I had never been so frightened in all my life. Gangs, guns, drugs, and prostitutes threatened to destroy my ministry, future, and life. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that I would have to face down a deadly gang, put my life on the line, and risk my family to start a gospel mission in the ghettos of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

We Started Our Ministry With Hot Meals On The Mean Streets Of Bridgeport

I spent my first year in Bridgeport preaching and feeding in some of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods and drug-infested parks. My wife and I prepared meals in borrowed kitchens and served them from our old station wagon. Before serving a hot meal, Tammy would sing a gospel song, and I would preach a short evangelistic message.

Hundreds of people—gang members, prostitutes, and children—came to our street feedings. The sights and sounds of life and death in the ghetto overwhelmed us. We saw children playing on playgrounds covered with broken wine bottles and empty syringes, drug dealers selling crack and heroin, addicts with needle marks all over their arms, and even a drive-by shooting.

Taking Over A Building Used For Drug Dealing And Prostitution

Towards the end of our first year, I received a phone call from a couple that owned a rooming house right in the heart of where Tammy and I were doing our ministry. The owners had heard that we were looking for a building and wanted to know if we might be interested in leasing their property. We were so excited!

We didn’t know that a street gang had started using their building for drug dealing and prostitution. The owners were desperate and afraid. To further complicate the situation, the week before we moved in, another gang tried wresting control of the building from the first gang. The new gang machine-gunned the building, barely missing one of the female tenants. Although they really shot up the place, they failed to oust the gang in control.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that if I wanted to use their building for ministry, I would be responsible for throwing this gang back onto the streets. I decided not to involve the police, figuring that their help would alienate those I wanted to reach with the gospel in the long run. I must admit that the prospect of throwing this violent gang back out onto the streets was very frightening to me.

The week before it was time for me to move into the building, I decided to visit the neighborhood and get a feel for its atmosphere. I watched from my parked car just down the street from the building. I saw drug dealers swap drugs for dollars, passing them into the hands of anxious addicts eager for a fix and prostitutes yelling at passing cars like hawkers outside a pawn shop.

After I had been there for about fifteen minutes, one of the prostitutes crossed the street and approached me. She wanted to know if I was a cop. I told her I was a pastor, had rented their building, and planned to open a mission in it the following Sunday. She returned to the building.

A few minutes later, one of the drug dealers shouted at me from the other side of the street. He told me they would kill me if I attempted to enter the building. I believed him.

Exchanging Fear For Confidence In God’s Plan

Shortly after my conversion to Christ, I read “Foxes’ Book of Martyrs.” The book was filled with stories of men and women that had endured great hardships and suffering, the loss of their reputations, and the short-circuiting of their lives by the vicious apparatus of church and state. My heart was gripped by their compelling testimonies, their willingness to lose all for the sake of Christ.

When I first became a Christian, my faith compelled me to completely surrender my life to Christ and be willing, if necessary, to make the ultimate sacrifice, surrendering my mortal existence. But now, my faith had aged, and my circumstances changed with the addition of a wife and children. The earlier compulsion to lay down my life, to exit temporal reality, now seemed adolescent, a whisper of a selfish perspective that had faded with maturing responsibilities.

Instead of relishing the possibility of martyrdom, all I wanted to do was run. The crisis and danger of this situation vividly demonstrated my fear of death. My faith in Christ, which should have prepared me for this battle, seemed to fail me. Christian friends tried to comfort me with their assurances that God wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me. But anyone reading the Bible knows Christians can die doing God’s will. It happens all the time.

My struggle continued for days. Things I had taken for granted were now brought into sharp focus—my love for my wife, watching my children grow into adults, flowers blooming, birds singing, hamburgers, and french fries. I cried out to God for help.

At this crisis point, I remembered the words Jim Elliot wrote in his journal before he set out as a missionary to a tribe of headhunters in Ecuador. He wrote, “He is no fool, who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.” The headhunters he hoped to win to Christ speared Jim and his companions to death.

As I reflected on Jim’s words and faith, my fear, though still present, surrendered to a higher calling. I realized that the loss of my life for the sake of Christ would become the portal that led me to a place where pain ceased to exist, tears were wiped away, sickness was subdued, and hope was realized. Feeling foolish, I decided that trading my life for a future with God was a winning proposition. I made up my mind to go for it.

The day finally arrived for taking possession of the building. Before going to the building, I held my wife in my arms for a long time. I wondered if I would ever see her again on this side of the grave.

When I arrived at the building, I unlocked the front door and entered the main room. It was filled with gang members and prostitutes. Summoning up all the courage I could muster, I announced that the building was now the property of the Bridgeport Rescue Mission. I told them all to leave. They left! I couldn’t believe it. But that wasn’t the end of it. Unfortunately, they took their drug trade outside and started selling a few feet from the building. I was still in harm’s way.

He Saved My Life

That night, I held a Bible Study in our new mission. To my surprise, the head drug dealer in charge of our block came to our study. His name was *Ron. About halfway into the study, Ron confessed his shame over his drug dealing. He knew selling drugs was wrong, but he felt trapped. It was the only life he had ever known. Ron and I quickly developed an understanding with one another.

My presence created quite a stir on the block. Another gang decided I was a danger to their business and planned to kill me. For reasons I’ll never understand, Ron intervened and saved my life. Five days later, disaster struck. Ron was shot to death less than fifty feet from the mission. Moments before he died, as he lay bleeding on the streets, one of the guys in our Discipleship Program led him to Christ.

During the next couple of months, four people were shot and another killed within a few feet of the mission. A little girl’s throat was slit up the street in retaliation for something her mother had done. One night in front of my house, several blocks from the mission, two teenage boys came out of the darkness and fired five shots at me. They missed. I never saw them again.

God Has A Sense Of Humor

Eventually, things began to quiet down. We finally broke out of survival mode and focused on building a gospel ministry for the broken and wounded. Some of the publicity we received was really used by God. A local newspaper article led to the donation of a thirty-five-bed licensed facility. We used the home to shelter, feed, and disciple men who had lost their way and needed Christ. A couple of months after we took possession of the facility, we rented another facility for use as a home for restoring street prostitutes through the power of Christ.

Today, as I look back over our time in Connecticut, I am overwhelmed with a sense of God’s power. We take no credit for the ministry’s successes. Tammy and I are just two ordinary people, deeply flawed, always desperately in need of God’s grace, who said yes to God. What a sense of humor God must have to use people like us.

**Name Changed