From Pittsburgh-Her first job as a student pastor was at a small United Methodist church in East Baltimore, Md., founded long ago by an ethnic German community in what had become a mostly African-American neighborhood.
“They were struggling to find their new identity, to make connections with the new community around them,” recalled Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi, the new spiritual leader of United Methodists in Western Pennsylvania.
One way they made connections was to hold a Bible study for the neighborhood youth — not in the sanctuary but on a nearby front stoop.
“That’s what the kids in the neighborhood did — sit on the stoop,” Bishop Moore-Koikoi recalled. The church needed to take its ministry outdoors because, she said, the neighbors were nervous about entering a building where they don’t see “people like me going.”
More here-
http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2016/10/16/New-Methodist-bishop-seeks-to-bridge-gaps/stories/201610160108
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