When I was a little kid, I wanted to be Evel Knievel, or a police officer, or a fire fighter, or maybe an astronaut.  I was sure I would work in a career playing for the Dallas Cowboys too.  But by the time I was in high school, I was basically disillusioned with church.  I certainly didn’t think then that I would find a career in prophecy when visiting my guidance counselor.

And the pay?  Well, the job earns so little, they can’t afford to print up brochures featuring it.

I was in my mid twenties when I came back to church.  And while there were some exciting features of that time in my life – in my faith – I still did not expect to take the path I found.  But no doubt I came back with a critical eye.  And the ironic thing, at least as I see it, is that when I went to Bible school, I did not expect to make a career of it, but I did hope that I might have valued input in my church… input I expected would prove supportive for those who preach.

Even then, the faith heritage I grew up in has practically no depth of understanding of, and no value for, prophecy.  Most of what I have learned about it, I found without the help of my church, the academy, or any of my mentors.  A little, sure, but not most.  And so I did not grow up valuing or understanding either.

My involvement with prison ministry and street ministry – especially my involvement in ecumenical circles working in those areas – pushed me to imagine more fully how God works through prophets.  I began applying the things I learned in one single college course, a handful of books, and one single seminar (a rare look at prophecy in church offered by a visiting preacher) to my work on the streets especially.  I found power in symbols and rituals that had seemed so flat and two dimensional before.

But none of that seemed like a prophetic calling to me.  I sensed that I was flirting with some deep ideas, alright, but I also sensed that I was like a toddler finding a loaded gun.  I did not feel qualified, adequate, or even wise enough to embrace a prophetic calling.  So I resisted it even though I gave it a lot of thought.

However, about that time I joined the homeless camping on the streets for over a year, and then joined Lubbock’s Premier Homeless Pseudo Church (not its real name) where I began volunteering, among other things as a chaperone during cold winter nights to host those without shelter under the roof of Jesus’s people.  It was around this same time that Mrs. Agent X and I got married, and we embraced prophetic symbols in that ceremony seeking God’s blessing on our life together – a story you should look at if you haven’t before.  See it here:

https://fatbeggars.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/proph-o-drama-wedding/

It was shortly after that wedding, and our second winter volunteering to chaperone the homeless, when suddenly leadership in our church arbitrarily refused to host the homeless on a cold winter night.  Upon seeking verification about why such changes in policy were made, we were told there was a lack of available volunteers at first, but this was just not true.  We had arranged for them already.  And when leadership was confronted about this, I was told, “It’s a leadership decision, [Agent X], and you will just have to accept it”.

A leadership decision to break with long standing practice is one thing, but a leadership decision to break with a long standing practice/policy based on dishonest reasoning is another.  A leadership decision to muscle a decision to break with God’s Word is another too.  What response does a believer have with this?

Well, at first I began a series of meetings with the board of directors, but it quickly became clear they were supportive of the bad decision and not interested in being reasonable about it.  I sought compromise with them (and looking back on it, I think that was ridiculous actually), but they weren’t having it.  Weeks and weeks of negotiations did not yield even an inch of compromise.  Both me and my position had NO VALUE.

It was in the midst of this pressure cooker, that I found myself looking much more seriously at the options.  I decided to answer the prophetic all, if indeed God was calling, and invited a group of homeless men to come eat with me at my home, to pray on it, to study on it, and see if we might reach a consensus between us.  One of the more divinely mysterious features of that moment happened to be that on the Sunday when this occurred, as I was preparing to invite a handful of individuals, the head guy from the board of directors, without knowing what I was doing at all, suggested to me that I go involve Agent J (the original Agent J) in the little group I was putting together.  He still has no idea that God used him to select (elect) one of the founding members of the Fat Beggars School of Prophets, but he did.  It was the best contribution the board of directors ever made to our mission!

In a matter of weeks, only a few meetings for prayer, our little group was perceived to be a threat, and an ultimatum was laid out by leadership that we disband or else I would be kicked out of the “church”.  I never dreamed of being a prophet when I was a kid, and so when I found myself looking for the way to honor God when my “church” refused me all the usual avenues for it, I found myself answering the call.  Sadly, this was a Leadership Decision “church” leaders just were not willing to accept.

