First things first. I’m writing this for my own benefit, so that I will be able to look back and remember all of these stories in order to encourage myself during times of life where I don’t feel God’s calling or presence so abundantly. If, in the process, this can be helpful to someone else, then that would be great. If they are a waste of your time, then my bad.
I don’t intend this to be all about how great I am or how great the work that I got to participate in this week was. I don’t intend this to act as some sort of “proof” of God to those who do not believe. I have no desire to prove any points or suggest that what took place is the best way to do things or act like I/we had it all together. I just want to write these stories down. You can draw your own conclusions about God, service, how helpful we were, or how great/terrible I am for doing anything that I did. I’ll leave it up to you.
Finally, this is pretty long, so you might want to read parts of it at a time. I’ve tried to title the different parts to make it easier for you to pick up where you leave off.
No more disclaimers, on to the stories:
Holliday Season, 2013
I spent most of my time at home during the holidays questioning what my calling is. I’ve been at the same job now for almost 7 years and I’ve been doing full-time youth ministry for almost 9 years. Ministry tends to burn people out from time to time. I’ve been burnt out before, but the entire fall season of 2013 was one of those times for me. I’m 31 years old now and I have a wife and three kids. I’ve watched our teenagers be more interested in hanging out with our younger volunteers than they are with me and so I’ve been questioning if it’s time to move on to some other form of ministry, or even a job outside of full-time ministry.
Usually when I start to question my calling, I talk about it with people I trust. While I was in Ohio, I spoke with three very important women in my life: Megan, my mom, and my grandma. They helped me talk through my questions and concerns. I also prayed a lot about these questions.
Coming back from Ohio, I did not have answers to my questions, but shortly after getting back home, I prayed a few more times and spoke with a couple friends down here about my feelings. Finally, I settled on the idea that I didn’t necessarily need to change my career or job, but I needed to make changes to my weekly routine in my current setting. So last week, I decided that I was going to start praying for God to open up opportunities for me to get out of the office and into the lives of others in our community. Megan and I agreed that I would begin making student’s extra-curricular events more of a priority this semester. We agreed that I will spend certain evenings taking individuals out to dinner or for coffee. We agreed that I would work on connecting with people at other churches and organizations in the community in order to get more involved with people outside of our church walls. Little did I know what God was planning this week to look like…
Monday, January 6th, 2014
I saw a post on Facebook in the morning from Katie Brooks. She had shared a status from Lindsey Glenn of an emergency shelter that Lindsey helped establish in Nashville to take in homeless people during the extreme cold weather that had hit. Katie expressed how she would love if we could do something similar in Spartanburg since the weather was going to be in single digits.
After going to SECH for my weekly staff meeting, I met Brad Brooks at Chic-fil-a in Duncan and we went together to “Come Closer Spartanburg”, which is a meeting of ministry leaders in our community that is designed to bring churches together in order to tackle some of the major problems in our city. The meeting was being held at Restoration Church.
The first person we met was a guy named Chris. We quickly learned that Chris was the lead pastor of The Journey Church in downtown Spartanburg and he was also the leader of our meeting that day.
After Chris moved on to meet someone else, Brad and I began to talk about Katie’s post and he asked me what I thought the chances were that we could get something like that set up. We began exploring the idea when we were interrupted by a lady who introduced herself as a worker for an organization that works to take in homeless families and help them get back on their feet and into a place they can afford.
Brad and I quickly looked at each other, wide-eyed, thinking there’s no way that could have been coincidence. We shared with her our idea and she strongly encouraged us to follow through with it. After she walked away, we agreed to at least pursue the idea further.
We then met another very nice man who didn’t tell us where he was from. Later on, as we sat down to eat, the lead pastor from Restoration Church sat at our table and started up a conversation. He told us that his church was currently working with Spartanburg County to set up an emergency shelter for the night. After laughing in amazement, Brad told him we were just talking about doing that at our church. He told us to do it because they anticipated many of the local shelters would be full. Then he told us we should talk with someone about the idea. He looked around and pointed to the guy who was sitting a table over from us. It was the nice man who we met previously who did not tell us what he did. He, apparently, works with homeless people as well.
So I stopped eating and stepped out of the meeting and called one of our elders at church to ask permission to use the building. That elder said he thought it was a great idea but wanted to run it by the other elders and our senior minister at the funeral he was on his way to. I was going to the same funeral, so we agreed to talk about it afterward.
I got the go-ahead from our senior minister around 3 PM. I immediately called Brad and we put a plan together for how to get the word out to both our members and to the homeless community that we were opening a shelter. We agreed to open the doors at 6 PM… just three hours later.
I called my wife and she called just about everyone in the world. Brad called his wife and she called everyone else in the world. We posted all sorts of information on Facebook. We got a police officer friend of ours to email the sherif’s department so that every police officer on duty that night would know to bring people to us if they picked anyone up. We got two local news stations to broadcast our information across the bottom ticker. We got several radio stations to mention what we were doing.
