Inside pastor’s mission to shepherd Staten Island’s forgotten streets
- wix factor
- Sep 18
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 29
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Life is full of struggles, but for one man, maintaining hope in vulnerable Staten Island communities isn’t just a goal — it’s a life mission.
Pastor David Beidel, 61, is the president and founder of Urban Hope NYC, a local non-profit organization that aims to connect all members of the public with a local church community and provides a number of programs for at-risk youth.
A Staten Island upbringing
Beidel, a West Brighton resident and father of four, came to Staten Island when he was just 7 years old. His family first came to New York from Sitka, Alaska.
As a child, Beidel grew up in Great Kills, attended PS 8, Barnes Intermediate School (I.S. 24) and graduated from Tottenville High School.
Beidel went away to college for two years, but unfortunately, his father became deathly ill and he returned home, ultimately dropping out of college for the time being.
Around this time, Beidel resorted to running a tree service, a job he would hold for 10 years and which ultimately served to delay the founding of his church.
“Those detours, you feel like they’re a waste, but I feel like God did so much in my soul to prepare me for this,” Beidel explained. “You know it was tough work, you know, a lot of challenges. I’d rather have gone through the challenges and the emotional character building while doing that — while doing tree work — than when starting a church.”
Becoming a pastor
Eventually, Beidel finished his college education at the College of Staten Island in the late 80s and attended Alliance Theological Seminary, a Christian and Missionary Alliance seminary, in Nyack, New York. The Alliance traces its roots back to Pastor A.B. Simpson, who worked with Italian immigrant workers in the 1800s who at the time were considered the “dust children” of New York City, according to Beidel. Simpson made it his mission to serve the poorest among the people and brought together an alliance of different Christian groups who served the city. This origin story proved to be inspirational for Beidel.
For Beidel, the calling to serve came around the age of 16.
“You’re raised in the church and it’s easy to get numb to it,” he said. ”Even though I believed, you just kind of go through the motions. But at a certain point, at 16 years old, I was really awestruck at the creator of the universe dying for me and loving me and paying for all my sins personally, it just grabbed me,” he recounted.
As explained by the pastor, the greatest crisis in our world is the “haunting absence of love in people’s lives.”
“It was the love of Christ that just really changed me and then the intimacy of His concern that I couldn’t escape because my mother would share her story all the time,” he said. “That He hears, like, the desperate cries of the most powerless, the most broken, the most disdained and marginalized of any society — that just still blows my mind to this day.”
The dust child
Beidel told the Advance/SILive.com the story of his polio-stricken mother who was abandoned by her family during the Korean War.
According to Beidel, his mother attempted to escape the North Korean army and found her way to a bridge, which had been destroyed by the South Korean forces. In retelling his mother’s story, Beidel shared how his mom had nearly given up and simply prayed for a merciful death. However, she asked that God preserve her life should He have use for “a throwaway” like her.
She would go on to hobble across the frozen river and was eventually rescued by American forces stationed in Korea.
“When I really knew God was calling me to start a church and to launch a ministry, the question for me was ‘who are the abandoned, you know, the forsaken?’ In Asia they would call kids like my mom a dust child — not worth the dust under your feet,” Beidel said. “So I was like, ‘who are the dust children of my city?’”
This question eventually led Beidel to West Brighton, which he noted had an alarmingly high murder rate in the late ’90s and early 2000s due to gang wars and drugs.
“We knew that’s where Jesus would want to put a church so we started a church here,” he said.
It began in a living room
New Hope Community Church traces its roots back to Beidel’s living room. In 1992, in his former home, Beidel and his wife began holding bible studies and worship.
“Sweet times, pot luck dinners and we all began to just love the neighborhood, love our own neighborhood,” Beidel noted.
The church eventually began to rent out spaces before settling upon the facility at 77 Alaska St. in 1999.
In reflecting on those more difficult times, Beidel recounted how there was a drive-by shooting outside a nearby school. On another occasion, a student involved in the church’s youth group was unable to attend as a dead body outside their building prevented them from leaving.
Instances like these and frequent exposure to violence such as this takes a toll on the neighborhood and traumatizes residents in the community, Beidel said.
The founding of Urban Hope
Many years passed with Beidel serving as a pastor at New Hope Community Church. While youth clubs and other partnership programs served the community, Beidel came to the realization that “the needs of our community are too great for the church to handle alone.”
It was this realization that sparked the idea for Urban Hope in 2009. Urban Hope consists of a network of churches that seek to connect residents with their houses of worship and, through a variety of programs, aims to restore hope in struggling communities.
“Together, we’re all just trying to do the best to shepherd the North Shore of Staten Island,” Beidel explained.
Part of Urban Hope’s mission is adopting neighborhoods, which is fulfilled through another of Beidel’s ministries called Jesus Week. In building networks of churches throughout the Northeast and beyond, Beidel has been able to provide millions of dollars in outreach books to churches that join the network.
”Our dream scene is that we would work together - all of us - and build a city where there are no sheep without a shepherd,” he said.
Beidel looks to push his network of churches to get out into the community and directly visit the homes of residents, as he feels churches today just rely on others to visit their church rather than make an effort to get out and heal neighborhoods.
“If we go back to a parish mindset where churches are loving on their community and knowing their community, we’ve seen that it brings, like, extraordinary healing and again, it ends hopelessness in a neighborhood,” said Beidel.
As detailed by Beidel, Urban Hope has two major arms: Jesus Week and Cities of Joy.
“Cities of Joy is the deep dive into healing, really healing, in places of multigenerational devastation like public housing communities,” he explained.
As part of Cities of Joy, churches partner with local officials and non-profits to target and heal the issues within NYCHA complexes.
As part of Cities of Joy, this summer, Urban Hope partnered with the NYPD to bring programming and festivals to select streets along the North Shore.
During the school year, Urban Hope dives deeper into literacy programming in about nine schools. Other programs include the Hope clubs, which are faith-based afterschool clubs in five elementary schools, as well as the Ambassadors of Peace program in middle and high schools, which focus on mental health and leadership development. In all, Urban Hope connects with 300 to 500 children on a weekly basis through their programs.
In Beidel’s eyes, the impact of historical discriminatory housing policies continues to devastate North Shore communities to this day.
“If we don’t do something to bring hope to people who have experienced such extraordinary injustice, then who are we?” Beidel questioned.
“If we don’t do something to bring hope to people who have experienced such extraordinary injustice, then who are we?” Beidel questioned.
A hopeful future
While Beidel expressed that he will carry through with his mission utilizing whatever resources possible and the healing provided through Jesus Christ, he did note that volunteers and supportive funding are a great help.
Although he no longer preaches at New Hope Community Church, Beidel continues to put his time and effort into building up Urban Hope. In the near future he is looking to scale out and expand programming into Brooklyn high schools and beyond.
Those interested in learning more about Urban Hope and the mission of Beidel, visit urbanhopenyc.org and jesusweekmovement.org.
In addition to volunteers and donations, Beidel is in need of a small warehouse to store donations for times of crisis.
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