And it seems they still aren’t.

Hmmm…

So I join a class at church meeting one evening a week in the dead of Winter to discuss how to care for the homeless “effectively”.  The class meets repeatedly for about 3 months.  The discussion goes deep, we watch video presentations, read books and websites, call on experts to advise us and so forth.  And we do all this in the comfort of a church building classroom, with climate control, sipping lattes or other drinks while the temperature outside plummets upon the very homeless we care so much about we would give up this precious time from our otherwise busy schedules.

But the mere mention of opening the church-house door to the poor and sharing our warmth as a matter of obeying Jesus’ Word incites quizzical looks and ultimately arguing how we should NOT.

Is this care?

Is this the Body of Christ?

Or is this a smoke screen allowing us to FEEL like we care?

You tell me.

When I talk to professionals in the field working for charities and social work organizations, and when I read the experts, I find a concerted push to get to the root causes of homelessness and to address the issue with comprehensive approaches that tend to be complex.  “Poverty” itself undergoes redefinition.  In addressing root causes “effectively” efforts are made to shore up deficits in sobriety, in education, in job training, in anger management, in housing opportunities, in “awareness”, and perhaps a dozen other aspects of the intractable problem.

However, I suggest that the one universal thing missing in the life of every homeless person is LOVE.

Having a HOME is all about sharing LOVE.  It’s not really at root about personal responsibility, about holding down a job, about education, sobriety, affordable housing or any of that stuff – important though any of it may be.  On the contrary, it is about sharing LOVE with others and living in a network of caring people where human beings are infinitely and innately valuable beyond measure to one another.  Where anonymity is nonexistent.  Where money is not as valuable as people to the hearts of those sharing in the community.

As insightful as a program can be, it cannot be anything more than a noisy gong without LOVE. Please quote me on that.  (St. Paul might almost say that.)

A week ago I was visiting Albuquerque, New Mexico where I joined Agent Z on a mission to bring the homeless in to his church and party with Jesus.  I am delinquent in reporting on it.

Agent Z is one of my kids.  My step son, to be exact.  But he grew up in my home, and it seems has accepted influence from me which prompts him to devote his life, both personally and professionally, to ministry for Jesus.  Being a young man, he finds his way forward through youth ministry, but reports to me that actually he thinks ministry is just ministry really, and the “youth” part is just the pathway the academy opens up for him.

This summer he took an internship, a temporary/student job, as a youth minister assistant for a church In ABQ.  This church sits on the intersection of I-40 and San Mateo, a corner heavy with traffic that includes lots of meandering homeless people.  And considering all his experience and his heart for the poor, Agent Z immediately began reaching out in his own small way as a youth minister to the homeless living just out the front door of this church.

He went out and met some people face to face.  Then after a social gathering for the youths, he gathered up the left over food and took it to the streets for distribution.  Soon one of the elders at this church prompted Z to examine their outreach program and determine ways to improve it.  And then Agent Z put forth a prayer request to the church with names of homeless men living just outside for the whole church to pray for.

As the summer progresses, Agent Z is required to “do a project”.  There are myriad tasks of a more mundane variety that Z is given as he learns the expectations of a staff minister, but to fulfill academic requirements, he is also supposed to take a leadership role in designing and executing a ministerial project.  Z chose to do what he does best, invite the poor to party with Jesus!

And this is where Agent Z has broke through to new territory.  In all the years he has watched or participated in Fat Beggars School of Prophets and our efforts to get the church to open a door to the poor and homeless only to be told NO every single time, Z got that little church in ABQ excited about the possibilities!

Last weekend, I showed up to see it for myself.

Saturday evening, the fellowship hall of that church hosted a Luke-14 Jesus Party.  About 15 people, some youth and parents and a few elders and staff ministers showed up, fired up the grill, held a short devo, and then formed a mission group that hit the streets.  I was one of those who hit the streets with this small group, and we went in search of the poor, the broken, the lowly so that we might compel them in to the party!