I called my sister-in-law to ask if they could help at all. She acted stunned and told me that she had just finished praying for God to make sure all the homeless people had a warm place to stay that night since the temperature was supposed to drop.
By 6 PM, I showed up with my entire car full of supplies and food that people had brought to my house to donate. I had blankets, air mattresses, pillows, sleeping bags, canned food, gloves, coats, socks, pants, and hats. When I arrived, there were already many other supplies stacked halfway to the ceiling in the lobby of our annex building at church. This all took place in THREE HOURS… from the time we started contacting people to the time we arrived, people at our church stopped everything they were doing in order to collect and drop off food and supplies.
Throughout the evening, people showed up with soup, chili, pizza, muffins, breakfast sandwiches, coffee and creamer, soda, bottled water, soap, wash clothes, and I’m sure many other things.
While we prepared the bed, Brad and Cindy, a friend of ours from church, went out looking for people in key locations around our town where homeless people are known to hang out. We even stopped by Miracle Hill and let them know that if their shelter filled up, they could contact us for overflow.
Then we sat….
Several hours went by and the only report we heard from Brad was that they found several people but all of them turned us down. It was very confusing.
Eventually, we found three people willing to come stay the night. They got to our building and we fed them and put on the College Football Championship Game in the youth room. Right as I was settling into the game, Grant and Cindy asked me if I wanted to go out and look for more people. I almost resisted, but then I remembered that I was not there to watch a game… so we went out.
We went by the hospital ER and found a guy who refused to come with us. We went all over the north side of Spartanburg and found nobody. We eventually came up on a man who clearly had no place to stay that night. We invited him to come with us but he turned us down. Cindy, who has personal experience with homeless people, told us that they don’t trust us. She said they have been taken advantage of so often that they don’t believe that we are actually going to give them a place to stay that night. I was very sad to hear that, so I just started praying for them.
We began heading back up North Church Street to get to the building when we passed a guy who was walking very fast down the sidewalk. We pulled over and asked if he had a warm place to stay that night. He said he did but he was heading to the gas station because his car ran out of gas. We asked if he needed a ride and he said ok. Once he got in the car, I expected him to give me a sob story and ask for money to get food and gas. He immediately told us his story. He was getting off work when his wife asked if he could go pick him up some chicken at Church’s Chicken. As he was on his way, he ran out of gas, so now he had to get gas, then get to Church’s, and then get home to his wife. Then he asked us to pull into Church’s so he could get the chicken before they closed.
Things were working out exactly how I expected. We got the story, now he was going to ask us to buy the chicken and then the gas. He went in, placed the order, and then came back out. He said they had to get his order for him but to go ahead and head on down to the gas station. Once we got there, he asked Grant to pump a couple dollars of gas into his can. Grant said ok, so they both got out of the car. As Grant reached for his wallat, the man quickly walked in, paid for the gas and came back out. Turns out, he wasn’t asking us for money, he just wanted Grant to pump it while he paid.
Once we got in the car, we went to where his car was pulled over and he thanked us profusely and even told me if I went to the mechanic where he worked, he would give me a huge discount on any type of car repair that I needed. Then he was off. As we drove back to the church, I couldn’t help but feel guilty for the assumption I had placed on that man. He was a great guy who was in need of a ride and nothing else. He didn’t try to take advantage of us or get more money from us or anything.
Back at the building, our three guests were already in bed, so I watched the rest of the championship game with Grant, Brandon and Brad and then fell asleep on the couch in the youth room.
Tuesday, January 7th, 2014
When I woke up at 7 AM, I walked to the lobby of our annex to find another member of our church who saw our posts on Facebook when she got off work from the late shift and decided to come straight to the building with eggs, bacon and pancake mix. It was very encouraging to see someone respond without even asking anyone if she should do it or not. She just saw what was going on, wanted to help, found a way to help, and did it. So cool!
Brad and I got in the car and drove around looking to invite people to breakfast. We found a woman and her two kids. They weren’t homeless, but they WERE hungry, so they came with us.
We went back out and found another man walking on the sidewalk with a couple random bags. He was happy to get in the car after we promised a warm breakfast.
We ate with our guests, let them hang out for a little bit, and then took them to where they wanted to go. Before they left, we told them to spread the word that our shelter would be open one more night since the temperature was supposed to stay cold again.
Then I went to work. Brad and Katie started getting volunteers lined up to bring food and show up at 6:30 that night. They were able to get enough help that I didn’t need to come back till around 10 PM. This allowed me to go home for dinner and spend the evening with my wife and kids and assist Megan with putting the kids down for bed. Once they were in bed, I went back to the church building.
The second night, I learned that we had fed around 25 people for dinner and 14 of them were staying the night. By 10, all but two of those people had gone to bed. One man sat at a table reading a book. He did not look homeless. He was clean cut and he had clean clothes on.
