Rev Downtown

You can't make this stuff up ...

2012-01-13T11:21:00.000-08:00

From time to time, I've wondered about making a movie or a TV show about the Downtown East Side. (There was a time, earlier in my life -- about 35 years ago -- when I actually harbored thoughts of being an actor and writer: I got enough paying gigs to make me realize the idea was possible ... but not probable.) The show would be called "Rev. Downtown" (my legion of fan would recognize that as the title of this blog) and it would paint a picture of the DTES as I've seen it over the 8 years that I've been there -- gritty and unpredictable but with the undercurrent of Hope that runs through what we do at Gospel Mission and The Lord's Rain. As I've tried to express over the years, it's not all bad news -- not even close -- despite the image projected by activists and the media.

But what would the script look like? And who would play the characters? It would be a tour de force for an ensemble of character actors: improvising their parts without stereotyping or ridiculing anyone. Maybe Sean Penn (if he can take time out from making politically-correct "statement" movies), Matt Damon, Philip Seymour Hoffman and maybe Donald Sutherland and Graham Greene. And if you tried to write a script, a producer would send it back with orders to come up with something "real".

(Interestingly, that's one of the reasons why I believe the Bible is the Word of God and not (as Peter put it) some cunningly-devised fable: what human could devise it? The more I'd read it, the more I'd hear, "you can't make this stuff up". But I digress.)

Take, for example, the conversations I had at The Lord's Rain on Tuesday morning -- two conversations at the same time. I've joked on occasion that you don't have to be ADD to work at The Lord's Rain, but it helps. Often, someone will start talking to you regardless of whether you're already talking to someone else, so you usually have to tune one ear to the new conversation long enough to analyze whether it's something that can be put on hold until you've finished the current conversation or something vitally important that needs to be dealt with right away.

Compounding the situation this past Tuesday was the fact that the quarterly HST rebates were distributed the day before. (For those of you not in Canada, the government sends an amount each quarter to people on low incomes to compensate (at least in part) for their having to pay the Harmonized Sales Tax.) The rebates are a great idea in theory, but on the DTES, it means more money available to spend on drugs, and by gad, that's what they did on Monday. On Tuesday morning, many of the people were showing the effects and I was caught between two conversations with a newcomer named Vance and Dale, a man I've known since my start at Rainbow Mission in 2004.

Vance was notable for his scrupulous good manners, asking politely and thanking us for coffee, a drink of water, a refill ... but he had also been sitting by himself, deep in conversation with an unseen interlocutor, and occasionally gesturing very broadly -- almost violently. Dale had sat down next to him and he and I started talking about prayer. That's where Vance chimed in, excusing himself for stepping into the conversation.

But Vance's conversation was only semi-coherent, bouncing from one thought to the next like a flea on a hotplate. (My late mother, an actor, was once cast to play a pilot who'd suffered a brain injury in a plane crash. The sentences did not connect one word to the next, and for someone who used mnemonics -- mental images -- to memorize her lines, the challenge of learning this script was enormous. She literally had to memorize them word by word.) There was a common thread through his talking, however: demons and evil spirits. He talked about Jesus with bright shafts of light coming from His face, his own Aztec spiritual ancestry, standing toe-to-toe with the demon Pestilence -- and imitating Pestilence with a stance and facial contortions that made me feel like I was looking at Mr. P right there. Vance also talked about Leviathan (another demon), the Holy Spirit, bright lights and colors and a lot of other things I can't remember.

I sat there -- not frightened -- but fascinated. Interestingly, his talk about the spirit world did not go into things like the New World Order or other worldwide conspiracy theories (others talk about those). It was all about demons and spirits. Had he been part of a cult? Does he walk around constantly thinking these things, or do those thoughts come only when he's on drugs? (And I daresay, it's at moments like that, that I'm praying someone is on drugs! I'm only half-joking.)

All through this, Dale was continuing his conversation. Dale's mind was fried long ago by the lethal combination of mental illness and crack cocaine. He primarily follows a single theme: "I'm alright, aren't I?" He talks very loud and sometimes very fast -- the volume and the speed generally depend on whether he's affected by the street drugs or his own "head" medication has taken effect. At Rainbow Mission, he took great joy in wiping down the pews after the service. "Will you anoint my head with oil," he once asked me, "so I can wipe down the pews and not bring any evil to them?"

I thought I saw signs he was actually improving, but after Rainbow closed at the end of 2006, I didn't see much of him and when he did turn up at Gospel Mission he was in worse shape ... and the descent hasn't really let up. "I'm alright, aren't I? I'm gonna be OK, right? They say they're trying to help me but they don't, you know, they don't ..." (I'm not sure who "they" are: social workers, perhaps, or public health nurses? They probably do their best, but with limited resources, they can only do so much. Try telling that to the patients, though.)

"... I pray, you know," he went on, "... I hold my Bible every night ..."

"Do you read it?" I asked. "Just holding it won't do you any good."

"I should read it more, shouldn't I? I read the Psalms. I should read the Bible more, you're right."

"The Psalms are a good start," I replied. "Build on that."

"Yeah, I can build on that. I read the Psalms years ago. I should read it more, shouldn't I?"

Dale desperately needs validation of his life. Even trying to elicit some kind of criticism for not reading his Bible more reminds him that he's still alive and can still draw closer to God. That is, in fact, a common factor among so many of those on the DTES. That's a big reason why they come into The Lord's Rain: it's become a source of Hope -- that intangible reason for carrying on -- that is in such short supply in the area. And you know what? While it's good that we have staff and supporters who approach people with love and openness, the people themselves have made it what it is.

I think it's because of that, that some situations get resolved when they might have turned ugly. A couple of weeks ago, Danilo and one of the 'regulars' (Joe is his name) got into an argument over something to do with the coffee. The argument escalated to a veiled threat to "take it outside". Joe left ... Danilo was upset that he'd nearly lost control ... John was upset that someone gave Danilo "attitude" over the coffee ... A week later, Joe came in and apologized to Danilo. Danilo apologized for his role in it. End of discussion.

Incidents like that are a good indicator of the success of The Lord's Rain: that people are able to make up after a near dust-up. It's encouraging, and you know something? People need validation -- and sometimes, so do we.

Jesus, shelters and the law

2012-01-03T14:04:00.000-08:00

There's a reason why there is a Commandment not to take the Lord's Name in vain, and it's less about cursing than it is about trying to take a religious "upper hand" in an argument. If you're going to approach something from the "what would Jesus do?" standpoint, better make sure you have a Scriptural basis for that.

A letter in the Vancouver Courier steps into that rather dangerous ground, in the controversy over the pending closure of the First United Church shelter for the homeless. I'm not sufficiently familiar with the issue to comment on it specifically, but the letter, with its use of pseudo-religious buzz-words like "Pharisee", indicates the dichotomy between what is "good" and what is "Godly".

The letter-writer seems to be of the opinion that, because Jesus calls on us to help the poor, the laws of the land should take a back seat. But that leads to the question, "Would Jesus break the law?"

Answer: no, He wouldn't. And He didn't. Pontius Pilate himself declared, "I find no fault in this man," and the charges for which Jesus was crucified were trumped-up and "confirmed" by false witnesses. Doesn't Jesus tell us to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's"? He's not just talking about paying taxes: He's talking about obeying the laws. (When Paul called on us to obey the laws of the land, he was being persecuted by Nero. If he can do it under one of the most brutal, oppressive tyrants ever, we can follow a fire code.)

The fact is, with Jesus on your side, you can help the poor and oppressed and stay within the law. If it requires resources, He will provide them; if it requires an expert on certain issues, like fire regulations or (in the case of Gospel Mission) FoodSafe, that expert will be put in your path.

It's important to remember, too, that -- unlike the charges against Jesus -- fire-code and other regulations are not trumped-up. They're there to protect people -- people in the building itself and those in buildings nearby that might be damaged should a fire break out. Are those people less deserving of the protection of those regulations, simply because a particular building is being used for a "higher calling"? Are the homeless less deserving of fire-code protection, themselves?

And it's worth noting that many of the people living on the Downtown East Side have been devoid of boundaries in their lives, but once boundaries are applied -- even something as seemingly minor as the number of Cobs buns they may have at The Lord's Rain -- they (generally) accept them readily. How would it look if we who try to minister to them try to circumvent the boundaries and (worse) try to rationalize them "in Jesus' Name"?

Many years ago when I was in radio in Victoria, a special-interest group sent out a communique just before Christmas stating that it had poisoned some of the turkeys in a particular grocery chain. The chain immediately pulled all the turkeys off the shelves and offered refunds to anyone who'd already bought a bird. Someone called the station to suggest that, rather than waste all the food, the turkeys should be given to the poor. Well-meaning, perhaps, but a little unclear on the concept: so what's the difference between that argument and the suggestion that one should wink at bylaws and fire codes because of the "higher purpose"?

Now, if one wants to make an argument that homeless shelters should have relaxed standards or be exempt from certain codes, that could be grounds for a valid discussion. But don't try to make it Holy and Godly by adding "in Jesus' Name" to the discussion. That can be dangerous on oh-so-many levels.

Acceptable?

2011-10-12T14:15:00.000-07:00

According to the author, editor and humorist Bennett Cerf, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia would spend one day a month (I think it was) presiding over Magistrate's Court in his city. As Mayor, he was Chief Magistrate, and took that part of the job seriously. One day, a woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She confessed, saying she had no other way to feed her family. He fined her $50, then suspended the sentence and found everyone else in the courtroom guilty of "living in a city where a woman has to steal to feed her family". Each person was fined $10 and the sheriff was ordered to take up the collection on the spot. Then he turned the money over to the woman.

As I arrived at The Lord's Rain Tuesday morning, I passed an old man sitting on a street-level window ledge. His eyes were closed and he was at least half asleep. He's a fixture in the area: a man who calls himself a Pastor and putters around the Downtown East Side, usually with a walker, proclaiming Jesus to anyone who'll listen. Sometimes he has a roof over his head; sometimes not. It appears this was one of those "not" nights.

Another frequent visitor at The Lord's Rain is a man named Bill. He's well into his 60s and spends his days pushing a shopping cart around the city -- I sometimes see him in the West End, which is a considerable distance from the DTES -- collecting bottles. "Good morning, Father," he says when he comes in for his coffee. (I'm not a Catholic priest, but that's his way of addressing a leader in a religious setting, so that's OK with me.) Bill has the most gentle spirit and has astounded doctors by bouncing back from a lung infection about a year and a half ago that the doctors were certain was going to kill him.

Last month, I was in Toronto, and stepped on the subway one time to find the too-familiar aroma of stale urine. It was coming from a man who was sound asleep, folded up in one of the seats. People in the same carriage seemed to look past, around or through him: but never at him.

WHY IS THIS ACCEPTABLE?

Why is it acceptable that men in their 60s and 70s, with long lives behind them -- and who maybe made a couple of mistakes here and there that proved costly in the long run -- have to collect bottles and cans and sleep in doorways, waiting for a free-coffee place to open up? Why is it acceptable for a man to sit in his own urine-reeked clothes on a subway while people try to imagine he's not there? Why is it acceptable for people to have to urinate and defecate in alleys while the leaders of the city -- one of the "World's Most Livable" and "Greenest" cities -- dither over how to provide public facilities for them? (Even to the extent of suggesting it's the responsibility of the transit authority, for the luvva Mike!)

And yet evidently it must be for some people, because the situation persists and even seems to get worse. Ignoring them and figuring someone else can help people has hardly been a resounding success; remember what Jesus said: "what you do to the least of these, you do to Me."

That would include ignoring them. Ignoring these people is tantamount to ignoring Jesus.

Selah.

And lest you think that rising up and saying THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE! involves some mammoth undertaking, consider the guy on the Toronto subway. As we got near my stop, I knelt down beside him and roused him to see if he was OK. He said he was. Then I told him I was praying for him. "It's all I can do," I said. I was almost ashamed to say it, but he looked up and smiled and said, "Thanks, man."

I don't know why I was ashamed: probably because I didn't have a magic wand and didn't know where to take him to bathe and get a fresh change of clothes (in Vancouver, I would have taken him to The Lord's Rain). But really, prayer is the most effective tool we have when used as directed. And the sense that someone cares enough even to say, "hello in there" can plant a seed of hope that can grow more than we could ever ask or think.

InSite - reminding us of the job at hand

2011-10-02T09:58:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that InSite -- the "supervised" drug injection facility on the Downtown East Side -- should continue to receive public funds on the grounds that drug addicts have the "right" to shoot up in a healthy environment.

Once again in this country, "rights" has trumped "right". InSite has been around for eight years, and despite its claims to having reduced the infection rate of HIV/AIDS, there are some inescapable facts:

people are still doing drugs, many of them openly on the streets or in alleys
there is still a "market" for drugs, because those coming into InSite had to have acquired them from someplace
women are still selling their bodies for drug money and often getting killed in the process
street crime has grown worse over that time
gang activity -- fuelled by the drug trade -- has also grown worse over that time
police are increasingly frustrated at not being able to enforce the laws that are supposed to protect people (get a cop talking about InSite and you'll see a completely different picture than the one put forward by the proponents)

Certainly, the idea that someone should be able to inject drugs with a clean needle in a more-or-less sterile environment is "good", but as we so often see, "good" is the enemy of "best". As you'll see from the Province article, the federal government argued eloquently about the mixed messages InSite sends. We try to tell people that it's bad to do drugs, then we turn around and enable it. The subliminal message from society -- as represented by certain "experts" and various levels of the court system -- is, "we really don't care if you go through life as a drugged-out zombie: that's your 'choice' and we won't take that away from you".

This just in: drugs have already taken away that freedom. You look at someone groping around the streets and alleys, looking for a grain of crack cocaine to smoke, fumbling to find a vein with a needle, or sidling up to someone passing through with the "I-just-got-a-job-in-Fort-McMurray-but-I-need-to-get-enough-money-for-the-bus" line and tell me how capable they are of making a wise "choice".

This is all in the name of "harm reduction", and as I've said before, Jesus is not into harm reduction: He's into harm elimination. The law of His time on earth banished the "woman with the issue of blood" in the name of harm reduction. Jesus turned around and healed her. Same with lepers and demonized people. So much of the Downtown East Side resembles a leper colony or Samaria. But the healing has to begin with the hope that healing is possible. The woman with the issue wouldn't have put her life on the line -- literally -- to touch the hem of Jesus' garment if she didn't have a glimmer of hope that it would work when spending her life savings on medical treatment had failed. Statements like the remark by then mayor Sam Sullivan to the effect that, while addicts want to be clean, he'd like to get up and walk out of his wheelchair, but that's not going to happen either (emphasis mine), serve to stomp that hope into ashes.

But wailing and gnashing teeth that the law is an ass won't do. The ruling simply strengthens our resolve to continue preaching the Gospel -- and with it, Hope -- to the people we serve on the Downtown East Side. Let them know that a life without drugs, poverty and despair is not some vague promise in a book, but something mandated of God and, in fact, attainable. Drugs, poverty and despair are not really the problems -- in fact, as a student from Columbia Bible College pointed out recently at the Mission, for many people, they're the solution. The problems that lead to that solution are deeper issues that only God, through Jesus Christ, can identify, expose and heal, and they involve turning to Him and letting Him do His thing. That way, people on the DTES can become a generation of Overcomers, which could be far more dangerous to The Man than a neighbourhood full of addicts.

Now that I think of it and run it through the filter of seeking God and His glory in all things, the court ruling isn't so bad, at that. It reminds us that The Man -- the legal system, social-service programs and health-care "professionals" -- cannot be relied on to save people. Only God can do that -- just as Jesus told Martha after her brother Lazarus had died, "you will see the Father glorified". So while there is still daylight, we have to keep working hard to remind people that God can be glorified in any situation -- even (or especially) in the midst of Canada's Worst Postal Code.

From The Lord's Rain - "This is the Day ..."

2011-09-13T05:53:00.000-07:00

Those of you who have been following this saga from the beginning probably know that one of the challenges has been to find a niche for Ladies' Day. It was actually put on Brodie Collins' heart -- he who did the plumbing for the project -- just as we were opening: that many women might not be comfortable showering or hanging out with a bunch of men nearby. So we decided to set aside such a time.

But what time? We began with Friday nights; that had limited success, partly because not many people want to shower-up at 7:00 in the evening and partly because another Lord's Rain opening started up earlier in the afternoon. So we kept trying new times, and it's always been difficult getting people to volunteer for an early-morning opening. Ladies' Day, therefore, became something of a moving target as we tried to find the right formula.

Then, this past spring, with Ladies' Day sitting in the Tuesday 9-Noon slot, our friend Randall pointed out that one reason why it was no more successful there was because people were lining up for lunches at some of the other agencies around the Downtown East Side -- and when it came to the choice between a shower and lunch, you can understand which won out. At that point, Janet declared that she was willing to give an early morning a shot and so, we moved Ladies' Day yet again to 7-10am on Mondays.

Monday, we got some evidence that we've hit the "sweet spot". With Janet away on vacation, I went down to open up. Sandy, whom I've known since the Rainbow Mission days in 2004-2006, came to help out, as did Megan, a new volunteer, who lives at the Rainier Hotel, a few doors away on Carrall Street. It's a single-room-occupancy (SRO) hotel, which caters primarily to women. Diane Brown, who works on Wednesday mornings, had met Megan a couple of weeks ago and invited her to come in: Megan asked if she could volunteer.

Megan seems like someone with a wellspring of gifts and ideas, who has -- for one reason or another -- never had a chance to give them an outlet. Drugs, mental illness, abusive past, you name it: anything can keep a lid on someone's self-esteem and make them keep their gifts to themselves and all have played a role in Megan's life. We'll get to know her more in the days to come. But one thing is certain: she's enthusiastic about bringing something to the Mission.

One of those is in "talking up" The Lord's Rain. She's been making little flyers to hand out at some of the social service agencies and telling the women in The Rainier about The Lord's Rain and Ladies' Day in particular. Already, it's starting to bear fruit.

This morning, a woman I hadn't seen before came in, using a walker. Ethel is native, 63, and in a lot of pain from the effects of arthritis and diabetes. She's also trying to kick a drug habit. "One of the women at the Rainier sent me over," she said. That would be Megan. Ethel was going for an interview to get into Ellendale, a recovery program in Surrey -- the kind where you allow yourself to be locked away for six months. But she was hungry, needed coffee, and needed to rest her feet.

One of the "meaning to get" things on my list has been a proper footbath, but I managed to rustle up a plastic bin and some foaming bath gel and ran warm water into it. Ethel plunged her gnarled, callused feet into the suds and the relief that came over her face was indescribable.

(The Health Contact Centre, which closed last year when a private not-for-profit agency took over some of its services, was noted for its footbaths, and people on the DTES haven't been able to find such a thing since; at the time, it was noted that the word "contact" was very important in the title: a vital face-to-face connection that you don't get in mainstream health clinics.)

