How can we bring the Good News and good works to Baltimore? How do we plant new churches and develop disciple-making leaders?

BALM is reaching the nations! Metro Baltimore Seminary student Krishna Kandel serves Nepalese immigrants in Baltimore. Christi Sabb’s (photo at right) YouTube ministry reaches almost 40,000 people from many nations.

How do you revitalize a 140-year-old urban church facing the stark possibility of closure? In 2021, Abbott Memorial Presbyterian Church faced this question.

Abbott has been a faithful witness to the city since 1882. Many early attendees were immigrants, and over the decades, new immigrants came from Germany, Poland, Greece, and more recently, Central America.

Photo: Christi and son Xander

Watch this brief video to hear from some of the people blessed by BALM in 2021.

BALM’s YUMI director Kevin Good is passionate about reaching urban youth—especially in neighborhoods where churches have fewer resources for this task. “Less-resourced urban churches are in communities where youth have limited support systems to meet their educational, character, and faith needs. The gospel is for the hope, healing and flourishing of Baltimore. How do we help church leaders flesh that out?

BALM's Director of Youth Urban Ministry Institute (YUMI) Kevin Good (far right) is helping the team of the Splash Hoops Academy, a non-profit youth sports ministry in northeast Baltimore city.

Pastor Craig recently attended a special service at One Voice Fellowship in Northern Virginia, where 44 men, women, and children from 12 countries took membership vows to join this new, multi-lingual church. The Garriotts have been coaching One Voice church planters Chris and Naomi Sicks, and this was an exciting celebration of God’s work. Gospel-to-Life coaching is one key way BALM fulfills its mission to multiply Christ-centered, cross -cultural leaders for disciple-making movements.

How do we build disciple-making leaders who understand not only the Scripture but the context in which we live? Men and women like those of Issachar, “who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.”? (1Chron. 12:32)

Two weeks ago, twenty-five volunteers renovated classroom space for MBS at Freedom church in northeast Baltimore. BALM partners with Metro Baltimore Seminary to sponsor the Church Planting and Renewal track and the Urban Ministry track. This strategic second site makes theological training more accessible for students from Baltimore, Pennsylvania, and even a new student from New Jersey!

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,

though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,

though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,

he enables me to tread on the heights.

Habakkuk 3:17-19

The prophet Habakkuk paints a bleak economic picture of scarcity and pending famine. Yet he still rejoices in God! May we be similarly joyful as we remember the Sovereign Lord, and Jesus, who “loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20)

We praise God for answered prayer even in the midst of a pandemic and a lockdown.

What a year it has been! As we consider how God has worked to fulfill BALM’s vision of multiplying Christ-centered, cross cultural leaders for disciple-making movements for church planting and renewal for Baltimore and beyond, here are some the highlights:

This 1981 photo shows our earliest leadership team in front of the Garriotts’ newly-acquired five-unit, former-slumlord house in Baltimore. These InterVarsity students and staff workers helped launch Faith Christian Fellowship (FCF). The bearded man on the left is Stan Long.

The grass is growing, the new trees are thriving, and the community is enjoying the newly landscaped lot at New Song Community Church in west Baltimore! God provided abundantly!

When Craig told me (Maria) about the New Song Community Church landscaping project, I wanted to put on the brakes.

With the encouragement of the elders of FCF and my own sense of the Spirit’s leading, I recently announced that I will complete my service as pastor of FCF on August 31st.