And we managed to persuade six. . . at first.  Six people from the streets showed up to eat.  I did not meet them all (after all, I was meeting the other fifteen for the first time as well), but I did meet and interact with four of them.  But before they came in, we had the adventure of reaching out to find them.

Agent Z’s youth minister supervisor, the main youth minister, was eager to visit with me, and when we encountered the first homeless man, Manny, on the corner, I engaged him with invitation.  It quickly became clear that Manny was deeply suspicious of church and church people, so I was stuck there for several minutes trying to assure him that we would not manipulate him, merely share a meal and celebrate Jesus with him.  Thus the rest of the group moved on, except Manny, the youth minister, and me.

After several torturous minutes of failing to convince Manny of our good intentions (I suspect Manny suffers mental illness with paranoid complications), we left him with our blessing, and upon realizing that the rest of our group had disappeared going North on San Mateo, I suggested we head South to get more coverage.  The youth minister agreed.

We found three more individuals in a nearby park who agreed to come, and we escorted them back to the church.  Two of them were a young couple, and man and woman, but the man never gave me his name.  They also kept a fair bit of distance as we made our way down the boulevard to that meal, but the other fella, an older gentleman, told me his name was John.  And escorting him was like herding a one-man herd of cats.

John asked if he could finish his beer.  I agreed that it would be better for him to finish it there in the park rather than take it to the church, so he slugged it.  But then he was a gregarious drunk, very friendly and open and told me lots of stories about his life along the way.  He was rather entertaining, really.

As we made our way back to the church, I met another man named Phillip.  Phillip was on his way to meet other friends at that moment, but upon hearing our invitation, he became excited and suggested he might show up a little later with other friends.  We sent him off with our blessing in hope of seeing him again with yet others too.

Upon arriving back at the fellowship hall, I had a second chance to talk to Manny.  So I lingered outside with him as the youth minister escorted John and the other couple inside.  I coaxed and coaxed Manny and even felt very hopeful when he ventured up to the entrance with me.  But he just could not let go of his fear, and I just could not alleviate it adequately.  So Manny drifted away into the city.

But once I joined the others inside, I found John entertaining the people gathered around his table by singing.  It turns out he can sing very well.  When he sang Neil Young songs, he actually sounded like Neil Young!  But the part I found particularly exciting was that one of the church ladies sitting there EATING WITH John (who interestingly had by now introduced himself to everyone else there as “Donald” (multiple personality???)) was completely engaged in singing with him.  They played an impromptu game of Name That Tune with each other and created many smiles and laughter between people of such deeply divided stations in life that ONLY Jesus could bring them together!

Wow!

I had cause recently to look at a very old post on this blog about another church that opened their door one night to the homeless (here in Lubbock, btw), and I was stunned by the joyful tone and rhetoric coming off my own keyboard!  I would love for you to check it out.  I notice that the day I posted it holds my all time record for the most views in a single day.  Almost 100!  Find it here:

https://fatbeggars.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/st-john-neumanns-catholic-church-answers-the-door/

I am just as excited for the ministry Agent Z is affecting in ABQ!

I watched this woman who lives a deeply devout Christian life amid all the comfort of American society welcome a drunk, possibly Schizophrenic, unbathed bum into her church’s fellowship hall where she shared a meal and joy and Jesus with him.  And I think he was the face of Jesus while she was the hands and feet of Jesus, and where the two were gathered together, Jesus was there in our midst!

Agent Z reports to me that after the party, which was small, he heard several people speak about doing this again!  He is planting seeds!

Later, after the party was done and cleaned up (I had to leave it early because I had babies with me that I had to tend to) I heard that four other street people showed up, and they too were welcomed and food was shared with them as well.  I have no way of knowing, but I wonder if Phillip didn’t come and bring his friends!

Word is out on the street in ABQ.  On San Mateo Blvd. in particular!  Jesus welcomes the poor, the lowly, the broken and parties with them!

Score one for Jesus!

God opened a door!

So there were these two brothers.  Each had a wife, and they shared an anniversary.