"This is truly a house of the Lord!" she exclaimed. "I can feel His presence here!" Sandy and I prayed over Ethel for her to have favor in the interview and healing for all things, known and unknown.

Then Megan came in, followed by another woman. Kathy is her name, and she had been divorced from her first husband, then widowed by her second, who was a Pentecostal pastor. Now here she was on the Downtown East Side. There's a story there, and eventually, I imagine we'll hear about it.

"Let's pray for Ethel that she gets in at Ellendale!" Megan said.

"We already did pray for her," I said, and immediately heard the Lord say, "Fool! Don't stop her from praying!"

By some miracle, I managed to recover and encourage her to pray before any discouragement set in, and Megan prayed a lovely, heartfelt prayer for Ethel.

"Let's sing," Ethel said. "'This is the day (this is the day)/That the Lord has made (that the Lord has made)/Let us rejoice (let us rejoice)/And be glad in it ....' "

And then they launched into "Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man from Galilee".

And so we drank coffee and ate Cobs Bread buns and talked of everything and nothing and by the time closing time came around, none of us wanted to leave. But the office was calling and Ethel did have to get up to the health clinic. We'll probably hear soon how things went. And there's a definite sense that Ladies' Day took a big step closer to the way it was envisaged from the start.

====

Sock update -- about a year ago, I whimsically made reference to the Vancouver Sock Exchange, with people bringing in used but still wearable socks and swapping them for new ones. On Saturday, Ron, one of our regulars who's a "binner" (makes additional cash by collecting recyclables from garbage bins and taking them to bottle-collection depots and scrap dealers), came in with a large bag of dirty socks. He's been regularly receiving new socks from us, which is understandable, given the need for fresh socks in his line of work. Now, I'm happy to say that he's one of the first who's actually traded in the used ones. "I got another bag of them at home," he told me. Now, that's "giving back"!

When we first started The Lord's Rain, "street foot", a ghastly rot that takes over a person's feet when they go too long in the same dirty socks -- especially if those socks get wet -- was very common. I realized recently that I haven't seen a case of street foot in a long time. I think the awareness of the need for fresh socks -- and people's willingness to meet that need -- has had a lot to do with it.

====

The "Worst" kind of violence?

2011-08-23T12:45:00.000-07:00

A message board outside a church near my place currently (at least, as of Sunday) displays the aphorism, "Poverty is the worst kind of violence".

I've spent the past couple of days muttering, "what the heck does that mean?". It's a little like eating spicy food that still needs salt: something is missing there.

To begin with, the word "violence" generally has some negative connotations, and when I hear a term used like that, it's often in the context that someone else is guilty of it.

But whom are we accusing?

Lest we cudgel our brains into porridge over this, let's remind ourselves that even Jesus, the Son of God, acknowledges that there will always be poverty. That's why one of His commandments to His followers is to take care of the poor. Not eradicate poverty (which is one of those well-meaning, world-based "goals" that seems laudable, but because it's impossible to achieve, can bring a sense of futility and despair when that goal is never reached), but lift the poor out of the mire to make room for and set an example for the others who, inevitably, will slip. Just as God sends storms and illness and other trials to strengthen our faith and increase our reliance on Him; just as He created good and evil, darkness and light, I believe poverty is one of His creations so that those who are not impoverished can carry out that commandment and so that we can all learn how interdependant we are on one another and on God.

So if we make a statement like, "poverty is the worst kind of violence," are we not leveling an accusation at God?

"The poor," Jesus says, "ye shall have always." He never says they'll be the same poor. An area like the Downtown East Side should be a flow-through point, where people come for a time, and then get on with life. Missions like ours exist to get people turned around and back on track. Sadly, the DTES has become less of a thoroughfare and more of a dead end, with bodies and lives piling up.

Rather than look at poverty as being violence, I believe it's an opportunity from God: an opportunity to help and be helped and to see His glory, no matter what. I remember a fellow who came in often to Rainbow Mission (which closed at the end of 2006) and whom I still see from time to time -- Abraham Jones is his name -- and he once gave a testimony: "I thank God that I don't have a roof over my head tonight. I thank God that I don't know where my next meal is coming from. I thank God that I don't have a job." The inference was that he knew he could rely on God through anything and he was grateful for the opportunity; it's easy to glorify Him when things look good, but to do so when things look bad requires a whole lot of faith.

So is poverty "violence"? No. Keeping people in poverty, whether by ignoring them (like the rich dude in Jesus' parable, who ignores the pleas of the beggar Lazarus) or creating institutions that deny them hope and the truth of the Gospel, is closer -- definitely, an offence to God.

The story goes that a newspaper surveyed its readers about 100 years ago with the question, "what is the greatest threat to mankind?" The great author, GK Chesterton, submitted a simple, two-word response: "I am."

Let me turn that on its ear. What is the greatest asset of mankind?

You are.

We are.

Come on in! The water's fine!

2011-07-20T16:09:00.000-07:00

I've said it before: you can look at Vancouver's Downtown East Side the way many activists do, as "Canada's Worst Postal Code," or you can look at it as the "whitest fields for harvest." But as Jesus said in that context, the laborers are few; and while we are to pray that the Lord of the Harvest brings in those laborers, we need to let the potential laborers know about the job. And to be crystal clear, the changes I've seen in people who have come to the Gospel Mission services or the times when The Lord's Rain is open are proof that the harvest is coming in and it's going to keep growing.

One of the really encouraging things is to see people coming to Gospel Mission services after making a "first contact" with us through The Lord's Rain: it's been a way that, as one prophecy stated years ago, Gospel Mission's reach is extending further into the DTES.

Jesus' last words to us on earth -- just before ascending to Heaven -- were: "you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in Judaea, and in Samaria and to the uttermost ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8) It's important to note that Jesus singled out Samaria -- land of the outcasts, where people worshipped strange gods and which was shunned by the people of Jerusalem and Judaea. The DTES is very much like Samaria, and Jesus is telling us that that's exactly where His Gospel needs to be preached. He's also telling us that, as His followers, it's not really an option -- it's our assignment.

Putting it another way, these are God's children, and we can't leave them at the mercy of the "prince of the air". That prince would rather enable them to stay in their current state and convince them that that's all they deserve. That is not God's will for His people: that's why He sent Jesus -- and that's why He sends us to tell them about Jesus.

Through Gospel Mission and The Lord's Rain, we do see this tremendous move of God: a gradual, steady revival, as people overcome their demons and addictions and pull out of that miry clay they've landed in. They find hope in the teachings at the Mission and in the sense at The Lord's Rain that people do care. From the way God has blessed Gospel Mission since 1929 and continued to keep His hand for blessing and support on The Lord's Rain since He planted the idea nearly four years ago, it's evident that this "Word-first" approach is His will.

But it takes laborers, and we have seen recently how much we need more people in this effort. For one thing, because we are all volunteers, discipling people and helping them as they make their breakthrough requires a "tag-team" with other disciples. We have work and family commitments, and sometimes all it takes is a change in those areas to affect the ministry. (Right now, illness, work hours and family crises like dealing with aging parents are all taking a toll.) So a service has to be cancelled; facilities have to stay closed.

Praise God, He has told us that other people are out there, willing to share the burden. We just have to let them know and encourage them to consider this opportunity.

We need teams at Gospel Mission and The Lord's Rain. It would be ideal to have teams serving once a week on a regular basis, but even having teams serving once or twice a month in rotation can ensure more "time slots" are covered. Here are the available times:

GOSPEL MISSION

Monday and Friday nights - services start at 7pm (door opens at 6:30, Worship at 7, door locked at 7:15 out of respect for those who came to hear the Word, message at 7:30 and meal around 8. A team consists of Worship leader, preacher, kitchen staff and cleanup crew. You could do it with 4 people. All we ask is that the teams provide the food and that at least one person in the kitchen either have FoodSafe certification or take a mini-course we put together to give the basics.

LORD'S RAIN

Thursday and Friday early mornings - 7-8:30am, or later if you can. At least two people are needed for this service, which involves making and serving coffee and handing out towels and soap and any clothing we might have. If food is available (or if the team brings some), we provide that, but that's not the primary reason for The Lord's Rain.

Let me offer some encouragement. God consistently calls His people out of their comfort zone. The best example is Abraham, having to pack up and move from the place where he'd been phenomenally successful to a place filled with definitely hostile people. I promise you, the Downtown East Side was NOT my comfort zone when the Lord called me there in 2004; but I soon learned that people there are no more or less fallen than the rest of us (take that any way you like!) and need to know that they are loved and that God has not given up on them. We are called to love the unlovely, and while the initial reaction some of you might have is, "I dunno, it looks pretty dangerous and there's a lot of sketchy-looking people there," I can tell you from personal experience that the water's fine. I've experienced first-hand the way God protects and strengthens His servants.

Here's some more encouragement. The Apostle Paul, who probably didn't see a "comfort zone" since he saddled up to ride into Damascus, got a Word from God while in Corinth. "Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace: for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city." (Acts 18:9-10).

In other words, all you need to do is agree to wade into the water wearing the full armour of God and prepared to speak the Gospel and He will be with you every step of the way. Moreover, you'd be surprised how many other Believers you'll find, just waiting to hear it confirmed from someone else's lips.

So I hope you'll consider this and of course, feel free to call me to find out more. Let your congregation know this opportunity is there for the taking; ask around; post this message; see if there are people who want to serve God in some way and may not even have thought of this. It may be exactly what God has in mind.

If you are interested - either as an individual or can pull a team together - please contact me through the Gospel Mission website -- http://www.gospelmission.net/.

The Lord's Rain at 3

2011-05-03T16:06:00.000-07:00

My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory. (Philippians 4:19)

On Saturday (April 30), we marked our third anniversary of the opening of The Lord's Rain. I remember it well, partly because Amelia and I had just returned from a day trip to Seattle the night before. (The UBC Thunderbirds baseball team was playing an exhibition game against the University of Washington and I was doing the play-by-play for the webcast: my friend, Thor Tolo, and I had to vamp through three long rain delays while Amelia shivered off in one corner. Then we drove back to Vancouver through driving rain and at times sleet. Typical baseball weather, in other words.)

We flung the door open at 7am and waited for the thundering herd to arrive. It didn't. Some people saw we had free coffee and came in, said "cool" and moved on. Finally, a construction worker named Tim Doxlator said he'd take advantage of the service, and then a woman by the street name of "Little One" became the first woman to shower-up there.

On Saturday, we recorded our 1,800th shower.

No matter what you're doing in life, it's good, every so often, to look back on just how far we've come, rather than how far there is to go. Many Christians bent on Leading People To The Lord tend to focus on how much more a person has to do to 'get right with God', which often fogs up the reality that the person in question has probably come an exceptionally long way simply by opening his or her ears to the possibility that there's another way to live. Moses did that with the Israelites as they were about to cross into the Promised Land: reviewed the 40-year journey out of Egypt with the theme that "God has brought us this far, He's not going to drop us now."

As well, the quote from Philippians up there came back to me this morning as I was thinking about the past three years -- 3-1/2, in fact, going back to the day we signed the rental papers and started work. Some years ago, I was meditating on that passage and the Lord said, "look at the word order". The passage does not say, "my God shall supply, according to His riches in glory, all your need." Now -- and this could be like trying to catch a grounder on a gravel field so stay with me here -- "according to," when used in the title of the Gospels, means "as defined by". So what if we considered that passage to mean, "God will supply all your need as defined by His riches in glory"?

In other words, the passage goes from simply meaning, "God ain't broke and if you're faithful He'll take care of you," to "God will define what you need by His riches in glory and then provide for it."

I know - you think I've really lost it: that week in the Florida sunshine did something to my brain. But doesn't Jesus say that our Heavenly Father knows what we need before we ask Him? Often, our problem is that we ask Him for what we think we "need," rather than letting Him define it for us.

Trust me: it works. It certainly did in the case of The Lord's Rain. God defined a need -- also known as putting something on our hearts -- and then provided for it.

The origins of The Lord's Rain actually go back to the 1950s. That was when Jim Bromley bought the two-story brick pile at 325-327-331 Carrall Street, where Gospel Mission had been located on the upper floor since the 40s (when the Mission was founded in 1929 it was kitty-corner on Hastings, next to the late-lamented The Only Seafood Restaurant). I've never met Mr Bromley so I don't know his spiritual background, but he obviously likes us because he's essentially kept the rent as-is since the 70s, if not longer. We've truly been blessed to have such a landlord, and our "silent partner" relationship came into play when we approached Mr Bromley's son, Greg, who now manages the property, with what was, at the time, a "neat idea".

A dozen years or so ago, Gerry Wall, the senior pastor at The Oasis, spoke a prophecy over Barry Babcook. He said that Gospel Mission was going to expand its influence and its reach beyond that "upper room". How that was going to happen and what it was going to look like was not spelled out, but prophecies are like that: they'll give a glimpse of what God has in mind - just enough to make you go "OK, let's see how this plays out," and stay close to God in one's own dealings.

Nearly 10 years ago, with my life going through a period of deconstruction and reconstruction, I went to The Oasis, which is about a 15-minute drive over logging roads outside Duncan, along the Cowichan River.

In fall of 2007, Lee Grady, then editor of Charisma magazine, spoke at Westpointe Christian Centre, where I had been attending for about a year and a half. He asked for people who were doing missionary work to come up and he would speak prophecies over them. I went up with them. His prophecy over me was that God was about to send me on a journey, in which I would receive new and sharper "axe heads" for the work on the Downtown East Side. "Up till now," he said, "your axe has been bouncing off the tree; these will help you start to cut through."

He had no way of knowing I was about to leave for New York.

In New York, I visited the Bowery Mission and saw they provided showers for "street people" three times a week -- one time for women only. That notion floated around in my head -- along with a lot of other things from the trip that indicated the prophecy was coming to pass -- and a couple of weeks after I got back, I told Amelia about the apparent need for a similar program on the Downtown East Side. We had both been struck by the way the guys who came in were filthy -- and wanted to get clean. But without space to install the showers (and the floor of the 1888 building might not take the weight anyway), it was simply a "neat idea".

Except that less than 2 hours later, we learned that one of the ground floor spaces had become vacant.

You probably know the rest of the story, but it bears repeating in bullet form just to remind ourselves:

Greg Bromley agreed to hold off renting the space for 2 weeks so we could work out a plan to fund and build the project. If he hadn't -- a throwback to the good relationship we'd had with him and his father over the previous 50 years -- The Lord's Rain would have remained a "neat idea".
We had started with Zero dollars to go to this project, and agreed that, if God was truly going to bless the project and make it happen, the money we needed would be provided: and if not, it would go back to being a "neat idea" -- for someone else to pursue.
2 days before the deadline, two phone calls came, pledging enough money to get the project started. "We'll take that as a 'yes,' Lord."
Another significant root of The Lord's Rain goes back to 1992, when I was working in radio in Victoria. Andrew Sheret, Ltd., a plumbing and bath supply company, was celebrating its 100th anniversary with a gala banquet, and the account executive who handled their advertising on our station approached me to be the MC. The evening went very well. 15 years later, I got one of those "nudges" in the Spirit to give them a call. They remembered me. "Can you give us a discount?" I asked. "We'll give you the showers," said president Brian Finlay.
The Oasis, which has a lot of skilled tradespeople in its congregation, stepped in with a pledge to build the project. Despite the shaky economic situation in the Cowichan Valley, they loaded up vans and a trailer and made the ferry trip three times to get the job done.
Others appeared with skills from painting to fundraising to plumbing -- Brodie Collins, who was saved off the street at Gospel Mission over 20 years ago and started his own plumbing and gasfitting business -- and provided just what we needed, just when we needed it.
Sometimes, it was humorous. Kathy Kinahan, who was working at Nokia at the time, kept pushing the company to come through with some bucks, even though it didn't quite fit with the company's vision for corporate social responsibility. Finally, a cheque arrived for $500. The same day, the old toilet in the back broke and had to be replaced. Cost: $500. The new toilet is now known as the Nokia Toilet. One of Kathy's colleagues suggested making a poster with a photo of the toilet with a cell phone floating in it. Oddly enough, the idea didn't fly.
The media played a huge role. Jen Palma (Global) and Kyle Donaldson (CityTV) covered the construction; Al Siebring wrote about the Duncan connection in his Cow Valley paper, and Cheryl Rossi and Sandra Thomas wrote about the project in the Vancouver Courier.
Further confirmation that this was God's Project and nothing was going to get in His way ("the Lord of Hosts hath spoken it, and who shall disannul it?"): due to a stupid mistake on my part, the door to the project was left unlocked. Someone walked in and took a load of plumbing tools. After beating myself up for about an hour, I was prompted to send out a news release, stating that the project would continue despite the "setback". CTV did a story -- Peter Grainger reported not on the theft, but on the project, and added word of the theft almost as an afterthought. Anchor Pamela Martin picked up on that point and ad-libbed that it would be nice if someone could help replace those tools. The next morning, came a phone call from a man who'd seen the story and wanted to help -- anonymously. And he did: big time. And continues to do so.
Some further large donations have come in right when we've taken a stand about something -- like in 2009, when we refused to accept money that had come from provincial gambling revenue; shortly after that, we got a call out of the blue, saying we'd been chosen to receive a large grant.

Whew. Those last two bullets -- and the one about the financial pledges arriving two days before our self-imposed deadline -- really set the tone for The Lord's Rain. It has been an experience in faith-stretching, this is His project, not ours -- although we're the caretakers of it, not unlike the young man who lost his axe-head in the river (2 Kings 6) and Elisha the prophet caused it to float to the surface (the basis of Lee's prophecy). It's an indication, I believe, of how God wants ministry to people on the Downtown East Side and other areas of urban poverty to go to "the next level" -- an overall provision of hope and love that can actually help break people out of the cycle of despair that they're in.

His timing is amazing on so many levels: do you notice that the project came together before the bottom fell out of the global economy in 2008?

Three years and still open.
There's plenty to be grateful for.

Certainly, it hasn't been an easy ride and there are certainly times when it seems like something or someone is pulling out all the stops to prevent it from succeeding. But the fact is, it is a success and will continue to be so. Setbacks and strange things going wrong simply prove the adage that if you're not taking flak, you're not over the target (how many times have I said that?).

Stones Big and Small (an appeal)

2011-04-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

My good friend, Murray Scott, takes one of the turns as service leader at Westpointe Christian Centre. He has a gift for taking everyday experiences he's encountered -- often from coaching soccer or his business, which is a building contractor -- and relating them to Biblical truths. So in many ways, I'm following his example as I write this. You'll see what I mean.

