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Scripture for this chapter
And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
Galatians 6:9 KJV
At a glance
Back in the city on foot, Wilkerson makes his first direct contact with gang territory.
Repeated, patient presence in the same place begins to matter more than any single encounter.
UECF.NET summary
Wilkerson returns to New York, this time without a plan built around any official process. He begins simply walking the streets of the neighborhoods he had read about, watching, praying, and looking for an opening. The chapter conveys how foreign this world is to him — the noise, the poverty, the visible presence of gangs marking out turf — and how little of his small-town ministry experience translates directly.
His first real conversations are tentative and often rebuffed; teenagers are suspicious of an outsider in a clerical collar asking questions. Yet a few brief, human exchanges convince him he is not wasting his time, and the chapter closes with Wilkerson committing to keep returning to the same streets and the same faces rather than treating the city as a single dramatic visit.
Key points
- Effective ministry in an unfamiliar community starts with presence and listening, not programs.
- Suspicion and rejection are treated as a normal first response to an outsider, not a verdict on the mission.
- Repeated, patient presence in the same place begins to matter more than any single encounter.
Related Scripture
For reflection and discussion
- What does it cost, practically, to keep showing up in a place where you are not yet trusted?
- Where in your own life or church might presence matter more right now than a program or an event?
- Who is someone you have written off too quickly because a first encounter went badly?
This page is an original UECF.NET study companion. It does not reproduce any text from The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson (with John Sherrill and Elizabeth Sherrill), which remains under copyright. Read the full chapter in a legally available edition of the book — see Further Reading & Legal Editions — or borrow the original 1963 edition via Internet Archive’s Open Library controlled digital lending.