The antidote to the Marxist poison of Black Lives Matter

Exclusive: Scott Lively recalls the Gospel impact and racial harmony of his inner-city ministry

In 2008, my wife and I moved to inner-city Springfield, Massachusetts, to start a Christian mission to serve the poor. We bought an abandoned former crack house in a really bad neighborhood to set a personal example of "redemptive living." We transformed that house into a show-piece and then sold it seven years later at cost to a charity home for troubled children next door. By then the whole neighborhood had also been transformed. All glory to God!

There was a gang shooting on our corner the day we moved in and about a dozen local murders followed that year. The neighborhood was so dangerous that residents were shocked to see us passing out Gospel tracts and praying with people in the evenings. One black gentleman gave us a stern warning when we gave him a tract and said, "God bless you," but with a tone that meant "you're crazy."

Early on I befriended Pastor Constant "Steve" Cooley, who truly was a "constant" symbol of stability and strength in the black community, and together we formedRedemption Gate Mission Society and its storefront church, "Holy Grounds Coffee House." We recruited missionary-minded Christians from the Greater Springfield area with a vision to re-Christianize that "post-Christian city." Holy Grounds became the most racially diverse and harmonious church around, and an incubator for numerous Christian ministries.

God used our tiny mission as a staging area for culture-changing ministry. Teams of evangelists roamed the streets, hundreds of inner-city families flocked to our annual Family Day in city parks, and thousands of believers from all over joined us for an annual March for Jesus that ended every year at City Hall. The high point was the 2010 March for Jesus when 22 pastors prayed one after another, in English, Spanish, Russian and Hebrew, while an airplane circled above with a banner exhorting "Trust Jesus."

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