In Genesis and Deuteronomy, the Lord commands His people that, if they build Him a stone altar, it's to be made of "whole stones" -- any stones that have been "cut to fit" are polluted. Now, the "polluted" part aside, that means that stones of all shapes and sizes are needed, as they all fit together. Small ones fill in the spaces between the big ones, and if those small ones aren't there, there are either gaps or the whole thing collapses.

It's also important to note that we're talking stones here -- in the plural. The altar was not meant to be a single, large stone. An altar is to be built, not found or appropriated. God doesn't want His people simply saying, "Hello: here's a rock! Let's worship here!" Rather, we're to take the definite, deliberate action of selecting the stones, and then joining them together so they will fit just right and stand for a very long time.

That's the way The Lord's Rain has been built. As I've said before, it's not been the work or gifting of one single person or entity that's made it happen, but the collective work of a whole lot of people bringing a whole lot of things of varying sizes to the project -- rather like Paul's description of the Body of Christ in Ephesians 4. That collective effort has imbued the facility with a spirit that many people care enough about the people in the Downtown East Side to develop it. That brings hope, and hope is the most precious commodity of all.

To keep the analogy going, we're in need of more stones, big and small, at The Lord's Rain. We have an ongoing financial need, and as you know, The Lord's Rain is totally run by volunteers, so funds that come in go directly to rent, utilities and upkeep. So would you please consider making a contribution of whatever amount you feel you can? Also, would you please consider making The Lord's Rain a regular part of your offerings?

Saturday will mark the third anniversary of the opening of The Lord's Rain, and there's no question it's been a success in terms of changes coming over the lives of the people who come in. In raw numbers, we've provided nearly 1800 showers. In the past year, we've managed to bring more consistency to the "Ladies Only" time and added another early-morning opening (now open Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 6:30am) and it looks like we'll be adding Mondays to the list in the near future.

Perhaps more tellingly, the Lord has truly blessed the facility from Day One, providing for it and protecting it in often miraculous ways -- something I blogged about a couple of years ago -- so there's no question that this is on the right track. There's no question, too, that we're grateful for the way you-all have bought into the vision and supported it in the ways you have, to date.

I think it also says something that we only have to send a gentle (I hope) reminder like this about once a year.

To make a donation, you can send a cheque or money order to:

Gospel Mission Society

Box 1151, 2480 East Hastings

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V5K 1Z1

... and please make sure the cheque is made out to Gospel Mission Society, and then mark "The Lord's Rain" or "Showers" on the memo line.

You can also donate by Visa or MasterCard via email to donation@gospelmission.net, including your name as it's on the card, card number, expiry date and your address for tax receipt purposes.

Thank you, as always, for the support you give us, however you give it.

Us and Them -- really???

2011-04-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

A little vignette from Saturday morning ...

“So are you learning much from volunteering down here?”

The question came from a Native chap, whose name I don’t know yet but who’s been a regular around The Lord’s Rain for some time now.

“I mean,” he went on, “there's a big difference between the Ritz-Carlton and this place, isn’t it?”

I guess we all do some “profiling” in our lives, and while I’m not exactly the embodiment of urbane sophistication (and certainly not an habitué of the Ritz-Carlton), it’s easy to assume some kind of class distinction. Mind you, I think I can count on one hand the number of times the issue has come up in my own case; unfortunately, when it has, it’s come up in the form of a crass comment from someone, which I dismiss because there’s a spirit of envy behind it. Usually, praise God, people at the Mission accept me for who I am and I return the compliment.

But this fellow’s questions were sincere and without that spirit. He was genuinely curious.

“Actually,” I told him, “what impresses me more than the differences is the similarities.”

And that’s the truth. People often look on the folks on the Downtown East Side as being “special cases”, a separate caste: someone once referred to the treatment of the urban poor in Vancouver as “genocide”, but that implies they’re a different race from the “others” in the city. But I think that's patronizing, suggesting that they should get perpetual handouts and "breaks" from society because they are basically incapable of moving beyond where they are now. But that kind of thinking avoids the inconvenient truth: any one of us is one slip away from winding up in the same situation.

When I speak in churches, that’s often one of the key messages, and I pull it out both for shock value and because it's the truth. What impresses me about working on the Downtown East Side is that people are intelligent, respectful, well-spoken, and good to be around. Ask Amelia about the level of respect: when she serves them coffee or food, they all say “please” and “thank you” and they stop to chat; when she was ill recently, people asked about her, prayed for her and sent home good wishes.

Some of the people, certainly, are addled by drugs; others by mental illness. Some can be a real pain in the bottom at times. Some seem closeted away in their own little world – but watch what happens when you call their name: they snap into this world, and smile, and answer.

Think about it: there are people in your own circle who are just like that – and if they’re not addled by drugs, certainly there are other addictions that affect a person’s behaviour and outlook.

All have fallen in some way, and some people handle it differently than others. Any one of us can be one misstep away from starting that downward spiral that leads to situations like the Downtown East Side. If you're in a decent financial situation, that can cover a multitude of sins -- at least, as far as the world is concerned. As Spike Milligan once said, “money can’t buy you friends, but it gets you a better class of enemy”. But if the slip-up is accompanied by going broke, losing a job, family, status – and that’s happened to more than a few of the people we meet on the DTES – the crash is palpable. A rich man whose Grace runs out ahead of the money doesn’t realize how much he needs Grace.

One recurring theme in my own messages at the Mission is how close I came to that kind of crash: the elements were there, but by then God had gotten hold of me and had said, "stick with Me, kid, and you'll go places". I've long since understood that this isn't about me, but about Him, and the rest of that theme is how that same Grace and renewal is available to anyone who'll believe.

If you want to look for differences our friend was asking about, here's one: most people who come into the Mission know they need help. A lot of people in other parts of the city don’t. Recently, another recurring theme that's developed is that it’s OK to believe God has something better and that one is entitled to it, simply because, well, it is written ....

So while it’s easy to look at the DTES – or any hotbed of urban poverty – and look at an “Us and Them” situation, you don’t have to look much harder to see it’s really “Us and Us”.

Working on our own "little room"

2011-04-08T07:02:00.000-07:00

Another great post this morning from Ron Edmonson, which speaks to the need for us to keep our own role in God's Plan in perspective. He points out that a honeybee only produces 1/12 tsp. of honey in its lifetime while, in conjunction with all the other bees in the hive, turns out a prodigious amount of honey.

The trick is that the bee knows what its job is and does it to the best of its ability. It shoulders its own burden and doesn't try to take on anyone else's -- like, it doesn't try to lay eggs or become the queen bee.

(DIGRESSION ALERT: this could turn into the stuff of a sappy children's book if I'm not careful: the little bee that wanted to be queen. Except, well, it was a male ... and, well, it didn't know that if another queen came along in the hive, Bob the Kindly Beekeeper came along and ruthlessly killed the new queen to prevent the bees from swarming and flying off to form a new hive and terrorize Bob's neighbors in the process, causing the neighbors to descend on Bob's beehives with axes and flame-throwers ......

Sorry, slipped over to the "dark side" for a moment there. Must by my German heritage -- the same culture that brought us Max und Moritz, before they became "sanitized" as the Katzenjammer Kids ....)

Back to the bees ...

As I read it, Ron is saying that as workers in any effort, we need to lose the word "only" from our vocabulary. We need to understand that so long as we are doing our job, we can be satisfied and proud of that 1/12th tsp. we produce, because it's part of a whole that is so much bigger.

A couple of years ago, a brother at Gospel Mission asked about Ezekiel 40 -- the description of The City. He wondered why the prophet goes into such intricate detail about the little rooms and the chairs and the palm trees and other carvings. Meditating on that, we start to see a parallel to our own walk. Ezekiel is never shown the "30,000-foot view" of the entire project.

He does the same thing with Noah, by the way: never actually shows him a picture of what the ark is supposed to look like at the end; same with Moses and the instructions for the Tabernacle.

There's a good reason for that. As human beings, we want to be responsible for the entire project: we want to Do Big Things, and if God showed us the overall picture of what He was going for, somebody (or maybe all of us) would come along and cut corners to produce what only looked like the overall picture. But you know something would be missing.

In the same way, He gives intricate instructions as to what we are supposed to do. That way, we don't embellish -- like adding a kangaroo between the cherubim -- and don't fall into pride. We also come to trust Him to bring it all together, because He knows that 30,000' view.

We also "stick to our knitting" and don't try to shoulder someone else's burden. God gives us enough as it is, and we have to remember that we can only be "unprofitable servants" -- the best we can do for God is break even, because if we tried to do anything more for Him, we'd be saying that His instructions to us weren't good enough.

I needed that revelation because we were opening up The Lord's Rain at the time -- just about 3 years ago, now -- and one morning, I was standing outside the Mission looking at the scene on the street. We look right into the teeth of one of the worse alleys in Vancouver for drugs and crime (possibly the worst, although the one beside the Carnegie Center gives it some stiff competition).

So I said to the Lord, "look at all this: the drugs and the crime and the mental illness and the homelessness ... how can we fix that?" And He said, "and your job is to run the showers program. Don't worry: you stick to that and see where it goes. I'll bring the others together."

And that's never left me. And rather than let me despair, God has shown me remarkable things with lives turning around; all because I was "just" running a showers program and preaching the Gospel. And I'm confident my 1/12th tsp. is part of a far bigger picture.

By the way, there's nothing wrong with Doing Big Things: so long as they're the Big Things God calls you to do. Peter wanted to Do A Big Thing -- defend Jesus. But Jesus had just told him he'd be the rock His church would be built on. That's a Really Big Thing. Peter's church stands to this day (and I don't mean the Catholic church), but when he did what he thought he was supposed to do -- take a sword and attack one of the soldiers -- he missed and only got the ear. And Jesus healed that.

I believe it's OK to let God know that one is willing to do more; but we need to be stick with the job we're given in the mean time.

VENTING - Why we're called to be here

2011-04-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,

That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!

-- Julius Caesar, Act 3 Sc. 1

When I started writing this piece on Saturday, I was still slightly radioactive over a situation we had to deal with at The Lord’s Rain. The Shakespeare quote kept bubbling to the surface after seeing one of our regulars get carted off to hospital, evidently on a bad trip.

Lesley is one of the regulars at The Lord’s Rain, a 40-something woman who at one time was probably very attractive. She’s also remarkably intelligent – as indeed are the majority of the people we see at The Lord’s Rain and Gospel Mission upstairs. But drugs and street-life have robbed all of that from her: her teeth are gone, she has AIDS, she has open sores on her face that she has to be admonished not to pick at; she, along with many others in the area, reminds me of a scene in a cartoon where a deranged sailor rushes off a ship and screams, “I was a human being once!”

At any rate, Lesley came in yesterday, acting about as normal as we ever do see her. After a while, she went into the bathroom, leaving behind her coat and bag, as we require people to do, to try to reduce the chances that they’ll do drugs when they’re back there or in the showers. I went back to tend to the laundry, and realized she was still there.

“Are you OK?” I called.

The response was a cross between a groan and a gargle – taken individually, they’re not good signs; taken together, it was even worse. She told me she wanted to get to her doctor, but she didn’t have his number. The only number I know in a situation like that is 911, and I dialled it.

The amazingly impressive thing about emergency personnel working the Downtown East Side is their speed and their compassion. It’s a popular and populist thing to suggest that police and paramedics tend to regard a street person as “just another junkie”, but in seven years of personal observation, I have never seen that. They are tough when they have to be – as I saw when they took down Axel three years ago after I’d pointed him out as the one who took a piece of re-bar to a fellow in the alley across from the Mission – but the streaks of compassion and friendliness restore your faith in the way they do things and wonder where the “activists” get their stuff.

The paramedics were there within a few minutes and by then, Lesley was only semi-coherent. The 911 operator asked what drugs she’d been taking, and Lesley painstakingly wrote out a list of them – mostly her AIDS “cocktail” – and then explained patiently to the paramedics that they would have to speak very quietly and very slowly so she could understand what they were saying. She had very little control over her movements, which made it impossible to get a reading on her blood pressure. We walked her out to the ambulance, strapped her into the stretcher and they drove off.

St Paul’s Hospital would be the most likely destination, and when I went through my own health issues a couple of years ago, I saw first-hand their dealings with “street people” (it’s also one of the leading facilities for AIDS treatment, which would make it the best place to take her, as well). They would likely give her a stern talking-to about street drugs and “bringing it on herself”, but would also do whatever it took to at least stabilize her and keep her alive. It’s a mixture of toughness and compassion.

But Saturday, after the ambulance had left, I hit cracking point. Angry? Frustrated? You better believe it! But where do you start?

Do you get angry at the circumstances that led Lesley to that point? How about the society that’s taken this laissez-faire attitude towards drugs? (It’s so easy to sneer at the US “war on drugs”, but we in Canada have a lot to answer for with the “non-aggression pact” we seem to have – and students of history and World War II will understand the full implications of that.)

Maybe you could rail against the amount of money, energy, time and resources spent chasing “cures” rather than attacking the root causes; or against the dealers, pimps and absent parents; or against the societal attitudes that decided it would violate her rights to force her into treatment?

Where do you start? Heck – where do you finish?

Sunday afternoon, I drove down Hastings Street and passed five ambulances and one fire department first-response unit, all with their lights flashing. I can’t help wondering what would have happened if there had been a fire or a heart attack while the paramedics were attending to Lesley or if one of the victims had to wait for a bed in ER because Lesley was taking one up.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not about to advocate for an emergency care system that “respects persons” and writes off certain people because they were largely to blame for their condition. What makes me angry and frustrated is that Lesley’s situation could have been prevented, but there’s such a negative response to people who suggest that we should try to stop these problems before they start, actually teaching kids values and hope and the social heresy that we can and should turn to God to get us through tough times. People advocating abstinence or “Just Say No” are denounced as naive and self-righteous; that’s as may be, but I believe that if we give people something to “Just Say Yes” to, “Just Say No” does not become an issue.

And even in this, the Lord is putting things into perspective – praise Him. “At least she had a place to come to,” He quietly reminded me as I was about to start punching the walls inside The Lord’s Rain.

Right as always. The Lord’s Rain was her safe place, as it’s meant to be. If she’d had that bad trip – or the chest pains she complained about – anywhere else, what would she have done? Where would she have gone?

I don’t think it over-states the case to say that we – meaning you, our supporters, because you’re part of this – have someone; at least, helped to give one more person another chance at life, another chance to turn around; another chance to feel the love that is so much a part of The Lord’s Rain. The Lord’s Rain was built on love: it was not built to satisfy a government requirement or as a make-work project; it was built because God put it on the hearts of all those associated with it that this was something needed in the area. More importantly, once He had set the idea in motion, He made sure it came to pass, often through miraculous ways. Incidents like this with Lesley remind one just how needed it is. Remembering how so many others have found safe haven and encouragement at 327 Carrall Street reinforces that.

It's important to remember that, and the successes we have, even as we keep up the search for others to work with us: those to open The Lord’s Rain on the other three early mornings a week, to help run “Ladies Day” (Tuesdays, 9-Noon) and to fill in on other mornings as needed. I know the Lord of the Harvest is tapping people on the shoulder -- just as His Son is knocking on the doors of a lot of people (Rev. 3:20) -- and sooner or later, those people will say, "hello?"

One of those people who did answer the bell is Randall, who has emerged as a vital member of our leadership team; almost immediately the enemy tried to bring him under when he was diagnosed early this year with cancer. (As 'tis said, if you're not taking flak, you're not over the target.) I have heard from him occasionally: his neighbour tells me he’s had surgery to remove the tumor and has been going almost daily for follow-up treatment. I haven’t heard his prognosis, so it’s still anybody’s guess as to when he’ll return to action, so please keep him in prayer.

Casino plans and the Whore of Babylon

2011-03-11T07:46:00.000-08:00

Statement from Gospel Mission regarding the proposed new Casino on False Creek.

Gospel Mission welcomes the prospect of an expanded casino on False Creek. The casino will definitely generate new business for us: new people finding themselves caught in their addictions, broke and in debt; and we will welcome them to our rescue mission to hear the Word of God, share a hot meal, and re-connect with Hope that goes beyond the empty promise of easy money through gambling. We find that when people have their backs against the wall and hit rock bottom at the same time, they inevitably turn to Jesus. We have seen that with drug addicts and alcoholics who have come through our doors over the past 82 years, and now we look forward to this new crop for harvest. Further, since we do not ourselves receive money from gambling operations -- including the relatively tiny pot reserved for charities in BC's gaming revenue -- but place our confidence in Jehovah Jireh, the Lord Who Provides, we know we will be there to catch whoever falls. We are, after all, just a stone's throw away from the casino: a six-sided stone, if you catch our drift.

Hands up, all those who caught a bit of sarcasm there ......

In one of its weekly collections of news clips (at least, this was the case the last time I read the magazine), Sports Illustrated would have a kicker called "This Week's Sign That The Apocalypse Is Upon Us"; some weird, usually funny, statement or event that suggests that things are not as they should be.

There are plenty of those around right now, and nowhere near amusing -- the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, for example, is the latest. Add it up with the fires, flooding and tornadoes in Australia, earthquakes in diverse places, vicious and short-notice (if not unpredictable) weather events and all the issues surrounding the Gulf of Mexico oil blowout last year, and an inescapable reality emerges: the signs Jesus foretold of His return are coming to pass.

As the song says, People Get Ready.

But the end-times prophecies are not all bad news -- after all, Jesus' return, and God taking over His Creation, bringing the New Jerusalem and coming to live among His people is good news and to be embraced and welcomed as well as prepared-for. And the Book of Revelation has lots of cause to celebrate.

Take, for example, the current controversy in Vancouver over plans to build a "destination casino" next to BC Place Stadium. There already is a high-end casino there: this would expand it and include a resort hotel and seven restaurants. And the opposition has been swift and loud. Opponents don't want Vancouver to turn into a northern version of Las Vegas and they're not swayed by the proponents' arguments. Health officials have waded into the debate -- coming out against the casino, saying problem gambling is already an epidemic in BC and this will make it worse.

I've blogged before about my views on gambling in general, but I'm noticing something else here, tied to end-times talk. In the past, arguments about the amount of money being generated for health care and community charities have won the day for the gaming proponents; but this time, those points -- along with the repeated assertion that it will "revitalize the area" and "boost Vancouver tourism" -- seem hollow and desperate.

("Boost Vancouver tourism"? In case anyone has missed the past 100 years, Vancouver already has a good tourism industry, with wonderful restaurants, entertainment -- Grammy-award-winning symphony, the Arts Club, the Playhouse, the Jazz Festival, the Yale, Gastown; not to mention natural beauty which you can still see from downtown despite the forest of high-rises. If any place does not need a casino to suck people inside and suck their pockets empty, it's Vancouver.)

You'll find that "something else" in Revelation 17-18, which refers to The Whore of Babylon. I see that as a description of the world economy, where kings and merchants worship and bow down to this gorgeous, jewel-bedecked woman, but when God steps in and exposes her for what she is, the kings and merchants cut and run and try to stay as far away from her burning as possible -- all the while bemoaning her demise.

