Tonight I went to a training meeting for the Tarrant County Survey and Street Count that I’ve mentioned before. It was a pretty basic affair, introducing the survey and some common courtesy tips. DON’T shine your flashlight in a homeless person’s face. DO let them decide how much and what they want to answer. DON’T poke the sleeping homeless person. (Yes, the trainer said someone had actually asked about doing that before.) I was a bit slow about going, but it was refreshing to talk with others very passionate about helping people, even if we might have some different ideas on how to do that.
One reason I think it was important for me to go tonight is that neither I nor my community of faith was running the show. It sounds pretty unremarkable, right? But how often do conservative evangelicals do that? How often do we insist it before our kind of event before we participate?
I’m not trying to through blanket guilt out there. Each person is different and not all events are created equally. I can’t encourage events that implicitly deny my faith. But the reality is that many events out there aren’t like that. We can get caught in a rut though that wont risk being involved with any other groups just in case there is something hidden we don’t know about.
It reminds me of Paul stopping to talk with the philosophers in Greece. He showed up at their discussion forum and put his two cents in. Not everyone was happy with what he contributed, but a lot of people felt love and saw hope because he was there at a place good Jews probably weren’t supposed to be.
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Wednesday January.24.2007 at 11:57 pm PST
Dave
Parke,
I helped for a couple of hours today with a the same count here in Pasadena. Ended up walking around for a couple of hours in a residential area without much action, but it was still a cool thing to participate in.
I hear you on event running. I’ve been thinking about that a lot even in inter-church dialogues. It’s really tough to get a church to support something that another church is doing. We have really set ourselves up a great system of silo’s that makes it a bear to work together…good thoughts!
Thursday January.25.2007 at 8:10 am PST
Jake
I think you are very right in that. I think a lot of young people ave that same problem. We see needs and have passion to help, but rarely take the time to see if anyone else is already working on it. Maybe thats because we think if we haven’t heard of them and the need still exists, they aren’t doing he job. Thanks for being unifying.
Thursday January.25.2007 at 9:36 am PST
Jake
i’ve been realizing that importance a lot lately.
A couple examples…. instead of making up my own international events for students on campus, i’ve just decided to direct people to doing stuff through the international center on campus and the international friends ministry….they totally focus on international students, so why start something new?
Also, I’ve been wanting to get more involved in the community, so I started going to some visioning meetings, in hopes of communicating some of the needs I’ve been thinking about. And boy was I surprised by what is already in the works!
Anyway, thanks for talking about this! I visited ya’lls website yesterday and it seems like things are going well down there…. :)
Thursday January.25.2007 at 9:36 am PST
tiffany
whoops, that was me, tiffany (above).
Thursday January.25.2007 at 10:23 am PST
Parke
Thanks for the kind words folks. I have to say that it is a messy thing once you step into it. I’m still not sure where the next steps lead as I hear talk of Arlington’s 10 year program to help the homeless that this should feed into. I know that plan won’t include sharing faith openly and it won’t always recognize the very deep and real spiritual component to these issues. That’s sad and a reality I’ll have to deal with.
Sunday January.28.2007 at 1:37 am PST
Parke
Just a quick follow-up, the event went very well and I met a number of great people. It was sort of strange walking through abandoned lots and wooded areas with a police officer and two total strangers, but I learned a lot about the city and the people who live here. Thankfully we didn’t see many people, which hopefully means many are in the emergency shelters.