URBAN TRAILS

Urban Trails is a Missional Living and Learning Experience for university students. Students in the Atlanta area are enlisted to live in unchurched and underserved urban communities to discover and implement community transformation initiatives, including but not restricted to church planting, educational tutoring/mentoring, economic development pathways, safety empowerment and housing creation. A well-developed and already tested process of preparation and guidance has been formulated.

Urban Trails Inside Atlanta’s Perimeter

Urban Atlanta Church Planting (UACP), a cooperative effort of the Atlanta Association of Southern Baptist Churches, the Atlanta Metro Baptist Association, and the Southwest Atlanta Baptist Association, desires to call Collegiate Semester Missionaries who will lay the foundation for community transformation inside the perimeter (ITP) of Atlanta. (The “perimeter” is I-285, the loop around Atlanta.)

Approximately 878,000 people live ITP.  It is estimated that over 500,000 people living ITP have no religious affiliation; over 600,000 people ITP are not church members; and over 700,000 people living ITP do not attend any form of worship each week.  Many of the ITP congregations 15 years of age or older are commuting congregations with little community interest or involvement.  Some call these churches “museums with carpetbagger members.” There is a need for more than 700 culturally relevant, missionary congregations.

URBAN TRAILS — 9 Month Plan (January 2012-September 2012)

This project will be a nine-month project beginning January 16, 2012, and continuing through September 15, 2012. Students will be provided a stipend, housing, and food money. The project could possibly involve as many at ten college students serving in teams of two as missionaries living in five areas ITP.  The desired outcomes of this 9-month project are:

1. Collegians will be discipled into being Jesus followers and will be trained to disciple those living in their assigned areas.
2. Collegians will have experienced missionary lifestyles in Atlanta, and this training could lead them to be effective missionary non-clergy in their work and community.
3. Culturally relevant churches being started in the five communities that address the community needs discovered during the community exegesis.

The year will be divided into two parts:

January – April: Missional Learning

During this segment of service, each student will:

• Meet every other week with leadership
• Participate in an orientation/team building weekend retreat in January
• Experience how to be a missionary in the city as a Jesus follower
• Discover his/her personality type and learn how to effectively work with people of different personality types
• Experience how to exegete a community—seek to understand how Jesus would see this community and the people who do not know Him
• Experience how to lead a small group
• $150.00 monthly stipend from NAMB (North American Mission Board)

May – July: Missional Living

During this segment of service, each student will:

• Meet every week with leadership
• Move into their area, prayerwalk and exegete the community
• Build relationships with the people in the community
• Conduct servant evangelism activities
• Participate in an exit interview of this stage with leadership
• $1,000.00 monthly stipend—$300.00 from NAMB/$700.00 from UACP
• MARTA Pass furnished for May, June, July

August – September: Launch

During this segment of service, each student will:

• Meet every other week with leadership
• Transition leadership of groups to the next step
• Share with UACP Leadership Next Steps
• Write a report
• Participate in exit interview
• $150.00 monthly stipend from NAMB

To start the process of evaluating whether Urban Trails is right for you—and vice versa—email Tim Wolfe ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) and provide the following information:

1. Name
2. Address
3. School
4. Brief statement of what you would hope to accomplish during the 9 months with Urban Trails

Contact:

Tim Wolfe
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
404.226.7382

To download this information as a PDF file, click here.