HISPANIC MINISTRY CENTER INC

Mission – We exist to resource and develop urban leaders so that urban youth have the role models they need to live transformed lives by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

OUR PROGRAMS

Training and Resources:
The UYWI Training Center is envisioned to be the destination where urban youth workers can find and receive the finest, practical, and most relevant training for effective urban youth ministry. In the Training Center, youth workers can access tools, resources, teaching, and certification courses to help train them for more effective, impactful work in urban youth ministry. The main delivery method for the training is through the digital medium.

Certification Program:
Our certification program offers leadership training, along with personal development tools. We gather a cohort of leaders together for intensive training once a month for 13 months (including graduation day). The Certification Program focuses on equipping leaders with the 12 elements of effective youth ministry with a specific focus on Personal Leadership (Developing Me), Ministry (Developing My Ministry), and Community (Developing My Community).

NXT LVL Leadership Coaching:
Our leadership coaching is a program for high-capacity urban leaders who are ready for a more targeted and intensive coaching experience for themselves and the organizations they serve. Through an assessment and customization process, we provide targeted, intensive coaching for you and your organization. Our focus is on maximizing your leadership potential by implementing best practices for operative, personal, and strategic impact.

Networks:
In partnership with DVULI, we have launched 10 Fuel Networks throughout the country. Our regional leaders are partnered with our Network Coordinator to establish a connection with youth leaders in their cities. UYWI is providing a model and framework for establishing Fuel Networks, the framework will help Regional leaders establish a specific mission, determined by each community, supported by 3 major objectives: Gather & Connect, Carry & Care, Create & Collaborate. We are committed to supporting each network by providing resources, training, and development.

Our 2025 goal is to train and develop 15,000 urban leaders that will be actively pursuing and engaging 1,000,000 urban youth with the Gospel.

“Historically, the church has often grown by the mission effort of the youth, making them both the largest missions opportunity and the largest missions resource. The majority of the disaffiliated did not go through a crisis of faith or intellectually reject church teachings. They left because they just weren’t interested in the Christian life they saw."

We believe that it is through the efforts of urban youth workers — who lead and disciple urban youth — that the tide of disinterest in following Christ will change. It is by their example and relational engagement that gives them a true picture of the Christian life. These urban leaders are and will be the experts for the future iteration of the Church.

But who will resource, train, and develop those leaders to engage youth to see the church thrive again?

“There is a dramatic need to invest specifically in planting in emerging urban cities reaching those who have left the church; Gen Z (which follows the Millennials) is the largest generation in American history and will likely increase urban density over the next two decades. The church will need to find new models for lowering the cost of planting while increasing the number of leaders who reflect the increasing diversity of urban populations, all without sacrificing historic orthodoxy.”

There is no one better positioned to address this great opportunity than Urban Youth Workers Institute.

We create healthy, high-capacity, high-impact, urban leaders who are reaching 50% more youth with the Gospel. In 2015 our surveys showed that our leaders work with an average of 25 youth. In 2020 our leaders reported an average of 40 youth, which is a 60% increase!

In the last 5 years, we have 8,651 urban leaders engaged in our process. With a goal of 15,000 leaders, we need to reach 6,349 more leaders to engage in our process. For this to happen, we would need to have an audience reach of 317,450. There is a 2% conversion rate from those connecting with us digitally, i.e., social media, to the act of signing up on our email list, which is the gateway to using all of our resources and deeper engagement through our process.

Through an internal audit of our leaders, we discovered that the average number of students each one of our leaders works with is 25. If we can increase that number to 67 students per leader, then we would be able to reach our goal of 1,000,000 students through 15,000 leaders.

Partnership catalyst toward this goal:

Through three strategic partnerships, we also have an international, national, and regional strategy to reach more urban leaders.

Compassion International – Compassion currently works with 2 million sponsored kids. We are working toward a partnership to collaborate and create resources for all their leaders in urban areas. Currently, we are piloting a partnership with Compassion’s work in the Dominican Republic. They are using our Spanish Discipleship Toolkit that reaches over 22,000 youth. If it is received well, then expansion into the rest of Compassion’s Latin American operations is possible.

Young Life – Young Life Multi-Ethnic has over 800 staff members who work with over 400,000 urban youth. The goal of our partnership is to provide all of Young Life Multi-Ethnic’s staff with relevant resources, training, and tools to help them grow in their capacity and impact the lives of urban youth.

DeVos Urban Leadership Initiative - DVULI has an incredible network of urban youth workers in 34 major cities in the United States. We are partnering together on a regional strategy that will support their current networks of urban leaders while growing in the number of next-generation urban leaders that are engaged in our process.

CONSTANT CONTENT CREATION AND AUDIENCE GROWTH
With the advent of our Creative team, we have doubled our projected outcome with a 10.12% increase in engagement. Most importantly we are excited to see many of our current audiences engage in our leadership process.

DKIT RESOURCE
The UYWI Discipleship Toolkit: The UYWI Discipleship Toolkit is a digital resource of videos for youth workers to lead their youth on a discipleship journey through biblically-based spiritual conversations. Currently, our Discipleship Toolkit has reached over 75,000 youth through their leaders in all 50 states and 30 different countries.

DIGITAL DISCIPLESHIP (NEW RESOURCE)
Digital Discipleship: In partnership with Love Thy Nerd and Satellite Gaming, UYWI is seeking created video resources and training to help leaders and churches know how to reach and disciple youth digitally. Engagement #’s

REGIONAL TRAINING EVENTS
- MANHOOD CAMP: Thanks to leaders coming together for this conference in the midst of a pandemic, Manhood Camp was available as a digital conference for youth across the country. We had 69 leaders and 116 youth in attendance.

- ZOOM CALLS: We provided 23 Zoom calls in 2020 and continued to host Zoom calls again in 2021. They focused on the series, Implementation of Best Practices and Conversations About the Future. Our goal is to share the best practices for social engagement with youth during this time of physical distancing and igniting a conversation about how today’s reality shapes the future of the Church and the movement of urban leaders.

CERTIFICATION CENTER
The Certification Program Los Angeles and New York: In 2020, we had 30 graduates from 2 cohorts in New York and Los Angeles. In 2021 we launched 2 new cohorts in LA and NY, while also adding a new cohort in Houston, TX.

FUEL NETWORKS
We continued to invest in our 10 networks in the following cities: Los Angeles, Long Beach, Phoenix, Houston, Milwaukee, Columbus, Cleveland, Queens, DC, New Jersey.