What I'm seeing with the casino debate is the failure of the "money argument" to sway people in favor of the project, and the increasingly desperate tone that argument is taking. Is the Whore going down? Are people starting to back away? Are merchants starting to wail for her?

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works:

in the cup which she hath filled, fill her to the double.

-- Rev. 18:5-6

And the Word of God encourages us to realize that this world economy has oppressed and ignored the people and that we are to ignore and oppress that Whore right back. Could we be seeing this now?

Of course, to close the loop back to the statement at the beginning here, we'll be there to help people: but there are times we kinda wish we didn't have to.

Fresh Eyes in the neighbourhood

2011-03-09T06:45:00.000-08:00

Diane is one of our new workers at The Lord's Rain. A retired nurse, she responded to a letter I'd written to The Vancouver Sun just after Christmas 2010 about a lengthy item on people who volunteer for the big dinners put on by charities at that time of year. My point was that there are volunteers working in the area 365 days a year and that we need more of them. Diane has now begun running The Lord's Rain -- usually alongside Randall but lately I've been filling in for Randall -- on Wednesday mornings. During our times working together, she's talked about some of her observations -- particularly after Randall had taken her on a "walkabout". Recently, I asked her to write them down. Here's what she sent, followed by an exchange of emails between her and a Vancouver city councillor about her concerns.

I started volunteering at the Lords Rain at the beginning of the year.

At the end of my third shift, my co-volunteer Randall took me on a tour to show me more of the DTE

WHAT HORRIFIED ME

After three shifts I was used to the drug dealing that went on in the alley opposite to the Lords Rain, I was not prepared for the extent of the dealing that is all pervasive in the area, especially on Welfare Wednesday. The dealers were on every street corner, and outside every ATM and cheque cashing shop. Many of the residents were spaced out, and walking along Hastings Street by the Ovaltine cafe there were at least four women sitting on the sidewalk injecting themselves with obviously pre used needles

I wish I had made notes at the time-the following are my recollections, including information from Randall.

First United Church*

We entered to see a group of volunteers providing bowls, soap and water to “walk ins” for foot care

Some people were lying fully clothed in the corridor

The meal room was very large-according to one occupant, a Rabbi had conducted a short service there. The long dining tables were covered with spilt coffee

I looked in on one of the sleeping rooms-bunk beds-very close together-nearly all were occupied (at 9.30 a.m.) by men sleeping fully clothed on top of a sheet

According to Randall, it is open 24/7 which does not allow time for cleaning, there are three bathrooms for the men, and three for the women

The Bottle Depot

A dark, dismal, depressing place

The binners come in and get money for their bottles and cans-the drug dealers are waiting at the door to relieve them of that mone

People were lining up to get free food all over the area-some did not appear to be homeless-(according to Randall there are some who abuse the system )

Different charities run food and soup kitchens

WHAT SURPRISED ME

The resources available to people in the area, and how up beat some of the helpers are

The Evelyn Saller Center

A well used shower programme

Meals available at a price which I felt gave those partaking a certain dignity and self worth

A pool table and area for socialising

Health, delousing, and laundry facilities

“A Health Clinic” ( I cannot remember the name, but I do remember the cheery and very funny pharmacist)

Downtown East Side Personal Development School

Life Skills Centre

Job search assistance, computers

Carnegie Centre

Meals available at a cheaper price

Socialising

Computers

Newspapers

The Door is Open

The day we were there was “ladies day”- a dedicated group of volunteers, mostly from the West side of town were preparing lunch, mainly from donated food

About 12 women were seated at tables socialising-quite a good atmosphere

***

Diane also paid a visit to the showers program at Kitsilano Community Centre. It operates on Saturday mornings.

I wanted to see how this programme was run, and the coordinator kindly agreed to let me observe

The programme, which is totally run by volunteers apart from one Community centre staff person, takes place each Saturday from 7-9 a.m.

I counted about twelve volunteers

2 at the entrance to the Center where guest sign in-their bags are put into large plastic bags, carts are tagged, and they are given a ticket for them “Valet Parking"
3 in the kitchen cooking up a full breakfast
2 at the cereal, hot porridge and muffin table
2 at the coffee(pre prepared and donated by Starbucks) and juice table
2 at the clothing, toiletries, towels table

Friendly, outgoing volunteers, mainly from the West side, some attend the Catholic Church next door-very respectful to the guests

The guests were nearly all male, some coming every week from the DTE, others from the surrounding neighbourhood. Many were regulars-nearly all were appreciative

Much of the food and clothing is donated-socks and gloves are purchased and given out to anyone who asks

The showers are the same ones used by the regular center users, and although no tally was made as to how many people had showers, I counted five people in the room at one time-this area was not supervised

There had been a problem with bed bugs-the center had to be closed for cleaning

The coordinator gives everyone a talk re the problem before they are allowed to enter

There are written guidelines for volunteers with emphasis on personal safety

My own thoughts re above

There seems to be a definite hierarchy within the world of the homeless, which ranges from the hopelessness of the women outside the Ovaltine Cafe, to the (learned) helplessness of some of the men in the food lines, as evidenced by the downward slope of their shoulders and downcast eyes, to the hopefulness of the people who are trying to turn their lives around

I feel angry when I see how people are “housed” on the East Side-such conditions would never be tolerated on the West Side

I feel angry and baffled when money is handed out every month to people who immediately spend it on drugs-I cannot understand how there cannot be a system in place to ensure that that money goes toward food and shelter

*Diane had some further thoughts on the cleanliness at First United, which she shared in a Jan. 29 letter to Vancouver Councillor Kerry Jang.

Dear Councillor Jang

I have just read the following in today's edition of the Globe and Mail-the story was referring to tent cities in Seattle: "Health and safety concerns - for prospective residents and staff- make tent encampments a non-starter, Vancouver Councillor Kerry Jang said. 'It's just not good public health,' he said.
I volunteer with one of the shower programmes on the downtown east side-another volunteer took me on a tour of the area. I had the chance to take a look inside the First United Church on the corner of Hastings and Gore, and was horrified at what I saw-I am assuming that you have been there, so will not go into any more detail.

A large number of people are sleeping in very close quarters under one roof, with a limited number of bathrooms and exits. If you have not been to this facility lately, I hope you will take the time to revisit it-unannounced.

I would also appreciate your telling me what role the city plays in its funding, and what is being done to ensure that safety and health standards are being met.

Yours sincerely
***
Councillor Jang replied that same day,

Hi Diane,

I am well aware of First United. The shelter there is being funded now entirely by the Province of BC. The city set it up initially with the Province and it became very popular due to the needs in the area. Just so you know, we are aware of the issues there - mainly over crowding on some nights and our fire and VPD inspectors are there regulalry, as are folks from Coastal Health to make sure all are safe. To date, any issues have been dealt with by the church and Coastal Health have been satisfied. Over the past two plus years, although crowded, the facilities there have not had any outbreaks, etc, likely due to the cleaning protocol and the fact there are adequate washroom facilities. I do not know what parts you have seen, but there are beds there now when in the first year there were just mats and pews.

Tent cities are a problem as there are no proper santitation/washroom facilities and no way to regulate heat. When tent cities have popped up in Vancouver in the past, there were severe health problems.

***
Diane copied her MLA, Dr Margaret McDiarmid, on the exchange, and was told that had been forwarded to Rich Coleman, Minister of Public Safety -- and the minister whose department would oversee the program.

Shouldn't do it to a dog ...

2011-02-09T07:22:00.000-08:00

The outrage du jour in British Columbia lately has been the slaughter of sled dogs by a sled-dog tour operator in Whistler. Apparently, these dogs were deemed expendable when the company experienced a downturn after the initial post-Olympics surge in business.

It's a horrifying case, both in and of itself and also in the exercise in "rush to judgment". There's been this outpouring of anger -- including death threats -- against the company, the person who did the killing (who's just been granted worker's compensation benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder) and the Olympic games; there's even been a Facebook page set up (oooh! a Facebook page! Now they're really in trouble!)

Interestingly, none of this outrage seems to be directed at the general public - the tourists who created a perceived demand for this service in the first place. It's a little like demanding Big Macs and Quarter-Pounders and then complaining that the South American forests have been destroyed to increase beef cattle lands.

Mind you, God is not impressed, either: A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. (Proverbs 12:10 KJV)

(Reading this, Temple Grandin is definitely more in line with the will of God than most animal-rights activists: reputedly, one of her key observations about cattle management was that in dying, animals provide us with food, so we have to treat them with respect while they're alive. But I digress ...)

But one of the sidebars to this outrage has been people pointing to the lack of outrage when it comes to inhumane efforts against people -- like the deaths of 21 children who were under the care of the Ministry of Children and Families. The province's Child Advocate identified those, and I can tell you, there wasn't anywhere near the public outcry over that than there has been over the dogs.

And let me add this to the mix: where is the outrage over the human condition on Vancouver's Skid Road? Why have so many Christians, who are called to reach out to the poor and destitute, abrogated that responsibility and handed it off to a vast socio-political experiment in not-so-benign neglect? Solutions like harm-reduction and mixing affordable and market housing run counter to the will of God:

mixed-use housing is not a bad idea, per se, but as I pointed out in my previous post, it keeps drug addicts in the very area where their problems are all around them. They need to move -- like Abram was instructed by God -- to a different place, so they can move towards the promise God as for them
(it also provides developers an excellent opportunity to promise an affordable housing component in their plans and then, when sales go sideways -- as happened with Olympic Village -- cry poverty and demand to be released from their promise)
as I've said numerous times before, Jesus was not into harm reduction; He was (and still is) into harm elimination -- total healing, not just band-aids
drug advocates rail that the US "War on Drugs" has been a failure, but the peace treaty with drugs we have in this society has led to the problems on Skid Road today -- the reason why people are terrified of walking through the area between Chinatown and Gastown. Neither works, because of the spirit behind them: the spirit of a "quick fix".

The US approach is to try to drop the Monty Python 16-ton weight on the drug industry;
the approach we see in Canada is to make life easier for the addicts: lots of social housing, clean needles and a "safe place to shoot up";
the court system fails to back up law enforcement officers;
the news media glamorize pushers by publicizing the dollar value of drug seizures and printing photos of gang leaders who look like they belong more in GQ than Hotel Crowbar

The devil provides quick fixes; God provides solutions.

God's solution involves recognizing that drug addicts and the mentally ill are fallen human beings like all of us -- everyone has a different response mechanism and theirs has involved a more spectacular crash. It's the duty before God for all of us to reach out with love and hope that overpower the need for the drugs.

I'm not just talking about the addicts. I grieve for the dealers and enforcers and lookouts I see on the street outside Gospel Mission: lurking about in their hoodies, talking on cell phones, swaggering back and forth looking as tough as they can, talking among themselves as if they're old friends, but you know deep down, none of them trusts the others. What will their lives be like in 5, 10, 20 years -- if they're still alive? Believe it or not, we as Christians have a duty to reach out to them, too.

But where is the outrage? Do we really care more for sled dogs than for other humans? Jesus told us there'd be days like these -- when "because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" (Matt. 24:12 KJV) -- as the world awaits His return.

Or is this lack of outrage really because deep down, we're convicted that -- to use Walt Kelly's overworked line from Pogo -- we have met the enemy and he is us?

Some heresy about the DTES

2011-02-08T06:02:00.000-08:00

There’s been a lot of talk lately about development on Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, with people concerned that “gentrification” (the bogeyman du jour in that section of town) will push the poor out of the area as housing prices rise; and then where would they go?

Unfortunately, the response from some of the advocates for affordable housing – as in the Vancouver Sun op-ed piece on Feb. 2 – makes the case that mixing social strata doesn’t work and demands that unnamed people and entities build more single-room occupancy (SRO) spaces and upgrade existing ones. The advocates don’t actually say who should pay for this, although I’m sure that, if asked, we would hear the usual responses: “the city can afford to spend millions on bike lanes” ... “the province can spend $600 million on a new roof for BC Place, but ...” ... yadda-yadda-yadda ...

Here’s a piece of heresy: what’s so great about keeping the poor on the Downtown East Side?

Really: isn’t this build-more-social-housing-on-the-DTES position little more than a call to perpetuate the ghetto?

This comes from ministering, observing and talking with people in the area, and for no compensation and with a sole interest, if I may say so myself, in seeing people’s lives change, turn around and move forward. Let's get real: this is Skid Road, a cauldron of despair, drugs, crime and prostitution; why would we want to pursue policies and strategies that don’t help people move on and instead make it easier for them to stay in that cauldron?

Perhaps it’s because there can be a buck in it for people who advocate that approach. But that would be cynical. Moi?

See, the first thing we need to do is stop glamorizing the place, and we've been doing that since the 1970s when the term Downtown East Side started getting traction. I remember thinking the term was kinda cool – a sort of New York cachet – like “Lower East Side” or “The Village”. These days, someone’s trying to coin “SoMa” for a stretch of Main Street (“South Main”, get it?): kind of like “SoHo” – South of Houston Street – in New York. (Vancouver has a history of wanting to be Just Like The Big Cities – so long as it’s not Toronto – and that goes back over a century, when architecture like the Dominion Building on Hastings resembled some of the buildings of the time in San Francisco. Unfortunately, a lot of its treatment of poor people resembles New York as depicted in “How The Other Half Lives” – in 1878.)

Next, we need to turn up our BS detectors when someone comes along with an idea they claim will “help” or “humanize” the “homeless”. Look at the people whose political and/or personal careers have been built on being “advocates” for the poor. Now consider the fruits of their labor. Recently, the UBC Museum of Anthropology cancelled an exhibit of portraits of the women who went missing from the Downtown East Side over a 10-year period. That was one of the wisest things a public body could have done, as it was responding to a couple of advocacy groups, which complained that the exhibit was primarily an exercise in self-promotion by the artist.

Only when we de-glamorize the area do we see that we are dealing with human beings, not subjects in a social experiment. Nor are they numbers on a “homelessness audit”: figures for a politician to point to and declare that’s his or her goal to have new rooms in fleabag “hotels” provided during their term in office.

We have to face the reality that the heart of the problems on the Downtown East Side is drugs. That, in itself, is not a big revelation, but the focus has strayed away from the need to get people off drugs. Do that, and you’re on your way to alleviating problems of health, crime, prostitution and the general fear people have of the area. We’ve tried the experiment of making it easier and “healthier” for people to take drugs, and it has not worked. For all its self-generated statistical evidence of success, the current approach of “harm reduction”, including places like InSite (the heroin equivalent of filter-tipped cigarettes), has not worked. Take a walk along Hastings between Cambie and Gore and tell me it’s made the streets safer (the way it was sold to the public almost a decade ago) and given people a new chance at life.

I believe we need to consider forced recovery treatment, not as a “punishment” for being a drug addict, but as duty of society to its people. The civil libertarians would claim that addicts are being denied their rights and that people have a choice to be addicts or quit, but I submit that someone who is lurching along the street, bent double, looking for a grain of crack that someone might have dropped and foregoing food for the sake of another hit has already lost that freedom of choice. It’s not their fault: it’s the insidious and deadly nature of the drugs.

There are three important elements, I believe, to changing people’s lives in this way:

1. Get them into treatment – real treatment programs, using proven techniques, that involve quitting and staying off

2. Help them develop a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. By doing that, they have something to focus on, rather something to turn away from. It’s the principle of “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” In this case, “all these things” means the “pleasure” derived from drug-taking.

3. Set up the treatment program anywhere but the Downtown East Side. If you want to get clean, get out of the cesspool. And stay out. Probably the best venue is a farm-like atmosphere or something else related to good, solid, productive work. Access should be severely limited. I can hear the howls of “concentration camp” now from the civil libertarians, but I’ve long since stopped believing they’re actually on the side of the poor (see above).

As I’ve said before, the problem on Skid Road is not homelessness. It’s hope-lessness. We need to restore hope – that intangible reason for carrying on; the liberating knowledge that none of us is capable of turning our lives around without Jesus. He is the hope that people need: the unconditional love that never fails – never has and never will.

And yes, I do see the results of that message as I see people start to rise up out of the ashes, get off the drugs ... or even start to smile again. But it’s tough to reinforce that message when the world around them – even people like mayors, members of Parliament and those who claim to be acting in their best interests – keep taking positions that such people, because they’re mentally ill and/or drug-addicted, are entitled to remain drug addicts, living on Skid Road.

It is not in our interest as a society to let any of our people live this way. God has not given up on these people: neither should we. If you talk with anyone in the Skid Road area, you’ll find they all have their stories, they all have experiences ... and they all have brains and things they can contribute. I meet artists, teachers, academics, working stiffs, chefs: people who’ve made one or two really bad mistakes and have wound up broke, on drugs or mentally ill. These people have gifts and talents to contribute and we as a society are denying ourselves those gifts.

Who among us hasn’t made a mistake? Who among us is without sin? Or are we actually being subtly self-righteous and judgmental, figuring they “made their choices” and are “paying the price”? Wracked with societal guilt, we then wail and gnash our teeth and ride off madly in all directions trying to “do something”. We forget – or ignore – the fact that Jesus already “paid the price” for everybody’s mistakes and then instructed us to reach out and help those whose fall was longer and harder than ours.

A seeming disconnect

2010-12-21T16:30:00.000-08:00

It's hard to know what to make of this one.

Being Christmastime, it's not unusual for churches and other groups to make forays into the Downtown East Side and food or meals or do something Yuletide-ish. It's quite nice, really: Wednesday night, a group of young people strolled through the streets, carolling; Saturday night, an a cappella Gospel chorus rocked it up in Pigeon Park. In many cases, people are out there because they want to do something to help the situation, because they hear and read about it so much in the media. Don't think the people in the area don't appreciate it. But last night -- Monday -- something strange happened that can't help but leave one wondering.

The pile was about 5-times this size and in front of the window.

I arrived at the Mission with the Monday night bread pickup from Cobs in West Van to find a mountain (I kid you not) of clothes piled in front of the building. The doorway to The Lord's Rain was blocked; there was a Canadian Tire shopping cart in among the clothes, and a guy was picking through there.

There are two signs on the window of The Lord's Rain: NO SELLING OF ANYTHING IN FRONT OF GOSPEL MISSION OR THE LORD'S RAIN. So I pointed that sign out.

"I'm not sellin' nothin'," he said. "I'm picking some stuff out."

"Then whose is it?"

"The group that was over there (Pigeon Park) put it here. They said they'd just leave it here and we could go through it."

"They", it turned out, was a church group, but no one seemed to know the name. They had set up tables in Pigeon Park and handed out turkey dinner, boxes of food and used clothing. One fellow told me there must have been 500 people there. Global TV covered it, so they apparently had some advance work going on.

