The Revelation Center

The Revelation Center is both a congregation and non-profit whose mission is reducing violence and building a better Mantua neighborhood (30th/ Spring Garden/ – 40th/ Lancaster). Their approach to peacemaking is found in the recognition that the culture of the local community needs to change. There are outreach ministries for male perpetrators of domestic violence, woman empowerment, music and arts. In everything the church and the ROCC do, they seek to engage others where they are, help facilitate the building of relationships and nurture positive change in the community. The key to the Revelation Center’s effectiveness is their senior pastor, Rev. Andre Stanton. He has built his most significant partnerships with local shelters, Drexel University and Penn, with the Philadelphia Horticultural Society, the Philadelphia Zoo, city grants, and the Philadelphia Police Dept (he serves as a police chaplain.) He has brought police into informal conversations with suspected drug offenders to seek transformation through conversation rather than arrest. Early in his ministry, he arranged a face-to-face meeting with the police and rival gang leaders.

Shootings dropped, drug traffic moved out of the immediate neighborhood, and he tells of success stories helping individuals leave crime behind. He meets with neighborhood men on the 3rd Saturday of the month, and on the 4th Saturday goes to the People’s Emergency Shelter (for women and children) a project of Drexel University’s Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships, with which he worked closely as PEC was being planned and built. His congregation collects food for the hungry, helps support Chosen 300 ministries (feeding the homeless), works with LIST community gardens, works with “National Night Out” and provides building space for Social Services clients to meet. He dreams of building a multi-purpose four story building in the neighborhood for job training, housing families in transition from homelessness, other “community center” activities.

Note: The Revelation Center has closed due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.