The boy stared at me, fists raised and eyes seething with a defiance and an aggression unexpected in a five-year-old. 

I stooped to his level, glaring back into his eyes, daring him.

The odour of stale cigarettes mingled with rancid cooking oil wafted from his coat to my nose. The stench almost choked me.

The boy was disrupting my Sunday school class, which was taking place in the heart of a ghetto in the South Bronx. At the time, I lived and worked in New York City, and worshiped at this church.

No disciplinary action could tame him. Repeated attempts to quieten him down only fanned his fury, culminating in a face-off like that one we were locked in now.

That was when I saw it.

As I stared into the little boy’s eyes, I saw the pain behind his defensiveness. I saw how he had probably been treated at home with the same aggression and raised fists he displayed, fists that have probably come down on him enough times for the five-year-old to learn to raise his in defence. 

I broke. What I saw in that kid’s eyes 15 years ago shattered my heart and transformed my interaction with him and other difficult kids I have met throughout my life.

Man of sorrow

When I heard Pastor Bill Wilson in Singapore recently preaching about children at risk, that ache in my heart for that little boy resurfaced.

The 75-year-old founder of Metro World Child has been ministering to children like the one I encountered for more than 50 years. It is no wonder he has what his surgeon diagnosed as a “broken heart syndrome.”

If you look into his eyes, you will see sorrow pooling beneath the fire that blazes when he talks about reaching children.

But if you look long enough into his eyes, you will also see the joy of the hope of the Gospel lighting up that dark pool.

Long before the founder of Metro World Child was abandoned at the age 12 by his mother, young Bill was already familiar with the harsh reality of a life trapped in the house of pain. 

Ps Bill started Metro World Child in the ghetto of Brooklyn at the height of economic and social devastation, with the goal of reaching children at risk.

He is acquainted with the poverty, hunger, loneliness and rejection faced by the children he ministers to.

“I’ve sat where they sat,” he told Salt&Light in an interview.

Young Bill with the buck teeth, the stutter and the shabby clothes had also been the target of bullies. Mocked and rejected, he kept mostly to himself, buried in books.

But he is no victim.

“I see everything in life as preparation,” he declared. “My whole life has been nothing but prep for such a time as this.”

Without hope but not hopeless

The hope of salvation that Ps Bill first found in a church camp at 12 years old is the same hope that has fuelled Metro World Child, a ministry he started in Bushwick in 1980, at the height of social and economic devastation in the US.

Bushwick, Brooklyn in New York is one of the roughest neighbourhoods in the nation.

Many children in this drug- and crime-infested area were born to drug addicts. Many grow up watching and emulating the patterns in their household, trapped in the same cycle. Too many end up as tragic victims of violence caused either by drugs or gang conflicts.

“When I look into a child’s eyes, I see innocence being taken away, destroyed by culture, by politics, by government, even by their own families,” Ps Bill said. 

The need was overwhelming. But many told him it could not be done. 

Still, Ps Bill chose to set up shop in that vortex of need.

The Sidewalk Sunday school that started with 1,010 kids on the first day is now the largest Sunday school in the world with more than 600,000 children.

“Everywhere I went in that neighbourhood, all these kids were called ‘hopeless’,” Ps Bill told Salt&Light. “The school called them hopeless, the cops called them hopeless, the governors called them hopeless.”

He attended a school board meeting once, and was told the children were hopeless.

“They’re not hopeless! They just don’t have any hope!” Ps Bill responded. “I walked away from everything to bring them hope – and it’s only in Jesus Christ!”

He slammed the table and walked out. It was the last school board meeting he was invited to. 

This same passion has fired Ps Bill for the last 60 years, igniting the growth of Metro World Child. In the last 44 years, Metro has grown from the 1,010 children who came for the first Sunday school in Bushwick to the largest Sunday school in the world, with more than 600,000 kids in over 23 countries.

This number of children is expected to hit one million by next year, as door after door has been opening in Latin America and Africa.

Winning the youth, empowering the youth

In this era when the Church is grappling with the grim reality of losing youths and young adults, the exponential growth of Metro World Child is remarkable.

Ps Bill put it down to the timeless power of the Gospel delivered in an age-relevant method, genuine love for the children and sheer grit.

“I don’t quit,” he declared. “Your commitment has got to be stronger than your emotions. You don’t live on how you feel.”

In 1980, in a neighbourhood lined with churches, Ps Bill honed in on the “4-14 window” – children aged between four and 14 – and started a Sunday school. 

“We don’t give children credit,” Ps Bill said. “Eighty-five percent of people who accept Christ do so before the age of 14. That’s what’s gonna change things.”

Many of the teachers and workers of Metro were raised on the sidewalks of the Sunday school.

In the Philippines, kids as young as 12 years old have become Sunday School teachers with Metro. At a training last September in Manila with partner churches, 80% of the 700 volunteers that turned up came from the Sunday School. Some were teenagers.  

These youths now serve the next generation, preaching the Gospel to them, praying for them.

Teenagers who were raised on Metro Sunday School in the Philippines now preach the Gospel to children and pray for them.

“We’re losing youth and, with that, another generation,” Ps Bill pointed out. “Are we willing to do what needs to be done to reach a generation?

“It’s not about doing a youth meeting. Let’s use them to get in here and reach the kids,” he urged.

“They can do it. Let’s give them a responsibility. Let’s make a plan, let them get out there.” 