It was truly a "drive-by" blessing. I had gone to the Mission at 5 to pick up the bins for the bread; then we got back to the Mission around 7:45. During that time span, they had arrived, set up, served, torn down, and left, their final act being to take the unclaimed clothes and dump them in front of our building -- unaware that it was private property.

I'm not an alarmist, but one wacko with a cigarette lighter and a mad-on at the world could have done a lot of damage to our building and the people at the service inside.

So I piled as much of the stuff as I could -- clothes of various descriptions, shoes (some of which matched) and so forth -- onto the shopping cart and pushed the cart around the corner, putting the rest of it beside. Then I called Global TV, to see if they had a contact. I wanted to talk about this with someone who was responsible before deciding how to respond. The assignment desk, however, couldn't find the initial news release and the reporter only remembered talking to someone named "Sean".

Randall told me this morning he'd tried to speak with someone who was serving food and got a terse -- almost rude -- response. "We're a church group." "Oh, yes? Which church?" "Just a church."

One of the things that really ticks me off is that it's not as if no one was in the Mission at the time. As you can see in the photo, there are at least two large signs saying "CARRALL STREET CHURCH" on the front: there's also the illuminated sign showing The Lord's Rain, the wooden sign outside Barry's office window and a big flashing pseudo-neon sign that says "OPEN". Surely, somebody might have thought to ask if it was OK.

(To which I would have replied, "no", because we already have an enormous supply of clothing that we're trying to get rid of. But I never got that chance.)

Why give out boxes of non-perishable food when it could have bolstered the Food Bank's supplies? Why hand out clothing with no backup plan for the stuff that doesn't get taken? And why be rude to a "local" who just wants to know where you're from?

Not having spoken directly to any of the organizers, it's hard to say if they were being contemptuous or ignorant (dumping what was essentially junk could be a product of either or both); but it's a sign of what appears to be a disconnect between suburban churches and ministries on the Downtown East Side. It's rare to hear from them the rest of the year, and evidently this church group was unaware of our existence. They mean well, and they want to do something, but I really think the onus is on them to educate themselves about who's already doing what. The dinner idea is lovely, but what happens on the other 364 nights of the year? Who's there? How are they dealing with the situation? What do they need? (Hint: the answer is not necessarily money.) If they find those answers, they can concentrate their efforts and their obvious well meaning where they do the most good.

People living on the DTES -- druggies, pushers, prostitutes, mentally ill, people on disability pensions, down-and-outers -- are often like kids. You can throw all the money you want to at them, but at the end of the day, all they really want is someone's time, attention ... and love. And as Christians, we're supposed to love the unlovely. Trust me: on the DTES it's not hard.

After all, as I've said, there's really no shortage of money, food or clothing, but the laborers are few.

A special appeal from The Lord's Rain

2010-12-16T07:50:00.000-08:00

This was sent to the Friends Of The Lord's Rain this morning. A special appeal -- as if people don't have enough hands reaching out for "special donations to remember the ******** in this Festive Season". But it's something that just came up, so I'm putting this on the SkyTrain to see if it gets off at Metrotown.

Our clothes dryer, a valuable donation when we opened The Lord's Rain 2-1/2 years ago, has packed it in. As John Cleese might put it, it has dried its last towel, shed its final lint, shuffled off its heating coil and gone to join the Choir Invisibule: it is an ex-dryer.

In a street outreach for which the very raison d’être involves showers and therefore clean, dry towels, the dryer is a necessity. In the earliest days, we did attempt to hang the towels around the facility, but that was unreliable and did tend to leave the towels rather hard, reminding one of the dialogue from the old "Barney Miller" TV series:

BARNEY: What happened to the towel in the bathroom?
YEMANA: It broke.

Given our space and electrical constraints, the solution is a stacking washer-dryer unit that can fit into the space where the washer and dryer are currently located.

SO ... would any of you be willing to contribute towards the purchase of such a unit? Are you aware of any companies that could donate or offer a discount on one? We're grateful for any suggestions or leads you might have.

Any such donations or leads can be directed to Gospel Mission -- http://www.gospelmission.net/ -- 604-684-3097 ... or leave a comment on this blog.

NEWS RELEASE: Weston again supports Gospel Mission

2010-12-09T06:12:00.000-08:00

Vancouver church, showers project is again “President’s Choice”

(Vancouver, Dec. 8, 2010) -- For the second year in a row, Gospel Mission and The Lord’s Rain are receiving a timely infusion of support from a major Canadian philanthropic organization. The W. Garfield Weston Foundation has made a donation of $3,000.00 to help the Mission. This grant, presented to the Mission by Trustee Mark W. Mitchell, follows a $15,000.00 donation received in 2009 as part of a one-time, special initiative to assist charities in surviving the global economic downturn, when support from “usual sources” might be expected to decline.

Founded in 1929, Gospel Mission is a combined church and street outreach. Since the 1940s, it has been housed in an 1888 brick building that was originally a saloon. In 2007, the Mission took over a ground-floor space in the same building to construct The Lord’s Rain, which provides showers for people in the area who need them. A letter from Trustee Wendy Rebanks, who put forward this 2010 grant, notes that since The Lord’s Rain opened in April 2008, it has become “a community gathering place, where people can escape from the street and find friendly conversation”.

“To say we’re grateful is an understatement,” says Assistant Pastor Drew Snider. “Gospel Mission and The Lord’s Rain have been built over the years by a variety of people bringing a variety of ‘offerings to the storehouse’ – what they can, as they can. Contributions like these from The W. Garfield Weston Foundation, combined with those from individuals and churches, let our friends here know that a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life are right behind them in their struggle.”

The W. Garfield Weston Foundation is a private Canadian family foundation, established in the 1950’s by Willard Garfield Weston and his wife Reta. In 1924 Garfield inherited his father’s company and during his life established bakeries and other successful enterprises throughout Canada and in many parts of the world. Today, these businesses include the George Weston Limited and Loblaw Companies Limited, companies in food retailing, processing and distribution. The founders believed that as the funds are generated through the hard work and success of these Canadian companies, grants should be given in Canada for the benefit of Canadians. For three generations, The W. Garfield Weston Foundation has maintained a family tradition of supporting charitable organizations across Canada. Today the Foundation directs the majority of its funds to projects in the fields of land conservation, education, and science in Canada’s North.

Gospel Mission is an all-volunteer organization covered by the Apostolic Church of Pentecost of Canada. It is cross-denominational in its approach: a church for those uncomfortable going to church. The Lord’s Rain offers what senior pastor Barry Babcook calls “Jesus with the skin on”. Gospel Mission services are Sunday afternoons and Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday evenings with meals served after each. Wednesday is Bible study and Thursday night is movie night. Services are also shown via closed-circuit TV in The Lord’s Rain, to accommodate people with disabilities.

The Lord’s Rain is currently open early Tuesday and Saturday mornings, Monday and Friday in the early afternoon, with a goal of opening six days a week in the early morning to give people a place to go when the shelters turn them out: this depends on volunteers stepping forward. Anyone interested in volunteering may contact the Mission via the website or by phone (604-684-3097).

Contact Drew Snider 604-803-3199

-30-

Give me that old-time charitable contributions!

2010-12-04T09:08:00.000-08:00

It's not that I'm a Luddite (except on days ending in "y"), but there are times when the New Technological Age leaves me cold. In fact, if I may throw my own spin on the tale of the Luddites, the rebellion -- smashing factory machines -- was not against the Industrial Revolution per se, but against the impersonalness of it all. I actually embrace technology, and in my day job with the BC Electric Railway Company, I have to, in order to keep pace with our communications strategy (much of which I've helped to design).

But there are times when I think Ned had a point.

Take, for example, QR code. Please.

Apparently, QR code, with a downloadable app on your mobile device (there's a sentence I never would have used two years ago!), enables you to pay for things directly through your cell phone, even (according to one CBC reporter who breathlessly described it to me a few weeks ago) ordering a latte from your SkyTrain ride and having it ready for you when you get off the train.

She didn't explain why I would want to do that, but that's not the point. The point is that now, one can debit one's bank or credit card account for practically anything, faster than the speed of thought.

And therein lies the issue.

The QR ("Quick Response") phenomenon does appear to be a boon for fundraisers. Show a poster with a gripping image of a person being helped by an organization, put the code on the poster, someone is moved by the image and can quickly make a donation to the cause and go about the rest of their lives. "Less than five bucks? Hey: no skin off my nose!", and on they go.

But what's the spirit behind that fundraising method? Is it a prayerful, considered contribution, or the same thought process that leads us to buy a package of Life Savers when we get to the cashier?

It makes our way of raising funds at Gospel Mission seem so Last Century -- cash, checks and credit card donations (and we only added the credit card option a year ago, when someone said that she couldn't find the credit card option on our website so she gave her donation to another organization, instead). But the whole success of our Mission -- surviving through 81 years and counting -- has been due to those old-time charitable contributions. When you actually sit down, write the check, count out the cash or fill out the credit card form, you find yourself thinking:

Whom am I giving this to?
have I done "due diligence" about the organization?
how will it be used?
whom does it benefit?
how does it benefit them?
is this a tithe or an offering?
how much?
can I afford to do this?
can I afford not to?
how else can I help?

By the time you get through that process, you've truly put thought into what you're doing.

The way the Lord has been providing for Gospel Mission -- and His provision for The Lord's Rain against all odds confirms it -- tells me there's something to be said for them old-time thought processes and we really don't need to go to Fundraising 2.0. People bringing in what they can, as they can, has worked since the time of the Tabernacle; as a result, we receive what we need, exactly as we need it. (Or, as Senior Pastor Barry Babcook puts it, God comes through in the 11th hour, 59th minute; a constant faith test for us.)

The spirit of prayerful consideration covers the contribution and thence the Mission itself. The people we minister to see the place as their Mission, supported by a variety of people with a variety of levels of means, from those contributing socks for the Vancouver Sock Exchange, to those handing over regular checks, to the occasional big-ticket donation. For many, it's a significant amount of skin off the nose, but it's something they're led to out of love and duty.

And so it has been this week, as an email arrived out of the blue from The W. Garfield Weston Foundation. Last year, The Foundation set up by the bakery and grocery corporation picked us to receive a $15,000 grant from a special fund set up to help charitable organizations like ours get through the economic downturn, when donations from "usual" sources could be expected to ease off. That was a one-time thing, so hearing from The Foundation that it would like to give us another $3000.00 was an unexpected and extremely welcome surprise. A letter from Wendy Rebanks, treasurer of The Foundation (one of Garfield's daughters and aunt of Mark W. Mitchell, who yesterday brought the check to the Mission personally), noted the success of The Lord's Rain both as a showers facility and a place to "escape the street and find friendly conversation".

To say we're grateful would grossly understate the case.

I mentioned the Vancouver Sock Exchange. It's about to receive another massive injection from Francis Heng's Spare Some Socks campaign -- part of his "Change Everything" initiative. Last year, he and his wife rustled up 450 pairs of socks, which took us several months to give away and led to the idea of the VSE, in which "street people" can turn in the socks they're wearing -- so long as they're still wearable -- and we wash them up and put them into "circulation" for others. Check out this video that Francis posted on his blog: http://www.changeeverything.ca/blog/francis/paul-socks-are-gold. "Paul"'s description of having to scrape the socks off his feet (because he'd worn them for so long) reminds me of the story the regional RCMP commander in Port Hardy told me about a homeless guy who'd been brought into the drunk tank there.

We also had a welcome visit from an anonymous donor who, with her son, brought in a boxload of socks and shampoo, having heard about us in a TV report about the recent cold snap in Vancouver.

Lives move forward -- recently, we posted Randall's testimony on God Tube. On Wednesday, Randall informed me he wants to go into Ministry and help others as he's been helped. Another brother, Marty, who started by coming to The Lord's Rain earlier this year and became a regular at Gospel Mission, has taken the big step of checking himself into a recovery program. It's times like these that we marvel at the works of God when people turn to Him through His Son.

Knowledge and Captivity

2010-12-02T08:52:00.000-08:00

One of the themes we promote at Gospel Mission is that people need to know God and His Word for themselves. Otherwise, they follow what they think the Word says -- or worse, what other people have told them the Word says -- and they miss out on their chance for a turnaround and a fresh start in their lives.

The theme of "Knowledge" has been working its way into our messages for much of the year. In the Spring, we started getting people at the Mission to take turns reading passages from Jesus' words -- the best way to get to know someone is by hearing what they said. Senior Pastor Barry Babcook last night started a series of Bible study lessons on Jesus' parables -- not just the "story" parables, but the metaphors He uses.

Here's a message that followed Randall's testimony on Sat. Nov. 27, on the topic "Knowledge and Captivity".

Randall's Testimony

2010-12-02T07:43:00.000-08:00

We encourage people to share their testimonies at Gospel Mission, and Randall Russell, one of the volunteers at the Mission and at The Lord's Rain downstairs, came forward and shared his recently. It's at the same time gut-wrenching and uplifting.

Testimonies are important: one can be skeptical and even cynical about the Bible and talk of miracles and the work of God, but you can't argue with a personal story. What's more, testimonies encourage others that they can have the same experience of salvation and transformation; and those who have already experienced that sometimes need to be reminded, themselves.

Since he gave this testimony, Randall has told me that even in the worst times, church was his refuge -- even for three hours a week -- and now he wants to go into Ministry, himself.

Men's Day -- has it come to this?

2010-11-22T06:59:00.000-08:00

John Gudmundson, writing in Suite.101, has an excellent piece on something that had been bugging me for a few days, now: International Men's Day. It was billed as a day to celebrate what it means to be a man, and John brilliantly encapsulated -- and, sadly, confirmed -- the reservations I'd had about it.

One of those reservations was wondering whether it had really come to this: that men have become so feminized -- from "manscaping"* to putting up with rather nasty jokes about the "typical man" (I came across one recently, which, had it been "tweaked" slightly and the genders reversed, would have been vilified as "sexist" and (in a different generation) MCP**) -- that we now have to have a day to look consider manliness.

Another thought was that it was a lot like my feelings about the secularization of Christmas. On the one hand, I get downright depressed when I see decorations and celebrations that totally ignore the One "whose birthday we're celebrating,' as Stan Freberg put it, especially when other religious/cultural festivals like Vaisakhi, Pride and Chinese New Year get wide-open, unabashed promotion. But then I ask myself if I would want Christmas to be viewed as "just another religious/cultural tradition". Same thing with a Day To Celebrate What It Means To Be A Man: as you said about the need for male role models, it should be self-evident.

From John's article, it's not clear whether the Biblical call on men -- as exemplified in Promise Keepers, etc. -- was covered at this Men's Day "forum". That would be something truly useful in society, especially when I think of the women we minister to and pray over and try to encourage as they struggle with drugs and other assorted demons. These are women who've been abused, knocked-up, had their children taken away because they're unfit mothers. One can't help wondering what would have happened if the men in their lives had been raised to know what it truly means to be a man -- husbands and fathers as God calls us to be. I can pretty much guarantee they wouldn't be wandering like zombies around Hastings Street, looking for their next fix.

*Thank heavens for those beer commercials for "The World's Most Interesting Man", whose commentary on "Manscaping" was, "I have no idea what this is".
** For those from a more recent generation, MCP means "Male Chauvinist Pig", referring to men who staunchly opposed any moves towards gender equity in society or the workplace.

Obituaries For Two Guys Who Might Not Get Obituaries

2010-10-16T08:21:00.000-07:00

The past two weeks have seen the loss of two friends, both of whom were drawing ever closer to Christ and are now, I'm sure, experiencing the Grace and Peace that surpass all understanding.

Chris Brereton was 55 and was something of a physical wreck for much of the time I'd known him -- which would be just about 30 years. A lot of it was generally attributed to "the usual suspects" -- eating too much, drinking too much, not exercising enough, sciatica, etc. etc. But according to his fiancee, some of the symptoms that he had put down to "aches and pains and sciatica" were actually the effects of cancer, and by the time that was determined, it had ravaged his skeletal structure and there was no holding it back.

Chris was a fixture around local sports for decades. We got to know each other in press boxes at Pacific Coliseum, Cyclone Taylor Arena and Empire Stadium. He was official scorekeeper and semi-official statistician for UBC Hockey for something like 30 years -- and for about that long at lacrosse, senior and junior, painstakingly hand-writing stats and compiling statistical histories of teams in the WLA and BCJLL (hand-writing, even after computers had taken most of the grunt work).

I think his happiest times were hanging out with that crowd -- the constellation of young players and old retired guys who still limped from long-ago injuries, enjoying being part of that unique camaraderie. He had an easy familiarity, too, with retired pro hockey players like Larry Popein, George Wood and Charlie Hodge -- guys I'd looked up to since I was a kid ("Pope" and Wood were my first hockey instructors, and Hodge was a star with Les Canadiens -- my team -- in the 60s).

One of Chris' talents that amazed me was an ability to do a mental "instant replay" of every goal scored. He'd make note of the players on the ice or the floor, and 85% of the time, I'd say, he'd have the scoring play -- goal-scorer and both assists -- before the referee would come over to give it to us. Often, the ref would ask Chris what he saw. He was passionate and exacting about the job he did, and it was clear that it was his calling. It amazed me how he would haul himself through all manner of traffic and weather conditions (and all kinds of gasoline prices!) to get to the games from his place in Langley, but it was what he loved to do.

One of his proudest moments came when the Thunderbirds recognized the work he and John Iorio -- the longtime clock operator -- had done over 20-some years. (Officially, there were some shirts and other recognition, but one of Chris' legacies to UBC Hockey is the heavy netting draped over the timekeepers' booth. That was a safety measure taken after when a puck came over the glass and took out most if not all of Chris' teeth when he had his head down during a game. How a puck could make that kind of arc and still have sufficient force to do that kind of damage is more than I can tell you. That may not be exactly the memorial anyone would have in mind ... )

Personally, I owe a lot to Chris Brereton. In what was clearly a God Thing, we collided again after several years of no contact -- what with my living in Victoria and Regina between 1983 and 2003 -- while we were both delivering newspapers in Surrey and Langley. There must be a thousand pick-up spots for newspapers in the Lower Mainland, and we wound up at the same one. I was just emerging from what had been the darkest time of my life, and delivering papers at 3am was not the reason.

I owe a lot to Chris Brereton, and I'm not sure he ever knew it. Along about April '04, he told me the Surrey Stickmen needed a PA announcer. That started a 5-year association with the club, during a heady time when they came within 5 seconds of getting into the Minto Cup playoffs. But even more importantly, he also put me onto UBC Athletics when they needed an announcer for women's hockey. That led to UBC basketball and other great opportunities, like the 2006 World Junior Hockey Championships and nearly into the Winter Olympics. When John Ashbridge managed to get a game puck for me from the World Juniors, I knew exactly who was getting it.

