Crayons for the City

FOR THE BACK COVER:


“Crayons for the City is a practical, inspiring, insightful example of how a traditional church in a troubled urban neighborhood can become ‘re-neighbored’ and have a transformative impact on its community. Decades of creative, front-line urban ministry give Kevin Yoho the credibility to speak convincingly and correctively to the church in the city.”


—Bob Lupton, veteran urban activist; founder of FCS Urban Ministries; author of Toxic Charity, Charity Detox, and Theirs is the Kingdom





“This book is a must-read for anyone with a burden and vision for new hope for the city. Kevin Yoho uses his extensive experience in church and community leadership to offer fresh ways to breathe life into our aging and marginal urban neighborhoods. He shows how congregations and other groups, through intention and design, become ‘strategic neighbors,’ offering real relationship, genuine encouragement, and real hope to those who have gone too long without it.”


—E. Stanley Ott, President Vital Churches Institute





“It is much easier to duplicate and replicate than to incarnate, but Kevin Yoho’s engrossing Crayons for the City is a showcase exhibit on how to move from franchise church to artisan church. Yoho’s love for the city and its people beams on every page as he traces the local-color particularities that lead to the universal principles.”


—Leonard Sweet, author; professor (Drew University, George Fox University, Tabor College); founder of preachthestory.com





FOR THE FRONT PAGES:


“Kevin Yoho gets it. Crayons for the City gets it. The book tells the story of one pastor’s commitment to reconnect a struggling urban church with its struggling neighborhood in ways that transformed them both. It also invites readers to do something similar in their own way, in their own location. The book is filled with practical insights and wisdom, undergirded at every point by a profound theology of love and hope.


—Dale T. Irvin, President and Professor of World Christianity, New York Theological Seminary





“Twenty years ago when we started The Simple Way, we decided to worship on Sunday at the church closest to us. I’m glad we did. Kevin Yoho was the pastor. I remember hearing him challenge bad theology and the stigma of our neighborhood, known by many as ‘the Badlands.’ Kevin said this: ‘Don't forget what they said about Nazareth . . . nothing good could come from there.’ Kevin Yoho knew that God shows up in the margins. Yoho is a gifted theologian and urbanologist—helping people unpack the mystery of the incarnation . . . this idea that God put skin on and moved into the neighborhood, and invites us to follow. I remember hearing another pastor tell me that he initially thought we were missionaries here in ‘the Badlands,’ but then he realized that we were actually missionaries to the Church—inviting the church to come back to the neighborhood, and find Jesus on these broken streets. Pastors like Kevin Yoho are reminding the Church why she exists. And it is not just to have worship services on Sundays.


—Shane Claiborne, Author; Activist; Founder of The Simple Way and Red Letter Christians