Though youths can be trained and need to be challenged to go beyond their comfort zone, the impetus for change has to come from leadership, Ps Bill noted. 

“It’s top down. It can’t be bottom up because the ordinary folks are limited,” he pointed out.

Last year, 19-year-old Eleaner Teo from Singapore applied for an internship at Metro’s headquarters after being challenged by Ps Bill to look beyond her life and think further than her immediate concerns of education. 

Eleaner Teo, challenged by Ps Bill’s sermon, did a four-month internship with Metro in Brooklyn that changed her life. Photo courtesy of Eleaner Teo.

The teenager was accepted and took off for New York after completing junior college. 

The four months of navigating and living in the ghettos of New York changed the trajectory of her life and transformed her perspective of missions, people and her education. 

“[Interning at Metro] reaffirmed the importance of obedience to God, the importance of evangelism, missions and the power it has to heal people,” Eleaner told Salt&Light.

“I see that I can do urban missions right here in Singapore.”

“I believe God has given my generation a very important role in expanding His Kingdom, especially as our world gets darker and more confused,” she said. “It’s critical that we gear ourselves to fight and to take action as soon as possible, because the need is now.”

Eleaner embodies the next wave of change: One youth that caught the vision and heart of God to ignite her generation. 

Long obedience in one direction

The astounding growth of Metro Sunday School was no overnight success.

“I’ve lived a long obedience in the same direction,” said Ps Bill, distilling his formula.

He still drives the bus, conducts block visitations and teaches Sunday school. 

Ps Bill is a walking example of the perseverance described in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.“

“Perseverance is the best revenge,” Ps Bill said.

On top of a gunshot in the face, five concussions, multiple threats on his life and a heart bypass, Ps Bill survived a massive heart attack in February this year.

“I knew I was in trouble,” Ps Bill related. “I thought, Lord, whatever direction this is going to go, we’re going to do everything we can.”

But step by step God divinely took care of him from the moment of the heart attack, to getting to hospital, to surgery and recovery.

Ps Bill at the Metro Sunday school in Kenya. “This is not a crusade. This is Sunday school, every week.”

On another occasion, two men who mugged Ps Bill missed the first shot of the revolver (it was highly unusual for a revolver to miss) but blew the side of his face off the second time.

Ps Bill, blood gushing from his wound, found the strength to stumble into his van and drive himself to the nearest hospital about 15 minutes away.

The moment he pulled into the driveway of the emergency room, he passed out.

Two years ago, as he was preaching in a church in New Jersey, a man came up to him and identified himself as the doctor who stitched him back together years ago of his gunshot wound in the Brooklyn hospital. 

“When you’ve looked down the barrel of as many guns as I have in my lifetime, you know death can be just a second away,” the pastor said matter-of-factly. “But I felt like God was prolonging my life.” 

That is why when Ps Bill wakes up each day, he tells God, “Okay, one more, God, one more [child].”

Open doors

“God has been prepping me all my life,” Ps Bill said. “So now, after a lifetime of preparation, when a door opens, I am uniquely qualified to go.” 

Last year alone, the number of kids at Metro Sunday school doubled to 600,000 as Zambia flung open its doors when the government issued a permit to Metro to conduct Sunday school at its public schools. Brazil is also opening up.

Ps Bill with the children in Kenya, which sparked the rapid spread of Metro Sunday School in Africa.

“The door is open,” he said. “And when the doors of government open to the Gospel, when people are open to the Gospel, when the staff is ready to move, we have to go.” 

In July, somebody from Malawi who had seen the Sunday School in Johannesburg went back to his country and started one. They gave out pieces of soap to draw the kids and 3,000 came. 

As Ps Bill always said, “The need is the call.”

Living by logos

The man who is a firm believer of “the need is the call” lives by the logos, the Greek for the word of God recorded objectively in the Bible.

“I’m all for a rhema word (the inspired word spoken by God for a specific occasion) but the bottom line is, I live by the logos. When I pray, I pray over an open Bible,” Ps Bill said.

“If you are waiting for God to speak to you, He already has. Why would God show you something else if you cannot obey what He’s already said?”

He added: “The Gospel is mandated for all of us. The need is still the call if you see a need. And if you can feel that today, that, my friends, is the call of God for you.”

Ps Eileen Toh, the pastor heading HarvestKidz, the children’s ministry of City Harvest Church, first heard Ps Bill in 1995 at children worker’s conference in Kuala Lumpur.

“I bought his book Whose Child Is This? and devoured it in one night,” she told Salt&Light.

“I had ‘a fire in my bones’ passion to take back what he shared to Singapore to reach out to the unreached.” She showed up in Brooklyn shortly after to learn the ropes. 

“Eileen rode the bus that I drove,” he said. “She saw it, she got it.” And she did it.

Pastor Eileen Toh (right) started City Harvest Church’s children’s outreach in 1996 after catching the fire from Ps Bill (centre, with his PA Yenni Wu). Now, 28 years later, HarvestKidz continues to bring children to church and support them and their families. Photo courtesy of Ps Eileen Toh.

Since 1996 when Ps Eileen launched CHC’s children’s ministry, now called HarvestKidz, it has been picking up kids in buses and bringing them to church up till today.

“We started with 40 children, and today we have about 2,000,” she said.

“There was a need and someone answered that need,” said Ps Bill. “It will take commitment but you’ve got what it takes.”

“Everybody has what it takes to make a difference.”

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