Mission In The City (MITC) is the community development arm of New Life Baptist Church and has an amazing history.
In 1999, God led us as a church to do a survey seeking the felt needs of the community (that would help the church become externally focused) that resulted in the following six community ideas: Recreation, safe place for seniors, after school programs, child care, housing, and jobs.
During this time, God’s hand was upon us and inspired us to buy all the houses and land in proximity of the church. We began to inquire about the land one lot at a time, and we found favor with every property owner. Some of them gave us their lots, stating they “wanted the church to have them.” Some sold their lots to us for as little as fifty dollars, others for five hundred, and several were in the thousands. However, none of them exceeded $12,000. By the end of 2005, we had purchased around fifty lots in our church community. We had enough adjacent lots to make an entire block, with the exception of a few houses people occupied.
In 2006, we were led to make the felt needs we discovered through the community survey our Mission In The City and declared the mission to be our 501 C-3 Community-Development Arm, with a vision to make life better for people in the city of Saginaw and Saginaw County by improving and restoring the community one person, one block at a time. Please go to programs on the home page to see and read about them.