The older brother bought his wife a vacuum cleaner and a sexy nightie to give his lovely bride as an anniversary gift.  The younger brother wrote a heartfelt poem, bought a dozen roses, planned ahead, asking her friends advice, booked reservations, and took his bride for a weekend get away to celebrate their anniversary.

Which wife felt loved by her husband more?

(Which one feels manipulated?)

okay… okay… okay…

Let’s change things up.

So there were these two churches.  Each reached out to serve the poor.

First Church of the True Christians raises funds to send to missions and charities, holds classes teaching people not to give money to the poor directly, sends the youth group on short term missions to the inner city (with a short stay at the beach too), and opens a fancy coffee shop where the profit from your latte is sent to the local homeless church – enabling the flock to feel good about their consumer purchases at a moral level.

The second church is the recipient of most of the money raised from the First Church.  Their assembly is made up of homeless people who receive many benefits such as access to a shower, a phone, a locker to keep things, and a few are even housed in “transitional housing” if they are deemed “worthy”.  However, this church closes their door to the poor twice daily and every night, does not allow them to be on the property at all during those times, AND throws violators of this rule in jail.

Which flock feels the love of Christ?

I posted yesterday about a conversation with Agent R that revealed to me the fact that a church put a homeless man in jail for trespassing.  And I am not talking about just any church, but the Premier Homeless Pseudo Church of Lubbock (not its real name) – the main church all the other churches of Lubbock count on to care for the homeless so that they don’t have to!  And I can’t get it off my mind.

There are so many implications at work in this action that I don’t think I can meaningfully analyze them all.  I can imagine taking my thoughts in various directions actually, but the one that grips me in the dark of night as I rest my head on my pillow is a matter of world order.  Just what message is a church sending when it criminalizes the sheep?

Is it the Gospel of Jesus?

What message is the church responsible for sending?  Is it not the Gospel?

So what message does such an action send?

First off, this is not a message the Premier Homeless Pseudo Church publicizes.  This is a church that brags itself up on the internet, in the newspapers, and on TV regularly.  I estimate that 80% of the news items in the local media involving issues surrounding homelessness also feature this church.  (Just my personal estimate, so it’s not scientific at all, but I rarely see these items not featuring this church that has become very media savvy!)

But you never see a story about this church throwing the poor in jail or closing its door in the face of the poor – the very people who make up the flock of their fold!  They have enough sense, it seems, to keep that out of the spotlight, and the rest of the church of Lubbock colludes with this arrangement by not asking tough questions or shining the light there.

So who witnesses this stuff?

The poor themselves mostly.  The poor and a church in denial.

I wouldn’t know about it either, except I went out on the streets and asked a pertinent question of a homeless man in the know.

But who else knows?

Well, the cops (and presumably a few attorneys and perhaps a judge – most of whom also are church people).

These people, by design and purpose, make it their daily business to order our world – at least our part of it – with justice. (Justitia was one of the great goddesses of Rome, btw.) And here we have a church calling on the justice system to come save us – TO COME SAVE US – from the very chaos we ourselves are charged with attending.

What does it say to a cop when a church calls to complain about one of its own members?  Doesn’t St. Paul say something about this? (Hint I Cor. 6).

When the cop is called to clean up the mess, doesn’t this send the message that even the church considers this homeless man to be of so little value that he is just a mess and not a valued member of our church?  When the cop is called to arrest the man, doesn’t this send the message that Jesus is not actually Lord, but the municipal government is in his place?  And when a cop is called to run off a homeless man from the church, doesn’t this send the message to the homeless that you better shut up and obey us because no one really cares for you, and if you don’t like it, that’s just tough.  Lump it!

Does any of that order the world for Jesus?

But if the church welcomed the man, loved him with an OPEN DOOR, with forgiveness of debt, with patience, with sacrifice, would that send the message that Jesus is Lord?

I need to be careful with this line of thinking.  The Bible actually does outline a process for expelling trouble-makers from the church.  As Michael Wilson terms it: “Jesus Due Process”!  I am not there on the ground witnessing the action taken by the Premier Homeless Pseudo Church first hand, and thus I cannot say with 100% certainty that they have not attempted in good faith to afford something of that due process for Agent J.  But I am a first hand recipient of the broken justice this church dishes out myself, and I suffer it for standing up against almost exactly this kind of miscarriage of Gospel!  So, I think my speculation is worthy of consideration.

