Welcome to the Urban Project - Los Angeles! The Urban Project was originally started in Chicago in 1998 by former Athletes in Action (AIA) staff member Paul Curtis. During those early summers, AIA staff and collegiate student-athletes would travel to Chicago to partner with urban ministers to make an impact in Chicago both physically and spiritually, while exposing the students to the realities of life in the city and what God is doing in the midst of it all.

In 2000, in an effort to establish stronger, more consistent, and longer-lasting partnerships with local urban ministers, the Urban Project was moved to Los Angeles where Michael and Dee Sylvester, former AIA staff at the University of Southern California, assumed leadership of the Project, officially establishing the Urban Project - Los Angeles.

With the Sylvester’s presence in inner-city LA, serving on both the campus of the University of Southern California and in the inner-city, strategic partnerships have been established with various pastors and urban ministers within the bounds of LA county to see the work of the gospel go forth.

The UP-LA continues on, helping serve the city of LA while casting vision to collegiate student-athletes to take a stand on behalf of the gospel and invest their time, talent, and treasure for a lifetime in the work that God is doing around the world.

At the UP-LA nearly 50 staff and students live together in community for two life-changing weeks. Lives, meals, joys, sorrows, laughs, cries, and plenty of late-night conversations and hysterics are shared as we seek to learn and to love.

Collegiate student-athletes of all levels will be challenged to worship God through their sport and their lives as student-athletes and to view competition, as well as their social platform, biblically. By approaching these from a biblical perspective, the Urban Project provides the opportunity for participants to become complete athletes – physically, mentally, and spiritually ready for competition and for life. If God created sport, and it is tarnished by sin, it needs to be drastically redeemed for God’s glory.

The UP-LA is a unique opportunity. While teaching the students how to honor and uphold the testimony of Jesus Christ in their athletic and personal lives, the UP-LA tackles the issues of culture, racism, class, power, poverty, privilege, responsibility, and social justice, and what the Gospel of Christ has to say about these ever-relevant and important issues.

The thesis of the UP-LA is found in Luke 4:16-21 where Jesus tells the world that He has come to “preach the gospel to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”

The outstanding book With Justice for All by Dr. John Perkins is used as a framework for exploring these critical issues. The book also distills a Biblical framework, based on Jesus’ life and ministry, for bringing justice and healthy, holistic development to a community. The Three Rs of community development that Dr. Perkins explains, and has lived out for decades, are Relocation, Reconciliation, and Redistribution. At the Urban Project, our desire is to see student-athletes catch a vision of how they can be agents of grace and healing when they return to their respective communities, campuses, and contexts.

At the Urban Project - Los Angeles, one of our goals is to develop healthy partnerships around the city of LA with indigenous churches and ministries where Jesus Christ is already being proclaimed. During the two-week project, the student-athletes and staff become a part of one of these ministries that the UP-LA has developed a partnership with. The purpose of these partnerships is to help accelerate what God is already doing in these places, as well as expose the students and staff to ministry in the city, allowing them to learn the Three Rs to take back to their own communities.

We seek to develop these partnerships with a posture of humility and service, understanding that the urban ministers who are serving year-round in these places know the needs of their people and are better equipped to serve them than the students and staff are, as they are coming from other communities, cities, and states. It is our desire to come alongside these ministries and serve them in any way they need in order to accomplish the work that God has called them to.

Secondly, these partnerships allow the students and the staff of the UP-LA to see the principles of Relocation, Reconciliation, and Redistribution lived out first hand. By serving alongside these urban ministers, they are able to gain a glimpse of life and ministry in the inner-city and take home these life-changing principles, along with a vision for bringing justice and equality to the people around them.