What is Gateway to Hope?
We are:
Seeking to bring the people of South Florida and cities around the globe into a transforming relationship by connecting them to God and to one-another. We desire that in each place:
Its people across all ethnic and socio-economic boundaries would become members of Christ’s body, the church, and passionately committed to engage the world in word and deed ministry.
Its pastors, shepherds and leaders would be encouraged and strengthened to see their communities with a new vision for discipleship and passion for raising up other leaders.
Its churches increasingly working together, ministering to the needs of the community, advocating for the weak and empower the helpless to bring hope and justice.
Its communities would increasingly reflect conformity with scriptural ideas of justice, mercy and peace as we seek to bring the light of Christ to bear in the transformation of society.
Gateway to Hope was born out of need. According to a recent Miami-Herald report, new numbers released by the U.S. Census Bureau show the Miami-Dade/Broward/Palm Beach metropolitan area is now the eighth-most populated in the nation, recently surpassing six million people for the first time.
The three counties have shown rapid and sustained growth over the past half-decade. Additionally, the census data shows that over the past five years the vast majority of new residents to the tri-county region — about 65 percent or more than 335,000 people — have come from other countries. And yet our churches reflect anything but these statistics. We seem, in fact to be headed just the other direction. The area from Ft Lauderdale to Key West holds 23 LCMS churches for the over 6 million residents. Nine of those congregations worship less than 50 people each Sunday and nearly all of them, big or small, are in decline. While there are 128 languages spoken in this same area there are separate churches or language based services representing only Spanish speakers and Haitians.
Looking for a Gateway to Hope
After 25 years of successful ministry in NE Ohio, Jeff and Terri Johnson have been called to south
Florida. Jeff has said that, “the need was so great and the opportunities so numerous that it was hard to pass up. All of our training and experience in cross-cultural outreach seems a clear fit. All of our training and experience in urban ministry seems to fit as well.”
Locating in Miramar they found themselves at the center of it all. Embedded in Miramar Lutheran Church they are surrounded by a people who are desperate to reach the world with the message of the Gospel.
Scheduled to close, this small group of people have taken extraordinary steps to change their future and the future of their community.
We need a city-wide movement. To have one we need the number of Christians across the city growing faster than the population, and therefore, a growing percentage of the people of the city are connecting with gospel-centered churches and are finding faith in Jesus Christ. That will eventually have an impact on the whole life of the city.
We must be about reaching people for Christ by developing, cultivating, strengthening and multiplying transformational churches and leaders that will result in this city-wide movement .