Day 5Taylor and Susan Field
In the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where Taylor and Susan Field live, residents are beginning to see other ways to make a living besides prostitution and dealing drugs. In this area, where drug dealing was a family business passed down through generations, kids are raising money for mission trips instead of hustling on a street corner.

Five years ago, this would not have been the case. A church and community missionary, Taylor says that when he and Susan first arrived 16 years ago, seven people died drug-related deaths.

The start of the Graffiti Baptist Center five years ago has helped alleviate the drug and prostitution economies by directing residents to legitimate jobs in the area.

The Center also provides education to parents and families on finances, parenting skills and job searching. Following the tragedy of September 11, 2001, many new opportunities for ministry emerged at the Center. Counselors remain on duty to comfort residents, and the Center is still helping people recover from economic downturn. The Center provides jobs at its facility as well as tutoring positions at several of its sites throughout the area. 

The challenge now is teaching these people how to grow in Christ, Taylor says. Kids are graduating from high school for the first time, and people are coming to Christ. Weve moved beyond survival, and now were teaching more effective living...living to be more like Christ.

In addition to Graffiti, the Fields were instrumental in starting The Journey, a congregation geared toward young professionals. This need to reach out to the very poor along with the wealthy has emerged recently as luxury apartments pop up next to rundown buildings, and the two economies are pressed together. Taylor says he sees himself as sort of a bridge builder.

Susan, a student evangelism missionary, serves as a Baptist campus ministry director for New York City, and also acts as a bridge builder on the campuses of Columbia and New York Universities. She is trying to help students there make the connection between their sometimes- unflattering concept of Christianity and the person of Jesus Christ.

Ironically, she says, Columbia University used to be a training school for Protestant missionaries.

From my perspective, these students are coming with a set of presumptions about truth and how you go about seeking that out, Susan says. My job is to be a bridge and to translate the truth about Christ into palatable language for people who have a skewed concept of Christianity.

Most of Susans ministry is one-on-one mentoring with young women who have questions about Christianity and how to live the Christian life. How do you pray? or How do you have a wholesome relationship?

These are just a few of the questions that come from nonbelievers who want to understand or challenge biblical teachings. Out of these conversations come opportunities for Susan to share Christ.

Susans and Taylors ministries complement each other, because the church plants and Bible studies that Taylor serves are good opportunities for students to worship or have their prejudices about Christians dispelled.