Metro Voice News Celebrating Faith, Family & Community
School backpacks filled with supplies will be distributed Friday to kids living in the Olive Park Apartments and the surrounding neighborhood. Readers are invited to participate.
The effort is being spearheaded by the Peace Patrol, Gideons International, and the Milestone Youth Center.
Bishop John Birmingham of Kansas City.
Bishop John Birmingham, founder of Peace Patrol, says its about more than education. “It’s not only to invest in the education of young people but invest in them spiritually.”
Birmingham says it’s not too late to join in the effort at the apartments located at 9th and Olive in Kansas City from 11 AM to 2PM.
“We need people to help us explain to the kids who Jesus is,” Birmingham told Metro Voice.
He hopes giving out the supplies to some of the cities most at-risk children will give them a headstart on school and reaching them spiritually will affect their lives.”
“Our principle function is to go out witnessing,” he states. “We’re passing out bibles and investing into the community.”
Birmingham is known in the Kansas City community as an ardent defender of the rights of residents to live without fear of death from the record crime. His 40 years of work with Peace Patrol includes preaching on the streets as he has done since he was 15 years old.
He believes that, working together, the community can end violence “if we work with children and give them hope and create a generation of peacemakers.”
They key, he says, is to tell young people that their lives can be centered and established. Birmingham partners with the Gideons passing out thousands of Bibles each year.
He encourages metro residents living in the suburbs and Kansas City not to give up on the inner city. “We’ve seen people come to the Lord right there on the street.
Jesus, and only Jesus, is the hope of our nation,” he says.
“We want to share Christ,” he states. “We need to keep it simple. Keep it about Christ.”
For more information, call Rev. Birmingham at 816-699-9189 or email the Milestone Youth Center at nitesong77@hotmail.com
–Dwight Widaman | Metro Voice
