Connect Leadership Ministries calls young adults to join together in “Missional Communities” in which they support each other in doing mission in vulnerable neighborhoods, planting or joining churches to reach out to the community.
With support from EAPE, Colin McCartney founded Urban Promise Toronto in 1998 and served as its president until early this year, when he launched a new initiative called Connect Leadership Ministries.
Through Connect Leadership Ministries, Colin recruits and trains young emerging leaders to revitalize dying churches and form missional communities that live among and serve the poor and oppressed in high-risk inner-city Toronto neighborhoods.
During this inaugural year it will cost $35,000 to maintain the missional community and church renewal effort that Colin established in a government-housing project in the Scarborough district of Toronto. Colin is a veteran urban missionary and a Red Letter Christian mentored by Tony, and we are confident that under his leadership Connect Leadership Ministries will be used by God to restore inner-city churches and transform the neighborhoods in which they are located.
We’re committed to helping Colin develop Connect Leadership Ministries into a self-sustaining ministry, but we need your help now and in the coming years to invest in this new and promising initiative.
The Latest from Connect Leadership Ministries
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Connect Leadership Ministries – The 3 M’s
Connect Ministries is involved in what we call the 3 M’s of ministry – Mission, Movement and Multiplication.
1. MISSION: Initiating Mission Via “Missional Communities” In Local Churches Or Through Church Plants
We are committed to calling young adults to join together in “Missional Communities” in which they support each other in doing mission in vulnerable neighborhoods. Our prayer is that these “Missional Communities” will plant churches or participate in struggling churches and provide the energy and purpose needed for the church to join them in reaching out to the neighborhood. The goal will be for the church to become a sending hub for missional actions within the neighborhood it is located in.
2. MOVEMENT: RED LETTER CHRISTIANITY
We believe that young adults will lead the way in mission and because of this we are committed to working with them in doing mission. We motivate, recruit, equip and send young adult volunteers into our cities to join “Missional Communities” with the purpose to do mission through urban churches or church plants. In this manner we come to see that true spiritual formation of young leaders takes place within the context of mission.
We call this praxis oriented community of young adults “Red Letter Christians” as we seek to develop a movement of young leaders who seriously seek to live out the words of Jesus that are written in red in certain versions of the Bible.
On top of the general equipping we are involved in we also provide more intense nine month Internships for young leaders interested in developing their leadership potential while also gaining important ministry experience. We place our Interns into “Missional Communities” where they will be stretched as they initiate and build a sustainable ministry in a vulnerable community through their “Missional Community” within a local church or by planting a church.
3. MULTIPLICATION
As our Interns graduate and return to their home country, or are led to serve in another country, we will work with them in establishing their own Connect Ministries hubs. It is our prayer that these missional hubs will create and energize more “red letter” movements of young adults from other countries so that a mission movement is multiplied on a global basis. Currently, we are working on potential missional hubs in places like the US and the Dominican Republic. Connect Ministries is also involved in coaching and directing young leaders where we are currently located in Toronto, Canada.