There was a more spiritual aspect to my relationship with Chris. In 2005, his wife, also named Diane, fell gravely ill. She'd had diabetes for many years and had been getting around in a wheelchair. Then her legs were amputated and there was a battery of other ailments that landed her in critical care at St Paul's Hospital. Chris asked if I'd go up with him. The night before, I met up with an evangelist friend of mine, Rob Gordon, and asked him how you pray healing over someone if you're not sure they believe. "Start by witnessing," he said. "Tell them your story, and show them the Scripture to back it up." So when Chris picked me up, I did just that (I do have a "story" about healing) and asked if he minded if I prayed over her. "Well ... I dunno ... let me talk to her kids." Sure - no problem.

Diane was not conscious when we got there, so I spent time listening -- listening to Chris and the nurse discussing her condition and listening in the Spirit to what I needed to do. I sat quietly in a corner and prayed. After a while, Chris said, "let's go for coffee," so we went up to the cafeteria. "You know," he said, "if you want to do ... that ... I think it's OK." "Well," I told him, "I already got started while we were in the room." "Great."

A couple of days later, Chris called. "Whatever it was you were doing, keep doing it! She woke up! She started talking! They were going to move her to hospice, but now they don't think they need to!" The next time Chris and I went up to the hospital, Diane was awake and alert. She asked me to read some of the Bible to her, so I read her some passages about healing and Psalm 92, which contains the promise of protection from sickness.

But the illness was too much for her body. A few weeks later, Chris called. "Diane passed away this morning," he said. "Can you come up?" I did. Her adult children from her first marriage were in the room -- and so was she: face uncovered, as if she was part of the conversation.

"I counted eight miracles since that day you prayed over her," Chris said. "Eight times she rallied or something happened that amazed the doctors." There was a pause. "Do you think she's with the Lord?" There was no doubt.

After a few months, Chris met another woman, also named Diane. New Diane is a Believer, and with his appetite whetted, Chris started drawing closer: she took him to church, and she told me that in the last weeks, he confessed Jesus as Lord.

Chris' spiritual change led to yet another major move in my own life. A couple of years ago, he asked me if I was qualified to marry people. I told him no. It wasn't the first time I'd been asked that, but this instance was the one that dug the spurs into my side to do something about it. This past summer, I was licensed through the International Association of Ministries to perform marriages in BC. I emailed Chris to let him know, in case he and Diane still wanted me to officiate.

And shortly after the phone rang last night, I found out why I hadn't heard back.

Diane told me Chris restored her self-esteem. Someone told Chris after the first Diane had died that he brought out the best in her. As I say, he kicked open a few key doors for me, and judging by the way he never said anything -- and I mean "never" and "anything" -- to try to claim credit for it, I wonder if he ever knew.

But Someone does, and I believe Chris is getting one sweet reward now.

=======

Pete died this week.

Pete has been someone I think of often, when I think of transformation revival on the Downtown East Side. Certainly, I've spoken about him in my talks to churches, as evidence of the way that exposure to the Word of God and His Grace can turn people's lives around.

When I first met him, he was one of those people I'd cringe when he'd come in because he had this enormous chip on his shoulder. Short and wiry, bald but with a stringy pony tail, he'd limp into the Mission on severely bowed legs and sit and look totally bored through the sermon, twisting in his chair to look at the clock every so often. We usually wrap up the sermon and serve food by 8, so if the time got around to 7:55, he'd start to fidget ... by 8, he'd begin muttering "let's pray ... come-on!", because he knew that was the prelude to the food ... and if perchance the service, lesson or whatever dragged on to 8:15 he'd start muttering little obscenities.

Sometimes, he wouldn't mutter.

But he kept coming ... largely because another brother, Jacques, kept dragging him in, determined that Pete was going to get saved come hell or high water.

(Jacques is actually known as Jack, but he signs his name "Jacques Robinson" ... a very rough-hewn type from Alberta -- I think his mother's the French influence in the family. Jacques/Jack is another study in transformation ... for another time.)

And little by little Pete's whole demeanour changed. He certainly stopped fidgeting; but he also started smiling. When he'd walk into the Mission, John would lead a loud chorus of "Heeey, Pete!" -- rather like "NORM!" on "Cheers!". He'd sit with Jacques in the front row, the two of them looking more like Statler and Waldorf, the two old guys on The Muppet Show, than anything else. But I believe the message of Grace was starting to sink in.

"You hear that, Peter?" Jacques would say at a key point in the sermon, "he's talkin' to you!' "He's prayin' for you, ya know!" "Jesus did that for you!" Jacques was one of Pete's biggest cheerleaders.

Like everyone on the DTES, Pete had a "story". His real name was Lewis Miner -- something I didn't know for the first couple of years .. and something Pete didn't know until he was about 16. Turns out that was his given name, but he was raised by his grandmother, who -- for whatever reason -- didn't give him the whole story. Whether that was a cause of Lewis/Pete turning to a life of crime is pure speculation, but Pete did wind up seeing the inside of a lot of prisons over the years. He killed a man in a fight and was sent to the old BC Pen for manslaughter. He broke out -- like that another man named Miner, Billy, had done 60 years before -- using his slight, wiry frame to shinny up the inside of a chimney.

"How far did you get?" I asked. "They caught me on the railroad tracks," he said, sheepishly.

He did more time for more things and drank a lot, which eventually led him to the Downtown East Side. I don't know how many years he was there, or even whether he had chances to pull out and hold down a job for any length of time. He came across as a throwback to the first DTES denizens I used to observe in the mid-60s, when I rode the #20/25 bus through the DTES to and from school: the classic "street drunk". He was also the definition of the miserable old sod when I first met him ... and then gradually softened, opened up, and in his way, I believe responded both to being exposed to the Word and getting Jacques' tireless, gruff witness.

I believe he came to a realization that he was hitting his early 70s and that he couldn't think of anything to show for it. It was time for him to look for some other way of measuring his life.

Early this year, Jacques came in alone and came over to me. "Pete's got cancer. They're giving him treatments, so we'll see." We prayed for him that night. The next Saturday night, Pete came in. "How're you doin'?" I asked him. "I got cancer," he said, grinning.

He came to a couple more services, and then I didn't see him again. Jacques would give progress reports and tell where Pete was staying. I always made a mental note to get over and see him. That didn't happen. Ever.

Pete was -- and remains -- one of the ones I think of when I talk about the victories, big and small, that we see on the Downtown East Side. I'm going to miss him. A lot.

===

If there's been any lesson from the past year -- more than any other -- it's been DON'T PROCRASTINATE! Chris and Peter are two guys I'd always "been meaning to" call or get together with, and the Holy Spirit was screaming at me to do it before it was too late. Same thing with my friend Joyce, whose husband was diagnosed with cancer this past spring: I put off calling her to see how she was doing, and one morning the Spirit woke me up at 5 to remind me. So I called ... and found out later that her husband had died that morning -- around 5.

Are we so busy that we can't take 5 minutes for a phone call or an email? Are we afraid we don't know what to say? We don't have to wax poetical or philosophical like Jean-Marc Genereux on So You Think You Can Dance Canada: just saying "how are you?" or "I'm here" is all that's needed. When I was sick a couple of years ago, a dear friend from church called, and that was basically all she said; when my dad had a heart attack in August, people from work took a moment to put their head in my office or call or email and say exactly that. It may not seem like much, but it's huge. And it's a lot better than standing on the sideline saying, "I'd been meaning to call ..."

Live from Gospel Mission

2010-10-06T07:18:00.000-07:00

As we mentioned in the previous posting (see previous posting), the TV is now installed in The Lord's Rain and we're ready to start our live closed-circuit feeds so that people with disabilities can take part in our services.

Now ... how to get the word out. It's to be a "soft launch", as we PR types call it. My friends, Viv Garcia and Brad Jacobsen with the BC Paraplegic Association have agreed to help publicize it within the disability community and thus inform those on the Downtown East Side that this is available.

Viv, in fact, is linking this from the BCPA Facebook page, so here are the basic details:

Services at Gospel Mission -- 331 Carrall Street -- are now available to persons with disabilities via closed-circuit TV to The Lord's Rain -- Gospel Mission's showers program at 327 Carrall Street (the ground-floor space below the Mission).

Services are at the following times:
SUNDAY 12:30pm
MONDAY, TUESDAY, FRIDAY & SATURDAY 6:30pm
(meals served after each service)

WEDNESDAY Bible study 6:30pm (no meal, but snack afterwards)
THURSDAY Movie night 6:30pm (no meal, but coffee & popcorn)

As of right now, the plan is to cut off entry at 7pm, so's not to disturb the service, but we'll review that as needed.

=====
Bravo to Daphne Bramham in The Vancouver Sun, for her column on the recent Ontario court ruling effectively legalizing prostitution. She dismisses the blather about rights and individual choice far more effectively than I could, but I look at the once-beautiful women on the DTES, whose bodies have been ravaged by drugs and who continue to sell their bodies to get more money to buy more drugs, and I wonder why anyone would want to make it easier for that to happen.

Daphne also points out that the ruling sends a message to boys and men that it's OK to buy sex. Speaking on my own account, how would they really learn about love and fidelity and the special relationship between a man and a woman if that message is coming loud and clear from legal circles?

=====
Yet another drug bust, headlined in the media with the dollar-value of the amount seized. As I ranted in another post, the media have a nasty habit of glamorizing the drug trade at the same time that they profess shock and outrage. They talk about the value of the drugs and discuss with lascivious glee the lifestyles lived by dealers and "drug lords". Let's get real: no matter how the media try to push the "crime does not pay" message, there are always going to be people reading, watching and listening, who will add "for them", and determine that, for that kind of money, they could do it better and not get caught.

Instead of publicizing the value of the drugs, why not give an estimate of the number of people whose lives were not destroyed because those drugs won't make it to market? How about an estimate of the health care costs that won't be flushed down the toilet in treating the manifold effects of drug abuse, or of the police, ambulance and firefighting costs that will be saved by not having to deal with that many more cases among the street people that the seized drugs would have created?

Perhaps that would make a good little J-school assignment.

Why We Do What We Do

2010-09-29T05:23:00.000-07:00

*** Slightly gross but too true dep't ... ***

Question: what does a TV have that a human on the Downtown East Side doesn't?
Answer: secure waste disposal.

I was about to throw a pile of styrofoam packaging into the dumpster in the alley next to Gospel Mission last week when I realized I was not alone. A man was relieving himself against the wall next to the dumpster.

I gave him some respectful distance, and when he had left, I then unlocked the dumpster and chucked the packaging in; replaced the padlock and got back in my car. As I drove down the alley, I couldn't help thinking that we were treating our garbage with more diligence than our brothers and sisters. The styrofoam got placed in a padlocked bin. This poor fellow had to go in the alley. (There are OT references to "those who pisseth against the wall", but I don't think that's what God was referring to.)

I also remembered something one of "the guys" told me: "the city is spending $12,000 to do a study, counting human waste in the alley". "What do they need a study for?" was my reply. "We know it's there: give us the $12,000 and we'll help fix it."

I looked online and couldn't find a reference to such a study, but I did find a whole bunch of other references to the problem of human waste in the alleys, going back almost 10 years. The latest study could be a myth -- like the cadborosaurus or intelligent talk radio -- but there's no question that this situation has been discussed for years, with appropriate wailing and gnashing of teeth, that "somebody" has to provide a washroom for these people.

Often, the discussion will stall (pardon me) when someone says, "TransLink should put public washrooms in its stations!" Then there'll be a long and patient explanation (usually from your agent) as to why that idea is a non-starter (and Arlene can tell you that even though New York has restrooms in 25% of the subway stations, you don't want to use those!), and then someone will say, "see? It's all about money!"

And that's where it ends. Can you say, "paralysis through analysis," boys and girls?

As part of the Pigeon Park makeover, the City installed a public restroom. That was before the Olympics. I ran into an acquaintance from the Engineering department a couple of weeks ago. "The washroom will be working soon," he told me.

And this is why we do what we do at The Lord's Rain. Now, people do have a place to relieve themselves that's clean, sanitary and lets them wash their hands afterwards. They also have a place to shower and hang out. Amelia talks about the times she's heard someone say, "I feel human again".

The difference, of course, is in the level of responsibility. City governments are responsible to taxpayers, and even though people may wring their hands over how bad something is, if they have other spending priorities, those bad things get shoved down the list. Or studied in order to create a business case with a fully-funded implementation strategy.

As a Mission, we answer to a different Commander, who has unlimited resources and for whom empirical observation is the only "study" required. He'll draw our attention to something and say, "Go. Do." And He provides. Which is how The Lord's Rain got built and is operated.

Last week, Gospel Mission held its board meeting in The Lord's Rain (the Tuesday night service was going on upstairs) when a young couple walked in the door, saying they'd been told at one of the shelters they could get a shower. "They told us this place was open from 7 till 8:30," the woman said. "AM," I pointed out gently, and they left. There was a slight double-take around the table, and Barry said, "any of you [the board] mind if we invite them back?" No objection. I raced out and caught them at the corner.

They were from the Ottawa area. "Gatineau, really," the young man said, "but no one out here knows where that is, so we just say 'Ottawa'." (I know! I know! My step-daughter lives in Ottawa!) They came in and showered and used the hair dryer and got into clean clothes. And the Board -- who come in from North Van and Surrey -- got to see first-hand what we do.

Evidently, we were supposed to be in The Lord's Rain that night for reasons other than the Board meeting. As often happens, I'm torn between hoping we'll see them again -- maybe for a service upstairs -- and hoping that we don't -- which will mean that they were just passing through the Downtown East Side. I think you know what I mean.

===

The styrofoam packaging I mentioned at the beginning was from the TV. In a previous email, you may recall, I mentioned that, when we were visiting The Oasis last month, Gerry and Brandon Wall stepped up and announced that they would cover the cost of a big-screen TV, so we could set up a closed circuit hookup and allow people with disabilities to take part in the service. Last week, we went to Best Buy and picked up a 50" plasma TV. On Tuesday, Barry mounted it on the wall, and now we just need to connect it and it will be in business.

I think we're already seeing signs that it will be appreciated. Debbie, one of our quasi-regulars at The Lord's Rain, noticeably perked up when we told her what we were doing. She's bent double from scoliosis, and has only been up to the Mission a couple of times in the 3-1/2 years I've been there. But she often brings a Bible into the Lord's Rain and reads it, or asks questions or shares things she's found, and being able to take part in the service will be a great comfort for her. Jim Ritchie, a brother who's paralyzed on one side after a stroke four years ago and who uses a walker to get around, is a faithful attendee at our services, but I can tell it's getting harder and harder for him to make it up the stairs now (he's 66 years old). I think he, too, will be happy to have an alternative.

===
Cheers, Waves, and thank you!

For the past year, we have tremendously blessed to receive coffee donated by Waves Coffee. Thanks to that -- and Danilo's "formula" for making it and using just the right amount of sugar and creamer (for a number of reasons, we pre-mix the coffee) -- we've developed a reputation for the best coffee on the Downtown East Side. Truly, there are few things that make friends like a good cup of coffee. However, Waves has told us that they can no longer support us. I understand there are other causes that need their help, so we pray continued blessing on Waves and are truly grateful for the help they've given us.

Is this a "setback"? Not at all: it's an opportunity for someone else to step up. Gospel Mission is a ministry built on faith, and for the past 81 years, the Lord has found nifty ways to provide all our needs: I'm looking forward to seeing how He does it this time!

The Lord's Rain, The Mission and The Family

2010-09-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

If you're old enough to remember the 1979 World Series, you'll remember that Willie "Pops" Stargell dubbed his Pittsburgh Pirates "The Family". They wore ghastly yellow uniforms and pillbox-style caps, which someone apparently thought were evocative of old-time baseball (some turn-of-the-century teams did wear them, but let's be honest: there's a reason why they're styled the way they are today), and Wilver (as broadcaster Vin Scully would call him -- note the autograph on the old Topps baseball card) would hand out gold "Stargell Stars" for his teammates to put on their caps when they did something great.

As I recall, there were a lot of gold stars on the Pirates' caps; they were a great team.

A group really has to grow into a "family" -- common experiences, common goals, love-led tolerance of one another's faults, are all important conditions, and it's not something imposed from on-high. When a union made noises about organizing a TV station I worked at some years ago, management called an "emergency general meeting" to remind us that we were really a "family". The pep talk was greeted with mild skepticism by some and serious skepticism by the rest. On the other hand, the place where I work now has simply developed into a family. People truly care about one another, both professionally and personally: when my dad had a heart attack 3 weeks ago, pretty much everyone right up to the CEO would look in at my office and see how dad was doing and if I was OK. It's not something you can impose through some consultant's report or a mission statement from a corner office: it either happens, or it doesn't.

It happens at Gospel Mission and The Lord's Rain. People who come in are not "clients" or "the homeless" -- they're "the guys" (even if they're female): they're friends ... they're family.

When Richard Johnson's "ol' lady" died suddenly this summer, he knew he was welcome just to hang out and the others would just sit with him -- even if they didn't actually say anything. Others know that The Lord's Rain is a friendly light in the morning where they can go; little by little, we get to know them and they start to open up. It takes time, patience, love ... and absolutely no expectations.

On Saturday, Amelia stepped up and asked the guys to pray for me -- relating to dad's heart attack -- saying "you guys rely on Drew -- and he relies on you, too". Which was very true. And then, wondrously, Richard Cunningham (who told me earlier this year that his dad used to play in the Negro Leagues and that he remembers his mom making biscuits for Hank Aaron) spoke up and asked for prayer for himself, too, as his mother has Alzheimer's and is in the last stages of her life -- and he's having a tough time of it. (Richard testifies often about his faith and feeling of being welcomed back to the Lord when he slips -- he's battling a crack addiction -- and talks a lot about his mother. "My mama said, 'I didn't raise no fool', and I want to make sure she's right.")

The fact that Richard felt comfortable enough to speak up at that time is another indication of the "family" we've become. It also reminded me I'm not alone.

It's become hard to separate The Lord's Rain from Gospel Mission -- the soft evangelism downstairs from the overt preaching upstairs: one way or another, people are hearing the word, seeing the light and being reminded that they are God's workmanship, fearfully and wonderfully made.

====

Photo album: Another chapter in Extreme Makeover: Mission Edition. A paint job in the back of The Lord's Rain -- next to the shower stalls.

With bare drywall and splotches of filler, it wasn't exactly the nicest thing to look at. Functional, yes -- the wall holds up the ceiling very well and we've NEVER been able to look through it into Wing's Cafe next door -- but a little style would be nice.

Late last week, John -- husband of Teresa Mancia, who leads the services on Monday nights and runs The Lord's Rain during middays on Mondays and Fridays -- took brush in hand and went to work. Looks much nicer, dontcha think?

