Setting Prisoners Free

A brief Introduction: There's a ministry on the West-side of Chicago called Mission:USA ; every Tuesday night they have a Church service called The BRIDGE . Their services are open to everybody, but especially those who find it hard to gel in their local congregations! Or to put into cruder terms; a lot of these men and women are ex-offenders, homeless and low-income folk who have felt ostracized and rejected by many churches, so their mission is to be a bridge between prison, the streets and the Church. The Bridge helps these wonderful men and women find churches that will welcome them with open arms.....  And isn't this exactly what the Gospel and the "Kingdom of God" is all about? Every Tuesday night, The Bridge has a host team from a Church, who greet the guests and provide a meal. The guests anonymously submit questions about their "walk of faith", and staff from The Bridge pick out a relevant question. Meanwhile, they have invited 3 p...

As an introduction I'd like to explain what this blog-post is about;  There's a ministry on the West-side of Chicago called Mission:USA ; every Tuesday night they have a Church service called The BRIDGE . Their services are open to everybody, but especially those who find it hard to gel in their local congregations! Or to put into cruder terms; a lot of these men and women are ex-offenders, homeless and low-income folk who have felt ostracized and rejected by many churches, so their mission is to be a bridge between prison, the streets and the Church. The Bridge helps these wonderful men and women find churches that will welcome them with open arms.....  And isn't this exactly what the Gospel and the "Kingdom of God" is all about? Every Tuesday night, The Bridge has a host team from a Church, who greet the guests and provide a meal. The guests anonymously submit questions about their "walk of faith", and staff from The Bridge pick out a rele...

My family and I travel down to New Zealand about every 3 years to visit our friends, family and Church; yet recently, I also had the privilege of making an unexpected and bittersweet journey to the country of my birth; I went to mourn the death, while also celebrating the wonderful long life of  my  Uncle Wayne ;  he is m y humble hero, a wonderful example and a World War 2 veteran! Every time we make this journey "down-under", we have the honor of spending a lot of time speaking about what we do and how we work with homeless folk in Uptown, Chicago. Whether it's in front of Titirangi Baptist Church, in a home-group or just chatting with a friend over a meal, people are genuinely interested and bombard us with heaps of relevant questions. Responding to these questions is never difficult or frustrating, we actually find all the sharing quite enjoyable. Most of the kiwis (New Zealanders) we chat with have seen multiple images of homeless men and women sleeping on ben...

A couple Saturday's ago, our family went on an outing to the Children's Museum at Navy Pier. We went to meet up with a group of other youngsters who have the same or similar "limb differences" as Muriwai; our beautiful 8 year old daughter who was born without her left hand! This event was organized by Born Just Right ; an online community started and inspired by a mother (Jen Lee Reeves), who has a 7 year old daughter (Jordan) with a "limb difference" very similar to Muriwai's. They had provided us all with free tickets to the Museum and a meal each from Navy Pier's food court. It was a truly wonderful day, as we were able to meet with other families who had also made concerted efforts to travel to downtown, Chicago, or into the big city! We all went with the sole purpose of wanting to connect with other folks who share similar experiences and stories. To my understanding, over 40 people attended, and it was great to meet and chat at length with...

There he sat... Hunched up alone On Chicago's brutal concrete Ignored by the vast majority Greeted by a compassionate few There he sat... Minute after minute Hour after hour Day after day Week after week There he sat... Withering into the rugged landscape Staining his fingers with endless cigarettes Enduring summer's humidity and winter's howling winds Living with his endearing smile and pleasant greetings. It was 2007. Day after day, Frenchie sat on the corner of Wilson and Sheridan fading into the landscape. His thin body was getting thinner, his sunken eyes were sinking deeper and his dirty clothes were caked in grime. Yet, Frenchie always greeted us all with a smile and his kind-hearted comments. As he sat, those of us who passed him daily grew to love him and his softly spoken greetings. He wasn't a nameless invisible soul to us, he was Frenchie. By merely sitting there, he had captured our hearts. My children and other kids knew him, and felt...

This picture is hard to briefly describe in words, because of everything it symbolizes to me!  This man, holding his key to his new apartment, symbolizes an abundance of hope, love and a network of people coming together for him! Yes, for him.... My friend pictured here, was a symbol of utter despair and rejection: he was homeless for what seemed like an eternity (he'd even lost count of the years he's been living on the streets), he is unable to read or write, he has a devastating mental illness, a chronically bad addiction to alcohol and a ton of physical ailments due to his age, love of beer and his 2 decades of homelessness. When you consider all this, and the fact he's also been repeatedly assaulted and stomped upon, simply because of "who he is", you cannot help but see all the despair and rejection staining his worn-out body!  This man, my friend, symbolizes and is the very picture of the fragile people I advocated for in my last post: Stomp...

I write this with a heavy heart... a heart that often throbs.... Even though I totally love working with people who are homeless and poverty-stricken, there are a couple of things that often leave me languishing with a very heavy heart.... Even though hope and joy are not foreign concepts to me and they surround me everyday, there are a couple things that continually rear their ugly heads, leaving me stewing with a very heavy heart.... Despite my efforts to embrace all the goodness and beauty of what I'm privileged enough to do, these couple things constantly battle me and my ideals, trying desperately to dash all the hope, joy and love I cling to!.... So what are these couple of things? The first thing is the daunting and daily reality that my homeless friends are dying! My life is surrounded by the actuality of death! The nature of my life in Chicago is constantly calling me to support and hold the hands of my homeless and poverty-stricken friends, a...