But of course I “may scream at the top of my voice” as one of my own shepherds tells me, “[my] voice has no volume” and “it will not be heard”.

Hmmm…

There is another Judge who I talk to every day without screaming.  He has yet to intervene, but I am pretty sure he hears me.

Just sayin’…

Here I am.  Just got back from a road trip through New Mexico, where, among other things, I joined Agent Z AND HIS CHURCH in opening the church house door to the homeless, to feed them, to party WITH them!  And as I spend much of my day formulating thoughts to distill into a blog post (it’s been a week since I last posted), I run a few errands around town and bump into Agent R, a homeless man I have known for years – and whom I pray for daily – and I ask him if he has seen [Agent J].

Agent R’s response?

“He’s in jail!”

“Really?” I ask.

“Yeah.  He got criminal trespassed at church.”

“How is that even a category of crime?” I ask.  “How can a church throw you in jail for trespassing?  What sense does that make?”

“They told him to leave.  They gave him a chance to go, but he refused, and now he is in jail.”

Wow!

And I will let you guess which church did it…

 

…

 

Okay, no I won’t.

It was Lubbock’s Premier Pseudo Homeless Church.  The same church that kicked me out for insisting we let the homeless come in.  The same bunch my current church supports financially and tells me that they like the way the poor are cared for there, but the way I care for them does more harm than good.

That’s Lubbock.

But it’s not Jesus.

 

…

 

Oh… you think I am unfair?  That I don’t know the whole story behind it?

Neither do you.  Did you ask?  Were you there?

I didn’t think so.

But this “church’s” credibility is shot, and has been a long time.

Criminal trespass for the homeless at a church?  Is this God’s House?  Did he leave you there to be the doorkeeper?

Well, he told you to keep alert because you don’t know the day or hour when the Master of the House will return!  He told you to keep watch!  He said, “Behold!  I stand at the door and knock.  If you open up, I will come in and party with you!”  And, he said, that stranger in need of shelter (hint: the homeless) and the least of these brothers and sisters are him.

That’s Agent J, ya’ll.

That’s Agent J.

But you sent him away without asking God.  And God says that’s him.  And when he didn’t accept your lame demands contrary to God’s commands, you put him in jail.

Explain that.

Have you ever noticed that God uses small people to do BIG things?  Broken people to FIX things?  Dead people to be ALIVE?

Sometimes I think the Christians of Lubbock don’t know this.  In fact, really the Christians of America in general, I think, don’t really appreciate this.  And maybe in this respect we are a lot like the church in Corinth.  Look at what St. Paul tells them:

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.  But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

(I Cor. 1:26-31)

Yeah!

God chooses the fools, the weak, the poor, and the small so that when he whips tail, he gets the glory for it!  No, really, think about some of the famous stories you know from the Bible.  (You don’t have to be a scholar to know this stuff!)  Think about David, the little shepherd boy killing Goliath the Giant.  This one is probably the most famous of all the stories of this kind, and it’s told in such a way as to really emphasize the point!  This massive warrior comes out and taunts God’s people on the battle field day after day, but God, working behind the scenes – back in the shepherd’s fold –  has a secret weapon: David, the little guy who ain’t even big enough to wear the armor!

But the Bible is actually chock-full of these kinds of tales.  Joseph, the one who dreams of greatness, gets sold into slavery by his older brothers to the Egyptians, and they tell their daddy that he is dead and gone.  And what happens?  Things get worse!  That’s what happens.  Joe goes from slavery to prison, and it looks like all is lost as he is even forgotten there by his friends.  I am sure even he gave up on his own dreams before God raised him up second only to the king.  And then wouldn’t you know it, he saved the whole world from starvation, AND his dreams came true when his brothers came and bowed down to him!

Think too of Gideon.  The thing about his story that is so remarkable is how that he started off a coward, but even after he was convinced by God to raise and army and fight, God made him whittle down the size of it to just 300 men.

