But Tyson isn't a pusher, a pimp or a police officer. He's the pastor of Waterbury Baptist Ministries, a church and Baptist Center in the inner city.

Tyson is one of the missionaries featured during the week of prayer for North American missions, March 1-8. The week is part of the Season of North American Missions, which also includes the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering. The national goal for the 1998 offering is $42 million.

At least once a week, Tyson walks through the Willow Plaza neighborhood around the ministry center.

Years ago, Waterbury's wealthy lived in this neighborhood and worked in factories that made Waterbury the "Brass Capital of the World."

Now, some residents have renamed Waterbury the "Welfare Capital of the World."

Willow Plaza looks like a poor community. But it's really just poor. "There's no community," said Tyson. "People reside here, they don't live here."

Tyson said there is "an art to inner-city ministry." He believes that ministry must go beyond the occasional rescue.

"Sometimes you've got to stop pulling people out of the river long enough to go upriver and find out why they keep falling in," Tyson said. "Only by being in the community long enough do you realize how to deal with the people there."

In 1991, Tyson and his wife, Rhonie Black-Tyson felt called to start a church in the inner city. A study of Waterbury highlighted three opportunities for ministry: drugs, prostitution and a lack of activities for children.

The Tysons found an abandoned park. With the help of volunteers, they cleaned it up and began a Backyard Bible Club. Tyson told residents he planned to start a church in January 1992.

The Tysons rented a former dance hall and gay bar on Main Street to use as a ministry center and church. One adult came to the first worship service, the rest were children. It was six months before the first child accepted Christ, nine months for the first adult.

But Maner was not discouraged. "You've got to believe in what God can do," he said. "When only two people show up, you've got to believe in the vision."

Over the past six years, the center's ministries have grown beyond a full Sunday and Wednesday evening schedule. It now also offers a tutoring program for children and youth, art classes, youth Bible study, kid's club and "Operation Nicodemus" (or "Nick At Night").

"Nick At Night began one Christmas Eve two or three years ago," Tyson said. "We had a candlelight service and 75 people came. I was real excited driving home when I came to a stop at an intersection not far from the center."

At the intersection where Tyson waited for the light to change was another storefront church. Inside, boys and girls were performing a Christmas pageant complete with shepherds and angels.

"They were at the part where the angels bring tidings of great joy," Tyson said. "I noticed a shadow across the street. There in the dark was a prostitute, just watching everything going on inside the church. That's when I realized that Waterbury has a day city and a night city."

Tyson decided that if the church was going to reach the people of the city, someone must step outside the building and meet the people where they were, when they were there -- day or night. After much prayer, the Tysons began the ministry on Friday nights.

"We call it 'Operation Nicodemus,' or 'Nick At Night' for short, because Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, in the shadows, and that's where we go on Friday night," Tyson said. "Every Friday night, we go out into the streets with hot dogs and the gospel."

The center also serves as a laboratory for hands-on mission work. Waterbury Baptist Ministries has benefitted from hundreds of volunteers from around the world.

"It's dangerous to come up here," said Tyson, "because your life is going to change."

As missions team members leave the center to go home, they pass a sign posted by the ministry center door. It encourages them to remember the needs of Waterbury and to get involved in local missions action.

Because, the sign and Tyson say, "There's a little Waterbury in every community."

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Jones is a news and information specialist for the North American Mission Board.)