DETROIT — It’s a topic people are excited about, but many aren’t sure how it could be done — revitalizing the faith in inner-city Detroit.

The Revive Detroit campaign, part of an archdiocese-wide evangelization initiative, is an answer to that question.

The idea started after conversations between Fr. Eduardo Montemayor, SOLT, associate director of evangelization and Hispanic ministry in the Archdiocese of Detroit, and Gerardo Hernandez of Hope and Purpose Ministries in the Diocese of New Orleans.

Fr. Montemayor and Hernandez grew up together in Texas and both were in the Detroit area. Fr. Hernandez was then called to New Orleans to work with Hope and Purpose Ministries, which is how Fr. Montemayor learned of the organization and Deacon Larry Oney, its founder and leader.

“Deacon Oney is really involved with working in inner-cities and evangelizing,” Fr. Montemayor said. “I said to myself, ‘Let me get to know Deacon Oney, please.’ When I heard him speak with such passion and conviction, I knew that we needed him to come to Detroit.”

Deacon Oney grew up as a sharecropper’s son on a plantation in northern Louisiana. There, he encountered problems with race, poverty and depleted inner-cities, such as New Orleans.

Fr. Montemayor felt Deacon Oney’s book, “Amazing Grace Overcoming Race,” was a message needed in Detroit.

“I was talking with Oney and Gerardo and we figured out how we can do this as a pre-evangelization course with Deacon Oney,” Fr. Montemayor said. “We reached the point where we asked the archbishop for support, and he said yes.”

Fr. Montemayor thinks the initiative’s focus on urban areas and its call for evangelization to deal with issues surrounding race and poverty attracted the archbishop’s support.

Revive Detroit will consist of three events starting in the Trinity Vicariate in northwest Detroit: “Amazing Grace Overcoming Race,” “The Encounter” and “Your Divine Mission.”

The events will feature Deacon Oney’s personalized message of hope and love and what can be done to restore inner-city communities by overcoming racism, poverty and loss of neighborhood self-identity. All three events will be filmed by the Catholic Television Network of Detroit, with DVDs made available to parishes.

The campaign begins from 6-9 p.m. Aug. 20-21 with “Amazing Grace Overcoming Race” at Corpus Christi Parish; then, on Sept. 14, “The Encounter” begins at St. Scholastica from 6-9 p.m. every Monday until Nov. 23. It will finish up with “Your Divine Mission,” tentatively scheduled for February 2016, which will include a daylong retreat and closing thoughts on the campaign and what needs to be done to reinvigorate faith in inner-city Detroit.

Fr. Montemayor is ecstatic about the potential of the Revive Detroit campaign as a turning point in the city.

“If we can make this work right here, in Detroit, it can be a model for the rest of the country,” he said. “What makes this different than other programs we’ve done in the past is it focuses on the inner-city and all the components of the New Evangelization. It’s homegrown right here in Detroit, and I think that’s why people are excited. If we can dream big, we can do big things. We can never out-dream God, and He has big dreams for Detroit.”