By Steve Perry National Missions Church Planter

I was born in Detroit, Michigan, during the 1980s, when the crack cocaine epidemic took place. My grandfather was a drug dealer, my mother and father were selling drugs as well. They were also drug users. The 1990s was when the police got more involved, and I watched many of my family members very close to me, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends were either locked up or die from the lifestyle. Thanks to Nancy Reagan’s campaign on “Say No” to drugs. I had a tangible reality on why to say “NO” to drugs. We lived in poverty; we had so many roaches that there had to be at least 3 Kingdoms of them, and on top of that, they were fighting wars.

It was just a sad situation. I knew as a child that for me not to die or get caught on drugs that I had to do something different. In August of 1990, I was seven years old. One Saturday evening, I asked my mother if my brother and I could go to church. She allowed us to go to church. We had never gone, so we wore a white shirt, black pants, and white gym socks. I also wore a belt for a tie.

We went to church, and I heard a gospel that Sunday so simple and with so much energy that I had to give my life to Christ. I was compelled in a church service that I needed a Savior. I needed a person that could change the direction I could have gone because of the examples I had around me.

I often ask myself what would have happened if that church was not in that community. Would I have tried Islam if it was there? If Hebrew Israelites were there, would I have made that choice? Why didn’t I join a gang? After all, that’s what young inner-city boys do when they have no guidance. What would my life be like if there was no Gospel-based church in that neighborhood? Maybe I would not have received God. When we started gathering our core group, all I had in mind was, “How could I reach a kid or an adult within this context that would be a follower of Jesus Christ.”