Jesse Sudirgo (Tyndale University) leads “The Pulse of Urban Ministry in the Greater Toronto Area” project. The team sought to capture a snapshot of the lived experiences of urban ministry practitioners and organizations in order to better understand the formative influences that contribute to their well-being and the flourishing of their ministries. The six-month project involved the formation of a team of researchers, an event gathering 26 community leaders, a video series documenting four sessions concerning the recovery of hospitality in our city, and the completion of a research project involving urban ministry practitioners and educators.
The team identified the precarity of commitment from institutions in hosting urban formation programs, which in some cases, lead to program closures. In the future, they hope to address the bigger picture need to figure out how to design a model for urban formation that is both innovative and sustainable for the institutions and the programs they host.