We've been praying for people to come forward to get The Lord's Rain open in the early mornings six days a week. One of our goals has been to give people a place to go once the shelters show them the door, and so far, we're only doing that twice a week. We still need to be open in the early AM on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.

One of our guys, Randall, has stepped forward, saying he'd be willing to make sure the doors are open -- but now we need teams to run the place: so again, please pray that the Lord of the Harvest will send the workers we need to run The Lord's Rain on those days from 6:30 or 7am until about 9.

Actually, as you can see by the picture, Randall didn't exactly step forward so much as he hobbled. He wrenched his knee over a year ago, and has been getting around with his knee in a brace -- or sometimes not. Last week, he was helping in the kitchen (he's a cook by trade), despite doctor's orders to STAY OFF THE LEG.

Come the end of the service, he was getting ready to mop the floor, when Barry (standing) told him to sit down, put his leg up, and he'd mop the floor. So Randall did. Barry mopped. Randall got up to leave. And slipped on the wet floor. Now, doctors are talking about surgery. This means Randall will definitely need help with The Lord's Rain!

Earlier this month, I sent out a plea for financial support. I don't normally do that, but every year or so, it seems, I just need to send that gentle reminder to people. So far, there's been a good response and we're grateful for that. This Mission has been built on the many-members-one-body approach, where people bring what they can into the storehouse -- large or small -- and it all fits together. Remember: we are set up to take credit card donations now through www.gospelmission.net and you can support me in the Ride For Refuge coming up on Oct. 16.

What's a headline worth?

2010-09-16T06:55:00.000-07:00

The media in Vancouver are all over the story of the seizure of opium buds at Vancouver International Airport. Prominent among the details is the estimated dollar-value of the drugs on the street.

Why must the media report that? (I'll get to the standard, defensive answer that you get from a newsroom shortly.) All that does is let people know that it's possible to make that amount of money dealing drugs, and increase the desirability of that occupation. "Hmm ..." one could say, "if I needed to make a quick twenty grand, that's the way to do it." The fact that the stuff was seized -- i.e. that police at least intercepted the cargo -- only increases the challenge to "do it right next time".

Newsrooms will defend their action by saying that "that's what the police told us in their news release", but does no one in the newsroom run the information that goes out through the "public interest" filter?

I remember, when I was starting out in broadcast journalism, the local RCMP seized a stash of marijuana. Big deal in 1981, but doesn't even merit a second glance on the cops' charge sheet now. Wanting to be cool and get an angle I thought would interest people, I asked what the street value was. "Oh, we don't give that information out," the police officer said. I asked my boss if I should call a friend of mine who was involved with drugs. He said -- to my surprise -- "you don't want to promote that -- it might give someone else the idea."

It made sense.

Now, we fast-forward almost 30 years to see the police giving out the dollar figure (maybe they get a charge out of telling the public how much "business" they've been able to shut down) and the media dutifully parrotting it. (And I know the media can be selective, as I've found in my own dealings with them as a public information officer, with the number of times certain extenuating details are ignored -- and others are misreported.)

Worse, just over a year ago, there was a high-profile trial of a drug gang member, and the daily fishwraps showed a front-page photo of the accused's brother -- not exactly an angel, in his own right -- arriving in court, looking like something off the cover of GQ. A stunning (unidentified) young woman was at his side.

And it's clear, watching from Gospel Mission, which is right in the teeth of the worst alley in Vancouver, that a lot of young men are buying into that image. Good-looking, clean-cut young men, wearing hoodies, talking on cell phones and not really doing much -- although they do tend to vanish just ahead of the police, rather like salmon when an orca comes through.

Aren't we supposed to be discouraging young people from going into lives of crime -- in particular, dealing drugs and muscling into gangs? Don't we shake our heads in disbelief and disgust at the scene on the Downtown East Side, which is the fruit of that labour? Why, then, do the media insist on glamorizing the industry by reporting on "value" of a seizure and material wealth acquired by dealers.

Don't reporters understand the impact? It may be a grabbing headline one day: but it could lead someone to a life-changing -- and life-destroying decision.

The real picture of the DTES

2010-08-09T16:33:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago at Westpointe, I shared the story of Davona, the young woman who'd been a "fixture" for a while at The Lord's Rain but who recently had a baby: a confirmation that, even as we're surrounded by the death and despair on the Downtown East Side, God still wants LIFE to show forth and win out. Pastor Jon Boyd remarked afterwards that you hardly ever hear about good news out of the area -- the media and the activists who command attention know that bad news sells and good news is no news.

I may be a little late to the party with this one, but I discovered a TV series over the weeend that is the most realistic portrayal of the DTES I've seen in the six-plus years I've been ministering in the area. Actually, my mother-in-law in Toronto had been talking it up for some time: "The Beat", airing on OLN Saturdays at 10PM and Sundays at 9pm (Eastern), or online at http://www.oln.ca/details.php?id=99.

It's a reality show, focusing on Vancouver Police patrolling the Downtown East Side, dealing with the drug addicts and dealers, the prostitutes and the others generally labelled "street people". And rather than serving up the usual doom-and-despair that the popmedia give us about the DTES, I actually got a pretty good feeling from watching it. It has a very positive tone, showing police as compassionate individuals who truly care about the people they encounter on the DTES.

Talk about against-the-grain thinking!

I was reminded of the son of a friend of mine who's been on the VPD force for just about a year now, and whose hope has been to be assigned to the DTES.

The popmedia portrayal -- egged on by those "activists" -- is generally that cops are violent psychopaths who abuse poor, helpless vulnerable people. Of course, that's the image that gets the headline and the 40-second video clip. (Funny how scenes of police stopping to chat with a street person, helping them if they're lying on the street, or just keeping drug dealers off-balance, never seem to get "caught on tape".)

The episodes I caught last night went against-the-grain in another way: giving voice to the utter disdain the police have for Vancouver's "safe injection site". Many of you already know how I feel about it. It's a human experiment that has failed miserably, as evidenced by the fact that the situation of drugs, crime, homelessness and poverty has grown worse since InSite opened. A stat that came out from the police in last night's show was that, in 2001, the needle-exchange program dealt out about 180,000 needles; by 2009, that figure had ballooned to 3-million. Yet, as one of the cops said, getting anyone in the mainstream media to report a "contrarian" viewpoint is nearly impossible.

But it's like the little kid in "The Emperor's New Clothes": everyone's so blinded by the flash and glare of the myth that they can't see the truth. I've often said that Jesus is not about "harm reduction": He's about harm elimination. The solution involves getting people off drugs, rather than making it "healthier" for them, and you start by instilling the Hope of Christ in their lives. Things like InSite and needle exchanges make our jobs a lot tougher. But with God, nothing is impossible, and that's the good news.

(We note that the last two mayors who were ardent supporters of InSite only lasted one term, and they and the previous mayor -- who helped initiate it -- were all fragged by their own parties. Perhaps God is sending a political message?)

For all its grittiness and cinéma vérité, "The Beat" gives a good-news portrayal, showing up-close-and-personal what we deal with, without getting mired in the doom-and-despair thing. Well worth watching, and you might be moved, as I was, to fire off a letter of appreciation to OLN and to Galafilm, the producers.

Pickton and the coals of fire

2010-08-02T13:13:00.000-07:00

If you want to stir up some heated discussion around The Lord's Rain, bring up the case of Robert "Willie" Pickton. I was out of town when the latest development came up -- the Supreme Court of Canada, upholding his convictions on six counts of murder and the Crown opted to stay the charges on 20 other counts -- so I haven't heard what's being said this time by the people who come in.

Certainly, the media coverage has created great opportunities for newspaper columnists to do the Righteous Outrage thing. They're great at that. One went absolutely over the top in expressing his fervent emotions about the heinousness of his crimes and -- rather fatuously, I thought -- called on Pickton to "man up" and tell what happened to the others. Another darkly hinted that "important people" might get tarnished if there were a public inquiry.

By way of a recap, Pickton was charged after literally dozens of women went missing from the Downtown East Side over a period of several years. The movements of the victims, many of whom were prostitutes and drug addicts, were eventually traced to a pig farm owned by Pickton and his brother in Port Coquitlam -- just east of Vancouver. Police eventually gathered the evidence that led them to Pickton. He was the only one charged. The details of the deaths that came out at trial can best be summed up with one word: horrific.

Some say that it's a relief that, without proceeding with charges in the other 20 cases (he's also suspected in about 20 missing-women cases on top of these 26) or holding a public inquiry into the case, we won't have to hear about the details all over again. Others say the families of the other 20 are being denied "closure" -- whatever that is -- because their loved ones' day in court won't happen. There is an underlying assumption that without a conviction, there will never be justice for the families of the victims.

As I say, Pickton has often been a subject of conversation around The Lord's Rain. Some of the people who come in knew the victims, and the recurring theme isn't so much the allegations of police inaction on the initial reports of missing people, but they do wonder how Pickton could have acted alone.

Shannon, whom I've mentioned before as the first woman I've known on the DTES who actually admitted to having been a prostitute, knew some of the victims and remarked recently how tremendously blessed she felt that she hadn't been one of them, herself. She went on to talk about what she'd like to do to him. Her talk was along the lines of "I'm not in favor of the death penalty, but ...", and I found it hard to disagree.

Then Jeff broke into the conversation. "Forgive him," he said.

Jeff is the sort of person who can provide exactly the word one needs to keep things in perspective, and this was one of those times. According to the word of God, that's exactly what this situation calls for: something to break the legalistic logjam and get away from the hand-wringing that the legal system has let people down. Jesus tells us flat-out that we have to forgive those who have wronged us -- even if that wrong is torturing and murdering someone we love. Bless those who curse you, He says; pray for those who despitefully use you. Proverbs 25:21-22 (echoed by the Apostle Paul in Romans 12:20) says that in so doing, we heap coals of fire on that person's head. Keep that in mind -- we'll come back to that shortly.

If we forgive someone, Jesus says, we'll be forgiven by God for the things we've done wrong. The act goes much deeper. Even though our fleshly desire is to gain revenge on that person, if we suppress that desire and follow God's will by forgiving, that releases God to work that will over the whole situation. We release the person from the burden of our hating them and release ourselves from that same burden.

OK, so the legal system has failed the families of those allegedly killed by Robert "Willie" Pickton. Another aspect of forgiveness is that you don't have to wait for a court of law to decide beyond a shadow of a doubt. Even if you only suspect someone wronged you, forgiving them still lets God get to work, either proving guilt or exposing the person who was really responsible. If the families of those victims were to declare that they forgive Pickton -- unconditionally and without reservation -- they might be surprised at what follows.

As for the "coals of fire" reference, I believe that has a number of meanings. You could say that the coals of fire represent the burning feeling of guilt and shame that comes when someone has taken the high road and forgiven someone else -- leading, presumably, to the one who's been forgiven reciprocating by doing whatever it is that God wants of them. But fire is often used to connote the Holy Spirit, so once again, forgiving someone touches them with the anointing they need. In the long run, justice and closure -- real justice and closure -- follow as the night the day.

Too often, our society mistakes "revenge" for "justice". To God, justice comes when His will is done. The world's approach has run out of avenues for the people affected by the Pickton case. Maybe it's time to look at God's approach.

What would Jesus doodle?

2010-07-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

In John 8, it’s recorded that the scribes and Pharisees hauled a woman in front of Jesus, telling Him that she’d been caught in the act of adultery and that, according to the law Moses gave, she should be stoned to death. The Scripture tells us that rather than answer them straightway, Jesus stooped down and started writing or drawing something in the dirt. Eventually, He stands up and says, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her”. And one by one, they’re all convicted and slink away.

Then He tells the girl, “go and sin no more”.

But aside from two of the more famous lines in the Bible, this account contains one of the great puzzlements in Scripture, and often I’ve heard people musing on it. “I wonder,” they say, “what Jesus was writing in the dirt? Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to look over Jesus’ shoulder and see what He was drawing?”

I’d thought of that, myself: one of those angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin posers that occupy our time every once in a while and then we move on to other things.

Then, just over a week ago, I got gobsmacked with the answer: it doesn’t matter.

John himself writes that Jesus did so many things in His time on earth, that there isn’t enough ink and paper in the world to write them all down. So evidently, when John wrote his Gospel, it was more or less a highlight reel of Jesus’ ministry. What he put in was enough for us to believe, so “that believing [we] might have life through His name” (John 20:31), and what he left out was not important enough.

So what Jesus wrote or drew wasn’t important. What was important was the fact that He was stooped down, drawing in the dirt.

Jesus lowered Himself below the level of the adulteress and got His hands dirty.

The “good” people stood off – a stone’s throw away, literally – and couldn’t even bring themselves to threaten her up-close-and-personal. Jesus dirtied His hands. What’s more, He made Himself vulnerable. In the story of Gideon in the Book of Judges, we read that God instructed Gideon to send home those soldiers who went down on their knees to drink and made themselves vulnerable to attack.

That’s more or less the essence of ministry on the Downtown East Side. We need to lower ourselves so that we’re not higher than the people we serve*, and not worry about whether we’re vulnerable. We need to be prepared to get our hands dirty. And there’s one more thing we can learn from this passage.

Was Jesus being rude or cavalier in not responding immediately to the Pharisees? No: He was doing something the other three Gospels tell us He told us to do; wait for the Holy Spirit.

See, there were other things Jesus could have done -- things the world might have expected any man with an ounce of compassion to do, given the same situation.

He could have stood valiantly between her and the accusers and shielded her from the stoning. He could even have dared them to take Him out first. Somebody might have done that, too; heaven knows there were enough people ready to stone him, too. But even if He had done that and everyone had left without throwing anything, that wouldn’t have accomplished God’s purpose.
He could have called them on the fact that the man involved had not been arrested and pointed out that Moses’ law was gender-blind. But that would only have convicted them to find the guy and then they’d be right back where they’d started – namely, discussing whether they both should be stoned -- and wouldn’t have accomplished God’s purpose.
He could have shown the world’s version of compassion – sympathy – and lectured the accusers on the hard life the woman probably had and how they had to cut her a break. But considering that God is no respecter of persons, that wouldn’t have accomplished God’s purpose.
He could also have gotten “legalistic” on them and reminded them that Roman law prohibited them from killing anybody – something the chief priests told Pilate when they wanted him to crucify Jesus – and that could have defused the situation right there. But that wouldn’t have accomplished God’s purpose, either.

Instead, He waited for the words the Holy Spirit would give Him – just as He told us to do when called on to defend our faith. Then, He spoke the word of God over the situation and His purpose was accomplished, namely:

The accusers were convicted to examine their own hearts
The woman got a new chance on life – with the proviso to “sin no more”

It’s interesting that John’s is the one Gospel that does not record that instruction to us, but he shows Jesus actually setting the example. And that’s an important example for any ministry – especially places like the Downtown East Side.

See, when we’re faced with issues like drugs and crime, poverty and prostitution, homelessness and the other ills of urban poor areas, the human, worldly response is to Do Something. And when that doesn’t work, then we want to Do Something Else. And that leads to such dangerous concepts as safe injection sites, and other concepts that are billed as helping people but rather enable them to continue along their slow death, rather than bringing real healing.

Don’t just DO something – stand there!

We need to remember that when the world is yelling all around us, challenging anyone to come up with a solution; we need to go quiet, drop down to the level of the people we’re helping and spend some time on our knees doodling in the dirt, waiting for the word of God to come to us.

It will always be right, and right on time.

Always.

====

*In The Passion of the Christ, the scene shows the woman being flung onto the ground at Jesus’ feet and staying there. That’s a more dramatic interpretation, certainly, but according to John, she remained standing in the midst of the crowd with Jesus beside her, even after He’d bent down and after all her accusers had slunk away.

Disciples more than dollars - no: really!

2010-07-11T22:41:00.000-07:00

"The harvest truly is plenteous, but we don't have enough money and our work falls through the cracks of any government programs."
-- Jesus, upon looking at the multitudes with compassion.
-- Not.

Actually, in Matthew 9:37, Jesus says the problem is the lack of labourers, and the resurfacing of Cherie yesterday at The Lord's Rain hammered that home for me again. Cherie is a woman whom I mentioned back in March in a blog posting, and she's sadly typical of one of the challenges we face on the downtown east side.

For all the optimism of that post, Cherie still appears to be lurching through her life from day to day, from fix to fix, from "customer" to "customer" -- you get the idea. She had that "hard" look on her face, that cracked briefly with a smile, but got paved-over when we refused to put more sugar in her coffee (I'd say 90% of the people at the Mission actually do respond to and respect the boundaries we set -- and these boundaries are purely economical -- but there are some who pout more than somewhat).

Anyway, you think you've found a chink in someone's armor, a way to crack through and reach them with true, unconditional love; but once they step back out onto the street -- into the world, with its constant temptations and its reminders of how they've fallen before -- without the support of others ministering that same kind of love to them, they slip again.

Often, I believe it's not the "fall" that does the damage to a person who's begun to find their way to the Lord: it's the guilt trip that comes from believing that they're just as rotten as they'd thought they were, they're really not worthy of any kind of forgiveness or new life, and that they'll never be able to make it back now.

All of which is The Big Lie and is easily countered by Grace. Just as love never fails, Grace trumps everything. But even if you get that message through to them, they need other people around to encourage them and build them up, especially when temptation looks like it's getting a foothold again. When I see Cherie -- or some of the others, even those that I've known for years -- slip, my first thought is that I wish I'd been close to hand to try to talk to them, encourage them and otherwise Be There for them.

Then I realize that there's only so much of "me" to go around. I can only speak for myself, but I'm pretty sure that, if you ask Barry or anyone else ministering in Christ on the Downtown East Side, you'll hear a similar reaction. After all, we have jobs and families -- don't forget that the Apostle Paul had a job and the Apostle Peter was married. Other laborers are needed to pick up the slack, to water the seed we've sown and to sow new seed themselves; to be the "fresh legs off the bench".

Or even -- the right legs: there's no guarantee that, even if I had been there with Cherie or whomever, I could have said anything more or different than what I'd said already. Sometimes, people need to hear a variation on the message, in order for it to sink in deeper. Case in point: when our late sister Candy gave her testimony about how Jesus saved her from drug addiction, it got through to some people who'd been hearing me preach for over two years. The testimony of another sister, Charisse, also struck home where the words of others had just bounced off.

Having more labourers also proves to people in the area that ministry in Christ is not just being done by a handful of sin-busters out to save the world with Bible in hand. Knowing there are multiple people who care and are motivated by the same thing can have a major impact by itself.

All of this is by way of encouraging people to consider forming teams to operate The Lord's Rain on early Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings. This would give people in the area more opportunity to stay off the street during those hours -- especially those in shelters, who get booted out a few hours before other programs open. When The Lord's Rain is available, they get invaluable exposure to what Pastor Barry calls "Jesus with the skin on" -- love, experienced through serving one another. You might even want to pitch it to your churches and see if others are interested.

