Chris Rice added, Glenn to Come…

I’ve just added Chris to the growing list of authors / contributors / people with fast-moving typing hands here. Still to come… Glenn Kaiser. He’s leading a P12 seminar in the room next to my workspace as I write, and just mentioned the days in which he still had all his hair. That was a long time ago. For him and me! Anyway, Chris should show up with contributions of his own here soon. I’ll let everyone know when Glenn is also on board.

A Desperate Kind of Faithful

Chris Rice, a friend and co-worker here at Jesus People USA, has posted some things worth reading lately on his A Desperate Kind of Faithful. Not least is his post on a preacher he knows very, very well… a man who has been trying to follow Jesus in serving “the least of these” for decades.

For instance, in “The Preacher Who Would Not Go Away,” Chris writes:

I heard tell about this preacher once. He just wouldn’t go away. He kept talkin about how churches should be noticing the homeless and poor walking the streets. He kept talkin about prisoners and their rights. He knew very well that this wasn’t popular. He knew the folks of this little city would rather see the homeless freeze to death or kill each other than try to help them. He knew that prisons were more popular than shelters, bigger money makers. But he wouldn’t back down. He kept talking about Jesus and what He said to do. He’d walk the streets with the homeless just to talk and get to know them. He ran this little thrift store and just gave away everything inside. He let the homeless sleep over night in the little store even when the little city said shelters had to be 2000 feet apart. Bars on the same street could be 200 feet apart but when you’re drunk you can’t just sleep on the floor of the bar. So the police harassed the little group who dared invite the homeless into their store. The next day the preacher walked the whole crew the five miles down to the police station and offered himself in behalf of the staff. “Don’t arrest them, he said, arrest me!” The police got all nice and helpful and couldn’t understand what he was talking about. Over the next few weeks, as temperatures dropped, the little store got flooded with hopeless cases. “Lets see if they can withstand this!” someone said. “We’ll see how much rendering their good heart can take!”

And things get worse from there when tragedy strikes via a rape, and the media does what media always does best…

Anyway, check Chris’ thoughts out. They’re worth a read, and maybe some silence afterward…