Reasons I am Going Homeless This Wednesday Through Saturday

I have been part of a church small group that is led by my friend Jill Carmichael (who will be joining us on the streets as well) and focuses on social justice issues for a little more than a year now.  In August of last year this small group took a trip to visit The Simple Way located in one of the poorest parts of Philadelphia known as Kensington.  The Simple Way is…well it is hard to explain exactly what The Simple Way is other than to say that is a group of subversive friends that have a heart for social justice.  Shane Claiborne is one of the founders of the group and has called Kensington home for more than 10 years now.  He is also a best-selling author.  Our group read one of his books together and we were interested in learning about how The Simple Way approaches Social Justice.  It was on the ride home from this trip where I mentioned, to Jill, “You know, it would be a good, potentially life-changing, experience to see what it would be like to be homeless.”  Jill, being a social-worker for Friendship Place, immediately responded with, “You know National Coalitionfor the Homeless (NCH) does something called a “homeless challenge” where you do exactly what you have mentioned.  You should try to get this approved as an A1:8 trip.”  A1:8 based off of Acts 1:8 and summarized by National Community Church as: “Ordinary people, empowered by God’s spirit, doing what Jesus did, together, wherever they are” is the title for their missions programs.  I did not have to think more than a second at Jill’s chiding.  The next day I was pushing my pastor about doing the trip.

I have several reasons for wanting to do this trip.  Personally, the more I study scripture as a Christian the more I see Christ as a social revolutionary who was relational and had a heart and passion for the poor as well as someone that welcomed interruptions to his daily routine.  Oddly, I have called myself a Christian for more than 20 years, but only in the past couple years would I say that I have seen, or at least gotten glimpses of who the real Jesus is.

I see myself as someone unique in that I am pretty much a classical type A personality and an introvert at the same time.  I am not all that comfortable initiating relationships—I run from most of them.  Also, I am someone who is very task-oriented and who really dislikes being interrupted from my tasks.  These are two personality characteristics that I do not see at all in Christ.  I see the Homeless Challenge as a huge interruption to my daily routine as well as a huge opportunity for initiating relationships with homeless people in my own city—a chance to develop qualities I see in Christ that I lack in myself.

Also, our church is incredibly missional, locally, nationally and internationally.  I believe our faith community can be much more involved than we are locally though.  However, if I make a statement like that, than the finger-pointing needs to be at myself.  My hope is that this trip will be something that our church does every year.  Perhaps, together with NCH, Street Sense, Mariam’s Kitchen, Loaves and Fishes and every other NGO working with the homeless in our city we can put ourselves out of business!  What can I say…I wear a bracelet that our lead pastor had made that reads: “Dream Big, Pray Hard, Think Long.”