Our Story
While directing a successful short-term missions agency commissioning mission teams around the world, Dr. Tom Grassano led a team of college students to do outreach in New York City. In May 1992, God changed his life on a street in the South Bronx. This community was one of the poorest and most violent communities in our nation. The streets were filled with drugs and gangs. Dr. Grassano walked into a store not knowing it was a drug front. While standing on the street outside, looking at an abandoned coffin factory, the Lord spoke to him and said, “Prepare yourself, Tom, I have future ministry for you here.”
Two years later, he and his family moved to New York City and to plant a church and an outreach center ministering to the poor, addicted, and abused. God taught them to pastor the streets around them. They brought the hope of the Gospel to the hearts of people. They established academic tutoring, literacy training, and other educational outreach. They focused on bringing hope to children and through that, reaching families.
God began to do miracles. Strongholds in the community began to fall. Addictions were broken. People bound by drugs for years were set free. Young men left gangs, quit selling drugs, and became good fathers to their children. Children became the first to graduate high school in their families. In a community with an 85% drop out rate, 97% of their students graduated high school and went to college. That drug front became their first outreach center. Then, they renovated that abandoned casket factory and it became The Harvest Center. God brought change to their community.
It was not without a cost. Dr. Grassano’s life was threatened four times. He was once attacked and beaten inside their center. A demonic cult left animal sacrifices on their doorstep for 16 months. The spiritual opposition was great, but God was always faithful! God proved His Word to be true over and over again. He has continually done for them what Joseph said in Genesis 50:20, “What was meant for evil, God made for good for the salvation of many people.”
Twelve years later, God led them to expand their ministry to Detroit, the poorest and most violent city in our nation. Equipped with the methods God had taught them in New York City, they began a movement called Hope for the City. This ministry united churches of a variety of cultures across the city to bring the hope of the Gospel to the hopeless. They led more than 70 churches and organizations to impact twelve communities in Detroit. Thousands heard the Gospel, hundreds received Christ as Savior, and churches were empowered to bring change to the streets around them. As one pastor said, “Urban Harvest changed the DNA of our church!”
The Bronx and Detroit are not the only places the Grassano’s have served. God has used this ministry to cast vision, empower leaders, and lead in strategic outreach in cities across the US and in many nations, most recently Cuba, Brazil, and Mexico. After several missions to Vietnam, God called us to focus on outreach in this country in 2018. He gave us a vision for poor tribal villages in the mountains. These villages have 30-40 percent infant mortality because of contaminated water, malnutrition, and lack of medical care. We responded to these needs by providing clean water, building sanitary bathrooms, providing livestock and new agriculture to grow, conducting medical seminars, and educating on health and nutrition. Many children in these areas could not attend school because their families cannot afford school fees, so we began an educational sponsorship program. This program has flourished, growing from eight children to over 180 in several villages, ensuring access to education and providing a future they could not attain before. A leader of a local village recently shared, “I thank the Living God, because He is changing the history of our village.”
Urban Harvest Ministries is dedicated to bringing the hope of the Gospel to the unreached and disenfranchised and empowering others to do the same. Fulfilling this mission has taken us to 40 states and more than 20 nations, empowering leaders, leading in outreach, and uniting people and organizations to change the world around them. We continue to go where God opens doors to bring the hope of the Gospel, no matter the cost. Read more here about our mission.