey, listen, friends, we can do more together than separate. When we finish up, I want Aaron to give a report on the fruit of these efforts. Stay with us. It’s been a joy to have Aaron Anderson, who is the CEO of Log Us Works. He’s at Logos Academy. He’s a pastor. Aaron, before we run out of time, tell the people where they can find out about your story, purchase the book, learn more about the ministries there in York, Pennsylvania.

Aaron Anderson:

Yeah. So you can go to my website. I have a blog that I write on. I kind of write on these topics and the book can be purchased there as well. It’s aaronjanderson.com and that’s two A’s. So A- A-R-O-N, janerson.com. Probably Google search just of unlikely good. We’ll pull that up and you’ll be able to get the book, which will tell so much about the stories and things that we’ve been doing with some suggestions. A bit of a how-to guide for nonprofits and church leaders to think about where to start. I try to be pretty practical in that respect.

Jamie Mitchell:

And they can find out about the uniqueness of Logos Academy and the kind of ministry you have there in the inner city in an urban setting and really touching the lives of students and their families who in many respects would be forgotten and would not get the kind of education they need, but you guys are doing a great work there. Aaron, I think it’s important that we discuss some of the outcomes. Your story obviously is not complete. You’re still at it. You’re slugging away there in York to continue to see God do a work, but there’s always more to do, yet measurable identifiable fruit has come from your efforts there. And I think it’s important for you to share a number of those to encourage our people and to say, “Hey, here’s some things that God has

Aaron Anderson:

Done.” Yeah. Well, I’d say starting with a school, Logos Academy has been around since 1998. People can go find it logosyork.org and go see the school. School that was started almost 30 years ago to serve low income kids in our community, Christ-centered education. In the last seven years, 72% of our kids have gotten full ride scholarships to the colleges of their choice. These are kids, by the way, Jamie, that are … I said it earlier, our bylaws stipulate that two thirds of our kids have to be kids that either are living in poverty or are right near the poverty line. And so we are talking about kids, many of them who are kids of color, who are seeing amazing results. That’s a Christ-centered work with lots of Christians coming together to do that. We’re a K to 12 school. Seeing that has been incredible. The impact, the generational impact that is having on kids.

I mean, these kids that have graduated are bringing their kids back to Logos Academy. And so that’s been a very, very exciting thing for us to see happen. In our work in the community, about 10 years ago in 2016, I started meeting with local police chiefs and black pastors. I started bringing them together. We’ve been meeting every month for 10 years now and out of that has actually launched an organization called the York County Safety Collab where we actually work to help local police build better community relationships with communities, with our communities. Urban communities often have a tense relationship with police. I’ll tell you, we’re watching black leaders develop beautiful friendships with the cops here and there’s all kinds of amazing things that have come out of our relationship with police there, ways that we’ve been able to fund training for them, ways that we’re able to work together against violence here in York specifically among kids.

That initiative has grown quite a bit. Those are just, I mean, a couple things. There’s so many things that are going on. It feels like we’re like Mark IV. We feel like that farmer that’s just scattering seed and now we’re starting to see some of it come up from the ground. And some things haven’t worked and that’s okay. We tried some things that didn’t work. Other things we’re seeing though are bearing some fruit.

Jamie Mitchell:

Aaron, just two observations years ago and I’ve said this on this program before years ago I got the same burden for the city I was a part of and I made an appointment to go see the mayor and I remember he was scared to death to meet with me. He later told me this because he knew that we were at political ends of the spectrum. He knew where I stood and I knew where he stood. But when I went in and I said, “Mayor, I’m not here to complain about a thing. I just have one question for you. How can my church help you be a successful mayor?” And Aaron, it broke the bubble and it opened a floodgate that ended up being about 10 years of really good relationship and he opened doors and it was amazing. And right now I’m an interim pastor in a town of 3000 and I’m writing a job description for the pastor and one of the things I’m putting in the job description of the new pastor is 10% of his time has to go to finding the needs in their city or their town as small as it may be and make a difference.

I mean, it’s that simple of a step, wouldn’t you say that a pastor or a church could do right now and could change drastically the landscape of how the church ministers to whatever city they’re in?

Aaron Anderson:

Oh yes, absolutely. I mean, that’s so encouraging to hear your story because that’s exactly making those phone calls, going and sitting down and doing exactly what you said to the mayor, to your police chief, to your local congressional representatives. I mean, look, I’m always lobbying those people for something, but they all know me as a human being, as somebody who’s a friend and who also is always … I pray for all those folks on a weekly basis. I’ve got a prayer journal. I’m always asking, “How can I be praying for you? What are you struggling with? What are the challenges that you’re facing?” When you do that, you’re still going to disagree on stuff and that’s okay, but you’re establishing a human connection. I think you’re loving people the way Jesus would want us to love. I think that’s how you be salt and light in your community.

Man, I think what you’d find is that you’ll end up being a conduit of a lot of good. People will notice we have now donors, donors who have significant resources who will end up giving funds to us because they’re saying, “We want you guys to be involved in solving this problem, so we’re going to put the money through you so that you guys are at the table.” And we’re just able to do so much with that. That’s a whole other topic in conversation about what that could open up. But what it does do is it at least puts you at the table and in a place where you can actually be a light. Jesus said, right, you don’t put a light of light and then put it under a bushel in the house. You put it on a lampstand so that everybody can see. And so I think this is one of those ways that the very, very simple way for churches and church leaders and nonprofit leaders to go get involved in their community is just to make those phone calls, sit down with people.

You don’t have to start with the thing you disagree on. Maybe don’t start there. D exactly what you said. It’s just, I’m not here for anything. How can we help you be successful? That’s a great question.

Jamie Mitchell:

You know what’s interesting that came out of that conversation, the budget of that city had so tanked that they didn’t have the money to provide nine volt batteries for smoke detectors in low income houses. Our churches paid for the batteries and helped distribute them and it made an amazing, amazing difference. Aaron, it’s been a blessing to hear your story. Get his book, Unlikely Good and push people to this program and listen and pastor. If you’re listening today, here’s what I want to suggest to you. Get out your job description, sit down with your board and say, “Hey, listen, I’m going to be changing some things and 10% of my time each week is going to be to seek the welfare of my city and all for the glory of God. To make a difference and be a difference maker, it takes courage. And as I say, at the end of every one of my programs and until tomorrow, live and leave with courage.

Have a great day. See you tomorrow. Again, stand in the gap today.