On a hot, humid day in Chester, the gym doors creak open and sneakers begin to squeak. The first ball hits the rim, then another, and soon the place hums with trash talk and laughter. At center court stands Micah Spader, area director and missionary with Vagabond Missions, greeting each teen by name, asking about school and family.
He plays hard, but he listens harder. After the final game, Spader gathers the group for fellowship. The afternoon closes the way many of his days do — with friendship, a reminder that God is near, and a promise to show up again.
Vagabond’s aim is straightforward and bold: to share the Gospel with inner-city youth by raising up and sending out missionary disciples — a mission lived through after-school programs, outreach, and personal mentorship in nine U.S. cities, including Greater Philadelphia.
“Either I follow You…”
Spader’s road to this gym began a world away. Born in South Korea and adopted as a baby, he was raised in a Catholic family in Sioux Falls, South Dakota — hunting, fishing, and developing a passion for break dancing. After high school, he chased a dancer’s path to the West Coast and San Diego State University and, as he admits, wanted little to do with God.
Then came an unexpected friendship: the second person he met on campus was a Catholic missionary who kept inviting him to Bible study and back to Mass — even as he was living the all too typical college life.
“I hit rock bottom,” Spader said. “I remember looking in the mirror and saying, either I follow You or I keep going down this path.” Weekly conversations with a priest at the Newman Center — and a life-altering confession — opened a door. “I left feeling free, really feeling the Lord’s love and mercy. It all made sense.”
The dancer didn’t disappear; he just found a new stage. “God made a way for me to keep dancing,” Spader said, “and to bring it into ministry.”
A vocation with “Jesus’ vagabond heart”
A campus minister introduced Spader to Vagabond Missions, founded by Bob and Kate Lesnefsky after their early years of ministry in an inner-city parish in New York. Vagabond’s approach is to be present where teens face cycles of neglect, violence, and instability — and to invite them into belonging, friendship, and a relationship with Christ through consistent programs like Open Underground, Breakout, worship nights, and small-group mentorship.
“People don’t realize there are so many neighborhoods here in the U.S. where kids haven’t heard the Gospel, never been to church, don’t know what a priest is,” he said. “We want them to know they’re loved — that Jesus created them good.”
A North Carolina detour
The intent was to join Vagabond and head the inner city. Instead, his first assignment was Greenville, North Carolina, where the summers were muggy, the needs were real, and the work was beautiful. “I still go back to see some of those kids,” he said.
After three years, the call he’d felt from the beginning — to serve in a larger urban context — finally aligned with an opening in the Philadelphia region. He packed his car for Chester, moved temporarily into the rectory at St. Katharine Drexel Parish, and started asking a simple question: Where are the kids?
The answer arrived on a Sunday. “We decided to open the gym after Mass,” Spader said. “I walked outside and there were twelve guys waiting for the doors to open.” By summer’s end, open gym drew about sixty people, all ages. Soon he layered in new programs aimed at fellowship and faith.
A place to belong
Makai Summerhill first heard rumors about the Underground from a cousin. One day after school, he met missionaries handing out flyers, followed them and walked into what he called “a cool hideout” — a space to be a kid.
“We’d hang out, play, and then we’d have a lesson,” Summerhill said. “Micah’s funny and really passionate about his job.”
Amid the gym games, beach trips, and a Life Teen camp in Georgia, Spader helped him connect faith to everyday life. “He taught me determination,” Summerhill said. “Not everybody has to be perfect to have strong faith. He keeps reminding us that when we’re at a low point, we can’t forget who we are and how far we’ve come.
“There are times when home isn’t the place to relax or be yourself. Micah’s like, ‘Don’t worry — come with us, bro. It’s fine.’ He never gives up on people.”
Derek Blair came because friends said it would fit him: basketball, activities, and a chance to get out of the neighborhood for a while. “We went to the beach, canoeing, camping — and camp in Georgia was amazing,” he said. What surprised him was the faith piece. “Before this, I hadn’t really thought much about God. One day Micah started talking, asked if I wanted to learn more. I said, ‘Why not give it a shot?’ Now I go to church on Sundays and Bible study on Wednesdays. I feel like I’ve been created as a new person.”
The long view of hope
Ask Spader what’s hardest and he doesn’t hesitate: hope can be hard. “You believe in these kids,” he said, “and you see what they’re up against. Sometimes it’s unimaginable.”
He’s frank about the weight — the grind of poverty and violence, the tug of easy money. “Day in and day out, you can forget,” he said. “Then you go to prayer, go to church, and you watch the Lord work in a kid’s life. And you remember: He’s here.”
He tells the story of a teen in North Carolina who used to steal. He started coming to Vagabond meetings, and Spader handed him a Bible. “A few weeks later he told me, ‘I read it every day. I sleep with it. I want Jesus to love me.’” The teen eventually left a gang and started over in another state.
“The key is Jesus,” he said. “We can run 50 events and miss the point if we don’t get kids in front of the Lord — at worship, in adoration, at Mass.”
The life of an urban missionary is far from glamorous. It can be heartbreaking. But that’s where faith is critical.
“I’m not from the inner city,” Spader said. “I can’t pretend to know everything my guys carry. But I can model what I’ve been given — and keep telling them the truth: You matter. God loves you. Your life is worth more than you think.”
The genius of urban mission work is not a program but presence — relationships that outlast a season and insist on hope when hope is thin. Vagabond’s model supplies the scaffolding; missionaries like Spader supply the flesh-and-blood fidelity.
The gym doors will open again. There will be games, jokes, and probably a few arguments. There will also be, in Spader’s words, “Jesus chasing after His kids.”
And in a city where despair sometimes gets the last word, a young missionary keeps answering with the first: love.
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Faces of Hope is a series of stories and videos highlighting the work of those who make the Catholic Church of Philadelphia the greatest force for good in the region. To learn more about a new way forward for the Church of Philadelphia, visit TrustandHope.org. If you know someone you’d like to see featured, please reach out to editor@catholicphilly.com.
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