I hung out with Steve, Brandon, Brad, Katie and Amber for a long time. We talked about getting a plan in place to make our shelter available whenever the temperature dropped below a certain level (we are currently still working on that plan). I eventually went to sleep, back on the couch in the youth room. I think I got about four hours of sleep that night.
When Brad woke me up at 6, he said everyone was already awake. So I got up, got some coffee, and helped set up breakfast.
I got to meet most of of guests. I met one man who was planning to go to a job interview later that day. He had just come down from Rock Hill and was trying to start a new life in Spartanburg.
I met another lady who had lung cancer and received enough support that she could probably find a place to stay, but she couldn’t afford a place that would let her keep her dog, and she loved her dog too much to give her up just for a place to stay (this info was given to me by someone else, not her).
I met a man who had been homeless for 15 years and was perfectly content with his life of eating at the soup kitchen, hanging out at the library all day, and sleeping wherever he could find a spot to sleep. I learned that he was the social butterfly of the bunch. He knew everyone who was homeless in our county. Apparently, he was the one who spread the word to everyone else that our shelter was open.
I met a man who told me stories about his son when he was a boy. His son is now 25 years old.
Then I met John. He was the one who was cleaner than everyone else and was reading a book the night before. He volunteered to stay after everyone left and help clean up. Then he actually did it. He began wiping down tables. He asked for the vacuum and swept both rooms that we were using. He folded blankets and air mattresses. He helped with the trash. He moved tables and chairs back into place for our Wednesday night Bible study.
As we were finishing up, I said, “I’ve been trying to figure you out all night.”
He laughed, told me I never would be able to figure him out, and then took a seat.
As we talked, he shared with me his story. He suffers from bi-polar disorder. Most of the time, he does great. But every so-often, his disorder causes him to make poor decisions that, over time, have led to lots of consequences.
Then I learned something very interesting about him. He is not homeless. In fact, he has a job and a place to stay. So why on earth would a person with those things come to an emergency homeless shelter?
He began to tell me his story about how he made some bad choices around Thanksgiving that cost him his job. Then he went home to visit family for Thanksgiving and he said God started working on him and he began searching his soul. He was at the library when Brad came by to pick people up. He was invited, so he decided to come.
When I asked why, he said that one of the worst things for him is boredom. Boredom causes him to make very bad choices. He had been at the library that day because his employer had canceled work due to the cold weather. He came to our shelter because he felt like God was telling him to come to the shelter. Then he said that he knew his decision to come to the shelter was the right one when he heard me talking about how I had met his pastor, Chris, from The Journey Church, the day before.
We talked a little more and I encouraged him to come by the office whenever he had nothing to do. As he left, he told me it would not be the last time I saw him.
The most fascinating thing to me about John’s story, is that he expressed how God had just sent him through a period of reflection and he felt like God was calling him to make changes to his life… which is exactly where I am at this point in my life.
Conclusion
I don’t know how to process all of this, but I do know that God was at work to do some great things this week. I hope and pray that the people we served were blessed by us. I trust they were. But I know for a fact that they blessed us.
I almost went to a youth workers conference this week. It didn’t work out for me to go, and I was really bummed because those conferences always help me deal with burn out. I almost had a chance to watch my favorite team play for a national title this week, but they fell one win short of that opportunity.
Had I gone to that conference, I would have missed out on the chance for me to meet some awesome people in our community and serve along side of some great friends. Had Ohio State made the championship game, I would have most definitely spent Monday night in front of my TV in my home instead of on the couch in the youth room and I would have missed out on what God was planning to do for me.
It’s amazing how God works in the lives of all of us at the same time. The chances of us driving by at the exact time that man had run out of gas are improbable. The gas station closed five minutes after we got him his gas. He wouldn’t have made it to the station in time had he been forced to walk all the way there. God was at work.
The chances that my sister-in-law would just happen to think about homeless people and have compassion on them, right before I called, has to be more than just a coincidence. I have to believe God was at work to reassure me that this was his plan.
The love of so many people dropping everything they were doing in order to clear out the lenin closets and pantries and bring them to church on Monday night still overwhelms me. They could have said they were too busy. They could have ignored the Facebook plea. They could have made excuses. Instead, they took action and renewed my hope in God’s people.
God reminded me this week, that he is here. He is at work. And he wants us to be actively open and ready to do his work at a moments notice. God reminded me that he loves us and he is not passively standing by till the end of the world. He is doing great things. The question is, am I willing to let him do great things through me or does he have to go somewhere else to do them?
All of this happening is great and there are many lessons to learn from it. If you are still reading, maybe you can help me find lessons that I haven’t even been able to see. Maybe you can help me see other ways that God was working in these stories and point them out to me so that I won’t miss them. Feel free to comment on this story and let me know your thoughts.
JD Morris 