Inner-city dwellers turn to Christ as result of witness

PORTLAND, Ore. (NAMB)—Churches are built on relationships, and few in the Pacific Northwest are better at cultivating friends and building relationships than missionary Troy Smith.

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A soft-spoken Mississippian by birth, Smith has become a master of understanding the human condition and how people develop lifestyles that are self-destructive to themselves and those they love. Smith steps into those quagmires of defeatism characterized by drug, alcohol and other dependencies with a Bible in one hand and a tried-and-proven approach to spiritual rehabilitation through Christ.

Smith and his wife, Jamae, are among nearly 5,200 missionaries in the United States and Canada supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions. They are featured during the March 6-13 Week of Prayer and North American Mission Study, which this year focuses on “Answer His Call.”

Smith first came to Oregon as a church starter in 1978 after discussing his call with the director of missions for Interstate Baptist Association. His life had been fulfilling as a pastor in Mississippi and then as pastor of a new church in Oregon. But he was increasingly challenged by Portland’s growing population of men and women who were looking for fulfillment through destructive behavior.

“I felt we should go to those people rather than abandoning them as I saw more and more churches move to the suburbs. Many of those churches left simply because they didn’t know how to deal with the problems of the inner city,” he says.

When he was told it was virtually impossible to start a church in downtown Portland that would become self-sustaining, he again prayed about it, but couldn’t shake the conviction that it was where God was leading him. He had left the church to enter full-time evangelism but felt the pull to the inner city so strongly that he began a second church downtown.

“I wanted to start a church that was more than a rescue mission. Many told me that it would never be self-supporting, but I felt God knew better; I just had to find the way he wanted it to be done.”

Under missionary appointment from the Home Mission Board (now NAMB), he opened the Baptist Revival Center in downtown Portland. That’s when he recognized a pattern.

“Genuine commitments to Christ go sour when addicts aren’t offered help with their drug problems. I found that my static answers—‘I can’t help you but God can’—were not good enough. There was death everywhere I turned in working with these people.”

The problem was there was no Christian approach to dealing with substance abuse. Smith and a co-worker won more than a hundred individuals to Christ but many took their own lives out of desperation.

Smith began questioning why God had sent him to a place of such desolation. He felt a strong call, he says, but wanted to leave—just like the other churches before him.

“I keep asking myself if those who I led to Christ were really saved, why did they keep slipping back into their old lifestyles? Then God gave me the objectives which became the foundation of what is now known as SAFE—Setting Addicts Free Eternally.

The goal of SAFE is not sobriety, Smith is quick to point out. The goal is for each person who completes the course to become a productive, healthy, child of God.

“If you sober up a thief you still have a thief. But if you change him from the inside, you no longer have a thief,” he says.

Smith’s program is built on the importance of building and maintaining healthy friendships and relationships. When individuals understand the value of developing new friends and changing their thought processes through Scripture memorization and Bible study, they become changed from the inside out.

His approach includes providing a house where recovering addicts live and provide each other with spiritual and emotional support. Extensive Scripture memorization is part of the approach so they are transformed from the inside out. And the results have been amazing.

His three-year appointment has now turned into 19 years, and he can still be found changing lives in downtown Portland. The SAFE program has become so successful he regularly travels across the nation to share the concepts with church and community-based ministries. It has been translated into Spanish and even found success in the Ukraine.

He quickly admits he could not do it without his wife’s help.

“Jamae helps teach the national seminars as well as serves as a primary teacher on the Tuesday evening programs when we work with our clients.

“Anyone who has ever sat in one of our conferences will tell you she’s the best instructor they could have. She communicates the program on a level that anyone could understand,” he says.

Smith credits the success of the program to its Christ-centered approach. There are many 12-step programs which address a higher power but that can be any power imaginable.

“I was determined to build a program that wouldn’t work if you took Christ out of it,” he explains.

“There’s no quick fix to this kind of problem … it’s a reconditioning of the subconscious mind. When they come here they’re drug addicts or alcoholics. But when they leave here they’re children of God, ready to serve, worship and honor Him.”