It doesn't take much: the best team size would be four -- two is the minimum; the early-morning hours (6:30 or 7 until 9) would work well for those with jobs downtown. I believe you'll discover gifts that you didn't even know you had.

It's all about building relationships, really. That, as much preaching the Word, helps instill the hope they need. Indeed, I can't think of a time when Jesus quoted Scripture at people -- save for the times when He used it to bring up the religious leaders on their own hypocrisy. Instead, the Gospels tell us that Jesus reached people through fellowship: eating with them, walking with them, sitting beside a well, standing them a round of drinks at a wedding.

It's through relationships that love starts to grow; and it's through love that hope takes root; and it's through hope that people start to experience true transformation in their lives.

Soldiers' tales - 1: Rudy

2010-06-30T07:35:00.000-07:00

The trip that eventually leads a person to the Downtown East Side -- or any Skid Row locale -- can start pretty much anywhere. I learned that early on -- actually, from a Quebecois named Gilbert, whom I got to know in Victoria early in my own walk. He had come from a very well-to-do background, but bad decisions and alcohol blew landed him on Broad Street, sitting on the sidewalk in the broiling sun with a baseball cap at his feet. More about him another time.

Rudy was a man I met at Rainbow Mission in 2005. He was in his late 50s or early 60s, and one evening as people were lining up to get their dinner, he got his and came over and sat next to me. I forget how the conversation started -- he may have come up to ask for prayer -- and it was the first time I'd met someone who actually preferred to be living on the streets. "When I got back from Vietnam," he said, "me and some buddies tried to rent an apartment, but after all that time in the jungle, we couldn't have four walls around us. I couldn't anyway. So I joined up with some guys living out of vans down off the highway near Tacoma. We were called the 'rubber tramps'."

I don't think I'd ever met a Vietnam veteran before. "What was that like?"

It was a four-word question with a twenty-minute answer. The part that I really remember involved him seeing his whole advance party get wiped out.

"We got ambushed," he said. "VOOM! We returned fire and when it was over, everyone was gone. Except me. And I guess we got all of them, too, or they thought they got all of us and run off. But then I looked around, and I'm face to face with Charlie Cong. He's maybe 20 yards away. He looks at me. I look at him. 'If he goes for his gun,' I thought, 'I'm dead'. Then he holds up two fingers. I figure he's giving me the 'peace' sign, so I hold up two fingers. Then I realize -- he's askin' for a cigarette. So I pull out my pack o' smokes, and he comes over and I give him one. And we sat there and had our smoke. And he pulls out a picture of his wife and kids and we use sign language 'cause Charlie can't speak English and I can't speak Vietnamese. And we finish our smokes, and he goes back into the jungle.

"I got back to my camp and told my commanding officer what happened. I says, 'I can't kill these guys. Get me outta here.' The CO got me medicaled out the next day."

That led to the failed experience with the apartment in Seattle and the stint with the rubber tramps -- and the fact that Rudy could never hold down a job or a residence and was now, by choice, living on the streets in Vancouver.

Rudy was one of three Vietnam vets who came into Rainbow Mission. Clive -- very soft-spoken and kindly, but totally messed-up -- and Abraham -- an amazingly inspiring man -- were the other two. I'll write about them later. Meeting them -- particularly Clive and Rudy, left me thinking that some of the bigger casualties of war are the survivors -- the ones who came home. I understand there was a tendency to vilify the returning soldiers; on top of that, there are the deep thinkers like Michael Moore, among others, who point to evidence that the Tonkin Gulf "crisis" that led to increased US involvement in Vietnam was really a put-up job. Do they help the Rudys of this world, or is it enough for them to be right?

Was that what Rudy came home to? Did he have access to help in re-adjusting and if he did, did he understand that it was available? Or was he left in that confused state of watching guys no older than himself get wiped out in an ambush and finding real human interaction through sign language with a young father known only as Charlie Cong?

Rudy was a regular at the Rainbow Mission, and two weeks later he came up to me and said he was finally getting into Detox, and hopefully a rehab program for his cocaine addiction. We prayed together and I gave him a hug and he clung to me and shook with fear.

A couple of days later, he phoned to say he was alright. A couple of days after that, I called the detox centre to ask about him and was told they didn't give out patient information.

That was the last I saw of him.

In the midst of death ...

2010-06-30T06:43:00.000-07:00

... we are in life.

Late last year (is it that long ago already?) I blogged about some of the people who come into Gospel Mission and The Lord's Rain, including Richard. Among other things, I mentioned how he would invariably get a cup of coffee for himself "and another for m' ol' lady" and go out to try to find her. Over time, we grew to wonder if said "ol' lady" was kind of like Maris on "Frasier" or Duffy on "Duffy's Tavern" -- someone who is talked about but never actually seen; and a mental jigsaw puzzle starts to come together.

A few months ago, though, Richard did bring his "ol' lady" into The Lord's Rain -- and to my surprise, it was a woman I'd seen and been aware of for a few years. I don't know why that surprised me: the surprise turned to marvel, realizing how much Richard cared for her and that even in an area as chronically nasty as the Downtown East Side, you can still find that kind of caring.

She had a name -- besides "m'ol' lady" -- Brenda; and she would often be seen, wandering the streets, begging for a buck here, a toonie there ... or food, or a cigarette ... I last saw her two Wednesdays ago, sitting at a table outside a little storefront coffee-and-smoothie place on Carrall Street.

"Can you help me get in there?" she asked, pointing to the Rainier, a recently opened single-room-occupancy hotel across the street. "I don't like the Portland, where I am now. Can you help me get in there?" I told her I understood the Rainier was run by the Portland Housing Society too, but I'd see what I could find out and get word to her through Richard.

"OK. Do you have a loonie or a toonie?"

I didn't -- and I wouldn't give money, anyway, on principle.

Before I could look into the Rainier, though, Brenda went into hospital. I found out about it through Richard. "She's got stuff in her lungs," he said.

Last Saturday, Richard was already in The Lord's Rain by the time I came down from the Mission upstairs. He was wearing sunglasses, which I thought was odd.

"We gotta pray for Richard," John began. "His 'ol' lady' ..."

"I heard," I said. "In hospital."

"She died last night."

"'bout 6 o'clock," Richard said. "I was with her in the afternoon. Then she died. I saw the body. I'm pretty much all cried-out now." Hence, the sunglasses.

"You know we're here," John said. "You wanna talk ... you want anything ... we're here -- you know that."

We prayed over him -- to have strength and keep seeking God through the bad as well as the good -- and we just stood nearby him.

He flashed a grin. "Have some coffee, Drew," he said. "It'll wake ya up!"

The Enemy tries to make death seem like a horrible thing, and truly the fear of death is the main weapon he uses against us. Pretty much every sin is rooted in the fear of death: if we feel deprived, hungry, sick, depressed, it's because we are afraid that somehow, that will make us die. We equate feeling good with life -- hence drugs, drunkenness, sex with the wrong people, and lots and lots of money -- and the lengths we go to, to get them.

God knows that we fear death, which is why He equates following His commandments to life:

"I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose lilfe, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice and holding fast to Him, for He is your life and length of days ...." (Deut. 30:19-20 ESV)

He also knows that we grieve our loss, and while the Enemy tries to make us think that's a silly, sissy, bad thing to do, God expects us to grieve -- and reminds us to turn to Him for comfort.

"He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of His people shall He take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it." (Isaiah 25:8 KJV)

"I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from mine eyes." (Hosea 13:14)

God definitely hates Death, per se, although not the passing from one chapter in our eternal life into the next -- so long as it's spent with Him. Death is equated with cursing and the antidote is Jesus' Victory over the grave.

And He also knows that we're going to be sad when it happens, and keeps reminding us that He's the one we can turn to for comfort. We're also told that we are to pray for one another, stand with one another and bear one another up in times of sorrow. That became the message at our service that Saturday night: that that is all part of the fellowship we enjoy as Christians.

After all, we know that if two or more are gathered in Jesus' Name, He's there in their midst, so by simply standing with someone who's grieving -- not necessarily saying anything beyond praying for and with him or her -- we're calling in the Comforter Himself to wipe away the tears.

A baby to pray for

2010-06-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

Being the father of a teenage girl, I went into "dad" mode the moment I saw Davona -- just over a year ago, now. Blonde and achingly pretty, she was sitting in the doorway of one of our neighbouring buildings, which was under renovation at the time. It was a Saturday afternoon, and I stopped to chat and invited her to come to the Mission service, where I was headed. She thanked me for the invitation, but didn't come up.

A couple of days later, though, she came into The Lord's Rain -- more for the coffee than anything else. It's easy to look at a girl like Davona and assume that she's drugged-out and working the streets; then you want to scream, "GET OUT! OUT WHILE YOU STILL HAVE YOUR BEAUTY! OUT WHILE YOU STILL HAVE YOUR LIFE! OUT WHILE YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TEETH!"

But on closer examination, Davona looks more like 30-ish. The fact that she still seems to have her own teeth is a sign that maybe the drug habit -- if she has one -- isn't so bad. But there was something else about Davona that wasn't right. She would carry on conversations with us -- except her voice would fade to nothing and/or she'd start speaking to the wall or her shoes, leaving you wondering if she was ever talking to you in the first place.

She would also show signs of obsessive-compulsiveness. She would go to a large box of clothes and start pulling them out one by one, examining each piece in detail. I'd find myself on tenterhooks, waiting to admonish her about taking so many pieces of clothing. (The house rule is a two-article maximum. Generally, the people respect that.) But instead of taking the clothing she had pulled out, Davona would carefully and methodically fold each one and put it back in the box. Sometimes, she'd take them out again and repeat the process. Occasionally, she might even keep a garment for herself.

Talking to Davona is like driving on the Interstate and your radio has a wonky tuner: you constantly have to do something to keep it tuned in. She'd carry on these conversations with no one in particular, but all you'd need to do is call her name, and she'd immediately snap back into reality -- or your reality, at any rate, as opposed to the one she had lapsed into. But after maybe 3 minutes, the frequency would start to drift again and you'd either have to call her name to jar the tuning knob back into position or just let her continue and go and do something else.

As often happens with people on the DTES, Davona disappeared for a few months. People do that. Sometimes, they've been arrested. Maybe they get a job and move away. Maybe they lose the job and move back. About two months ago, Davona turned up again. She was a bit more lucid, incessantly fussy in the mirror ... and pregnant.

Danilo tried to press her for information as to how it happened. Well, maybe not the how part, but information about the father. He got nowhere. Another of the women who often come into The Lord's Rain had a baby about a year and a half ago, and that little girl was seized by the Child and Families Ministry shortly after birth. There was an unspoken assumption that the same thing would happen with Davona's baby.

And that was the last we saw of Davona ... until today. I was walking through Waterfront Station, when a very familiar blonde face passed by. I called to her, and yes, it was Davona. And strapped to her front was a Snugli with baby sound asleep inside. "Her name is Shine," she told me, stroking the little head. I was in the middle of some INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT work and had to catch up with some others so aside from a little more sighing over the baby and telling each other it was nice to see the other again, there wasn't much chance to catch up.

In a story that could have so many unhappy elements to it, I'm believing for the happy ones all the way through. That Davona has the support she needs, that she's healthy mentally and physically, that the baby stays healthy and grows ... that everyone involved will see a miracle of God through all of it. A new little life, coming out of (and hopefully, staying out of) the DTES: that amid what often appears to be a land of walking dead, we have a sign that God wants life to keep going -- even there.

Especially there.

In your own way, in your own time, lift up Davona and Shine in prayer.

It's called "responsibility"

2010-06-16T18:29:00.000-07:00

My friend, Sandra Thomas of the Vancouver Courier, has nailed it again with her assessment of the study into traffic and pedestrians on the Downtown East Side.

(At the outset, I should point out that my company, TransLink, has been quoted in the media for some comments that were included in the report. What I say here has nothing to do with my position at TransLink, as you'll see.)

In her column, she sums up the study's proposal, so I'll leave it to you to read. But there's something that nags at me: the proposal is the latest, as Sandra points out, in a series of "approaches" -- for want of a better word -- to various problems on the DTES that seeks to make everyone else responsible for the actions of a particular group of people. Why would anyone want to make a particular group exempt from responsibilities that the vast majority of people take for granted?

If you try to absolve certain people of responsibility because of some pre-existing circumstance, are you not, in fact, oppressing those people? In a way, you're declaring that the DTESers are a separate caste, made distinct by the fact that its members are incapable of being responsible -- and therefore are entitled to special treatment. You've assumed a position of superiority to this "caste", writing them off as incorrigible and doing so under a cast of kindness, pretending to be one who cares and truly understands the needs of these people better than anyone else -- including themselves.

Rather than assist them to become responsible, you simply enable them to continue being irresponsible. Isn't that the way of thinking that created Indian reservations and residential schools?

It's oppressive enough to tell people that they'll never be able to pull out of the mire they're in so they might as well have a more comfortable time of it. But this also accentuates the "us-versus-them" mindset that splits the DTES from the rest of the city. "Here's another case," people from outside the DTES would say, "where these deadbeats get another break because they're so hard-done-by!" That hardens hearts even further, making it tough to stir up the compassion and love that it takes to turn lives around and really bring change to people. When hearts are hardened, it becomes tougher to see people as God sees them.

Why would someone want to oppress people like that? Why help them stay in a drugged-out, chronically ill, impoverished state? Is there an agenda? That's the $65,000 question. "Follow the money," the legendary Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein as they were digging into the Watergate Scandal. As we saw recently with the implosion of the Downtown Eastside Residents' Association, groups that receive large handouts under the guise of helping the poor are just as susceptible to temptation as anyone else. And when money is involved, the greatest temptation is to perpetuate the need that's been bringing in the money.

But I sense there's something more than that going on. People who start to see the light of Christ coming on in their lives, turning the darkened image in the mirror to something clearer and closer to the way God made them, realize that, with the help of Jesus, they are capable of overcoming the drugs and poverty and abuse and other things that put them on Skid Row to begin with. As they strengthen their faith and hope, they can no longer be controlled by other people, because the weapons being used against them -- guilt and shame and even the fear of death -- suddenly have no effect.

Well, of course, that's the last thing Satan wants, isn't it? He wants to prevent that light from coming on, and the best way to do that is to convince people that the way they're living is as good as it gets. He does that with rich folk in the British Properties, making them believe they've got it so good, they don't need Jesus. And he does that with the most mpoverished on the DTES, perversely, also making them believe that this is as good as it gets, and that they're so special, the rest of the world should excuse them from following the law and being responsible people. So wipe that pipe before you pass it, bro, and don't bother with Jesus.

It makes our job just that much more challenging.

The "We Are All Pedestrians" report is just the latest symptom of that mindset. Forgive them: they know not what they do.

Better Living through Chemistry?

2010-06-03T06:37:00.000-07:00

John Fischer's "Fischtank" piece today really strikes home. He writes of William Cowper, an 18th Century English poet who wrote some of the classic hymns that are still being sung today -- and how Cowper wrote them at times when he was in deep depression.

I can relate, and I'm sure a lot of us can: it's at the times of deepest depression that we have reason to contemplate God and His mercy and the meaning of Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross. Sometimes, I've felt strong enough to haul my own tail in front of the Cross: sometimes, my wife has been the one to point and push me there. But it does the job.

I can't help thinking that, if Cowper were living today, he'd have been put on heavy medication and, being so "normalized", would have continued on cruise control without even thinking he needed to contemplate God: thanks to Better Living Through Chemistry, he was "OK" and could get on with dealing with the things of the world, which are so much more important than contemplating God. And not only would Cowper have missed out, we -- more than 200 years later -- would be without what John Fischer calls Cowper's "legacy of depression".

Isn't that what happens with so many people today? Who needs Jesus when I've got my little bottle of pills to take twice a day before meals? Not only do they miss out on their own time with God, the rest of society misses out on their witness.

Poverty: who allows it?

2010-05-31T05:38:00.000-07:00

"Look out there," the street person said, "how could God allow what's going on out there?"

He was pointing to the scene in the alley across from The Lord's Rain -- still crawling with drug dealers, addicts and lookouts: the iconic symbol of poverty in the city of Vancouver. The question, too, was a familiar one, and it's one that's been asked ever since someone broached the idea that God actually loves and provides for us.

Often, discussions around The Lord's Rain dealing with God and Christ are about people genuinely trying to find their way back to Him through the drug-induce haze they've been living in. There are also people like Jeff, Marty, Jack and Joe who know their Bible and recognize it as their source of Hope where the world has let them down. But from time to time, someone will try to validate their life choices either by a bizarre stretch of the Word ("God created everything, so why couldn't a bear be my saviour?" -- honest!) or by dragging a nice, fat red herring across the path -- like the question above.

How, indeed, could a loving and all-powerful God allow crushing poverty among His people?

This just in: He's not the one responsible for poverty. People are. People make choices that many times land them in the state you see on the Downtown East Side. Sometimes, they're not there through any action of their own, but through the actions of others -- abusive parents, teachers or clergy; fetal alcohol syndrome; the economy; lack of education. Jesus says it's not for us to condemn anyone by assuming that the unfortunate state they're in at present is due to sin in the past. When He looked at the man who'd been blind since birth (John 9:1-3), He said that the blindness was not a punishment from God but an opportunity for God's glory to be shown.

More than that, people are responsible for reaching out to the poor and helping them change their lives. People are responsible for choosing whether to do so while guided by the Holy Spirit or by their own intellect ... or whether to do so at all.

I advise, by the way, against doing something while guided by one's own intellect. That usually leads to an unhealthy motive, like human pride at having one's own theory proven or turning a profit at the expense of the poor (which then leads to a situation where the problem is actually perpetuated because one then fears that solving the problem would eliminate the demand and therefore eliminate that profit).

(Einstein once said (maybe it was more than once) that you can't solve problems using the same approach that caused them. Human actions caused the problems that appear on the Downtown East Side; why should we assume that human actions will solve them?)

The fact is, God only allows poverty insofar as He created Evil in order to give Good an opportunity to shine. But as with everything, He calls us to do His work on the earth and is standing by with the power and authority we need to do it. But He also gives us the choice as to whether to respond to that call. So if we don't, and places like the Downtown East Side remain a cauldron of despair, pray that those who don't respond will have their hearts and minds opened ... and don't blame God.

A Ground-Level Investment

2010-05-30T15:58:00.000-07:00

A couple of things recently reminded me of one of the greatest needs in the area we serve: socks. My friend Sandra Thomas wrote in The Vancouver Courier about the closure of the Health Contact Centre on the Downtown East Side, and how one of the elements people would miss would be the face-to-face contact -- the human touch. She mentioned how "street foot" is one of the biggest blights in the neighbourhood: the horrible affliction when dirty feet get infected and then people can't get clean footwear.

That reminded me of a conversation I had with Insp. