Category: Homelessness
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Have We Forgotten That It’s Not About Us?: Barriers to Kingdom Collaboration Part II
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? They are servants through whom you believed, and each has the role the Lord has given. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. Now he who plants and…
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Why “Random Acts of Kindness” Aren’t Always Kind
This is a picture my friend, Angela Hopson, took will doing outreach among friends experiencing homelessness this week. It shows an area at one encampment where boxes of perishable and non-perishable food is just dumped for people in the camp to use. For those of us who work regularly with friends experiencing homelessness, we need…
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Have We Forgotten Who The Battle Is Against?: Barriers to Kingdom Collaboration Part I
We have refused to find common ground around our goals which are the same. This divisiveness only benefits the real enemy, Satan, who can keep people trapped in a life of hopelessness while those who seek to help them fight each other.
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Getting Beyond the Dogma of Personal Reponsibility
James Tissot [Public domain],via Wikimedia Commons Yesterday my friend Robert Charlock submitted a letter to the Indianapolis Star regarding the need for a Homeless Bill of Rights in Indianapolis. The self-righteous on-line comments of those who assume poverty is usually the result of personal choices quickly emerged: “How many brought this upon themselves? When having a…
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Atypical Christmas Songs: Christmas at Denny’s
I’ve previously mentioned wanting to assemble a collection of posts about some of my favorite “Christmas Songs” that most people may not think of when they think of Christmas. I’ve decided this will be the year. They won’t be in any particular order and I’m not sure how many I’ll come up with, so I…
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Humility Critical For Real Change To Happen
This past Monday I watched our local city-county council get bogged down in petty politics as they debated a proposal to provide legal protections to our neighbors living without homes. As I watched this, I kept thinking of how important the quality of humility is if we are ever going to see any substantial change…
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Being At The Mercy Of Another
This past weekend I had the “opportunity” to experience just a piece of the helplessness many of the most vulnerable people in our city experience on a daily basis. This was not a staged learning experience where you know no matter what’s going on it’s only pretend, but instead a situation where you are in…
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Wisdom Found Under A Bridge
During our missional communities time serving friends without homes alongside Food 4 Souls yesterday, we served a different route than we usually travel. Though we missed the friends we’ve made on our normal route, this change gave us the opportunity to meet Fred. Fred was travelling along with one of the outreach workers from Food…
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Trusting The Only One Who Can Help In Times Like These
Winter has arrived in central Indiana on a level people here haven’t experienced in twenty years. The family and I enjoyed playing in the snow that kept falling through the day yesterday (nearly 12″ total). Today we will hunker down in the house while the temperatures plummet to levels we haven’t seen since we left…
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