Mission

Hey you guys, I hope that this blog can kinda become an ongoing conversation between us. Even though distance may separate us I would love to be able to just share and enjoy a sense of community with all of you even though we may be living in different parts of the country. Leave some comments, shoot some e-mails, and I hope that discussion follows. We will see. This is an experiment of sorts. I doubt it will work, but you never know… I think I have been wrong before… once or twice. :-)

This morning I woke up early and rolled out of bed. I threw off my Sesame Street quilt (I know you are all jealous) that my grandma made me and slowly found my way to the bathroom for a hot shower to open my eyes. The thing is, my shower here can’t keep a constant temperature, and I am continually jumping in and out of a stream of water in continual temperature and pressure flux. It annoys me, it has been one of the things which I just do not like about where I live.

The shower was short this morning, and the drying period was even shorter as the crisp air of the morning was sneaking through the many windows of our apartment that for some reason never close all the way. I quickly dried off and threw on some warmer cloths which would provide the temperature stability my shower failed to afford.

I poured myself a bowl of fruit loops and sat down to an episode of MacGyver. I enjoy my morning of no talking and just listening. The episode ended and I brushed my teeth, did my hair, and slipped on my shoes. It was just another normal morning.

I walked out the door around 10:15 and the sun had already begun to warm the foothills so that a t-shirt was plenty enough to keep warm. I proceeded across campus to my friends’ house where we were to leave to go to the soup kitchen in downtown LA on SkidRow.

The normal aspects of that morning stopped once we got to the Midnight Mission. I had always wondered where homeless people would live and it is now clear. The street was lined with tents, and makeshift homes. People were camping out on the sidewalks, and a few gathered at a street corning laughing and dancing. Some sat in their huts, others were walking around, but in the end none of it was “normal” for me.

We served food that afternoon. The man who showed us around and organized the food distribution was a former drug addict. He had been through the programs the Midnight Mission has to offer and he was able to turn his life around. It was a great story, but I wonder if I will remember it in a few weeks: A few weeks of me living my little life far away from the homeless.

I think that it is so easy to brush the homeless and drug addicts aside when you never come in contact with them. I mean society today teaches us that we should strive to live in the nice area of town, get a good job so that you can raise your kids in an area with good schools, and the church rarely seems to argue against this. My home church for example is talking of putting millions into a new building in a rich neighborhood to attract more members. What kind of members are they looking to attract? It seems the church is running.

When did homelessness become something that was just there? Something that we can not fix? Another man we talked to today is currently in the program at the Midnight Mission as well. He says that the main reason people in that area are homeless is a lack of education and help. He said that if the people knew that the Mission and other things were available they would try to get out of their lifestyle. They just don’t know how to do it. And we all just keep running.

I don’t know, I have been thinking about this more and more lately. I heard a guy named Shane Claiborne speak at the National Youth Workers Convention and he discussed how he and others have developed a community of “lovers”, people who just love the poor and the addict. They don’t just love them if they change their ways or become more churchy, but they love them as they are, sleeping in the park, and often a little bit drunk. Since when did Jesus demand people to have their lives together before they could come to him? Since when did the church cease ending homelessness?

I think too often we think of mission as something we do weekly, monthly or even annually. We make mission into trips, or things we do at certain times. But what would happen if the sole goal of the church was to be in mission? What would happen of the community of believers would come together for no other purpose than to love people as they were. Not to tell them they needed to do this or that to attain God’s love. Wouldn’t us showing them God’s love give them much greater hope for change than anything else we could say to them in words? What are we called to do?

I think it is similar to the AIDS and poverty crisis in Africa in many ways. In the end I just don’t know how much the church as a whole cares. I was reading a book the other day where Brian McLaren quotes Tony Compolo saying to a group of church leaders “Millions of children are dying in poverty and you don’t give a F***!” as faces blanched, he would add wryly, “And to prove my point you are more upset that I said F*** than that millions of children are dying in poverty!” I often wonder how true that is. I read Amazing Grace by Kozol in college and it was my first observance of poverty even if it was through pages of a book. But today it became more of a reality. And I am confused as to what the heck we are supposed to do about it. The thing that is even more confusing to me is that I can just go in do “mission” and leave to my pleasing little life. Is that what we are called to do?