Tim Streett
Tim Streett has lived and worked among the urban poor for 25 years in cities—including Boston, Chicago, and Indianapolis. He spent the last 17 years as a resident of the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood in Indianapolis where he serves as the Assistant Director of Shepherd Community Center. His primary role at Shepherd is to provide continuing education to staff, volunteers, and partner churches through a ministry known as Shepherd U. Tim utilizes his twenty years of experience combined with a formal education in sociology to teach about issues of poverty, urban development, and urban ministry.
Tim is the former Executive Director of Jireh Sports, a mentoring program utilizing alternative sports, which grew out of a partnership with seven inner-city churches in Martindale-Brightwood. Jireh Sports merged with Shepherd in January 2008. Jireh Sports was established in an old warehouse on twenty acres of land. Shepherd Community is successfully working with the Exxon Mobil Corporation to remediate environmental contamination and turn the property into an urban sports park. Tim also founded The Ralston Trust, a charitable trust which seeks to acquire and redeem vacant and distressed property within inner-city Indianapolis.
Prior to taking the helm at Jireh Sports, Tim served for seven years as the Minister of Urban Church for the East 91st Street Christian Church. In that capacity he was responsible for the development of partnerships and outreach ministries in the inner-city communities of Indianapolis. Tim also served for a time as the leader of contemporary services and preached most Sundays before 1000 members of 91st Street’s congregation.
Tim also has a significant teaching ministry focusing on issues of racial reconciliation, forgiveness, poverty, and urban ministry. As a fifteen-year-old, Tim witnessed the murder of his father during a random robbery. As an adult he reached out to establish relationships with each of the men convicted of the murder. One of those relationships grew into a friendship as Tim helped the man pursue his education and establish a successful life upon release from prison. In his teaching, Tim draws on this experience and his twenty years of living and working among the urban poor.
In the fall of 2013, Tim and his family moved to a small town in southern Indiana so that he could pursue doctoral studies at Bellarmine University in Louisville while the family could be closer to his ailing father-in-law. Tim is married to Stacy, previously the Media Specialist at The Oaks Academy, who now operates a bed and breakfast in Vevay, Indiana. They have a sixteen-year-old son, Gabriel, and a fourteen-year-old daughter, Mary Elizabeth.
