Abandoned on a street corner by his mother at the age of 12, young Bill Wilson sat and waited for her on that corner; he waited three days, but she never returned.
A Christian man on his way to see his son in the hospital stopped and asked Wilson if he was OK. Anybody could have stopped, but thankfully it was a Christian man who did.
Pastor Bill established Metro World Child, formerly Metro Ministries, in 1980 in Bushwick, Brooklyn, one of New York’s toughest neighborhoods at the time. It was most commonly known for its history of gang violence, crime, drugs and poverty. In the earlier years of his work, Pastor Bill was beaten, stabbed and even shot.
But he persevered and refused to leave the neighborhood, believing that the situation wasn’t hopeless. He persisted in doing Sunday school programs and reaching children with the hope of Jesus, eventually expanding into all five boroughs of New York City and many other places around the world as well.
On a recent Sunday, Metro World Child had more than 221,000 attendees.
But how did the ministry go from a neighborhood program to the “largest Sunday school in the world,” according to Wilson? Listen to the podcast to find out!