And can you see why?  It’s a mistake to think that David was just that great a warrior or that Joseph was just that lucky or that Gideon was just that ironic.  If you read these stories and the dozens upon dozens of others like them in the Bible and think like that, then you are missing the picture.  Look again at how St. Paul, who I am sure preached these stories to the church in Corinth before so that by the time he writes them he can allude to the lesson it was all meant to reveal: Divine-A-Might comes in small packages so that God can have the glory when his mysterious work explodes in your imagination finally!

Did you ever see the “What’s Your Excuse?” poster in the Christian bookstore?  You know, the one that says:

Jacob was a cheater;

Peter had a temper;

David had an affair;

Noah got drunk;

Jonah ran from God;

Paul was a murderer;

Thomas was a doubter;

Elijah was moody;

Moses stuttered;

Zaccheus was short;

Abraham was old

and Lazarus was dead.

Now, what’s YOUR excuse?

Great message, don’t you think?

Do you remember Shiphrah and Puah?  Probably not, but go check out their story in Exodus 1.  When Israel faced a genocidal king, these midwives were the tip of the spear of heaven’s special ops!

Really!  Midwives helping mammas give birth!  Heaven’s Special Forces!  You read it right.

Here’s the thing: Those who partake in God’s greatness are always the long shot, and generally just as surprised by their successes, their victories, their resurrections as the watching world.  And Paul wants his proud church in Corinth to know this standard feature of God’s great acts in the world so that they get on board.  They need not think too much of themselves, but rather be humble and watch for God to work wonders in their midst that will shock them and all who see them once they are humbled.

I think my church needs this word today.  And I think my friends in low places out on the streets need it too.

Yeah, my friends in high places may be missing out on God’s movement in our town because they boast in themselves, and my friends on the streets may be missing out because they have become convinced that the proud church has Jesus all bagged up and there ain’t no way God would ever use them.

I have a church that raises millions of dollars for all kinds of good causes, but how do they do it?  Well, there are the weekly contributions of course.  They host fundraisers for everything too!  You know, bring in the special guest speaker, sell tickets and have a banquet….  And with a handful of doctors, lawyers, engineers, bankers, and pharmacists making the contributions, you can see how it is that we afford such a large plot of land over on the “nice” side of town, how we afford such a large sanctuary with a fifty foot steeple and stained glass to match!  It has a fine banquet hall and kitchen, plush offices, perfect climate control, and matching drapes.  I should mention the manicured lawns, and the prayer garden too.  There is hardly a detail missed!  You would think with this kind of greatness, the whole world would be saved for Jesus by now!

And I don’t begrudge well-to-do Christians creating beautiful buildings in beautiful places in which to honor God.  Really I don’t.  (Though I wonder why they don’t build them in the poor part of town, host the poor in them purposely – compelling them in to the party of God.)

But I definitely want both my church and my street friends to know, to really contemplate and meditate on the fact that Divine-A-Might comes in small packages!  It is no mistake that Jesus is born to a homeless couple that place God’s anointed King of kings and Lord of lords in a manger to sleep and invite foreigners to be his couriers and lowly shepherds to be his attendants at his birth.  It is no mistake that this homeless prophet takes his crown on a Roman cross amid the jeers and scorn of all the powerbrokers who cannot see and hear what God is doing right under their noses.  All of this happens so that God will be glorified in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection!

And so if I were looking for God to do a new thing in Lubbock, I wouldn’t be too quick to seek for it in the million dollar sanctuary.  And in fact, the light turnout at the football stadium last spring when all the churches of Lubbock pulled together shows what I am talking about.  Despite all the planning, preparing, and promoting for the BIG EVENT, it just whimpered at half capacity – maybe because a few pastors, rather than God, would look really cool if they had managed it.  But I don’t know that; its just a guess.

On the other hand, if I were looking for God’s BIG THING, I would get as close to some lowly homeless people as I could.  I would expect that God is moving and shaking way down below the radar, back behind the scenes, amid people we would not expect – who wouldn’t expect it themselves!  And I would seek him there in their midst because those poor souls will be so stunned when it happens that they won’t know how to take the credit, and the Divine-A-Might will explode for God’s glory, not ours!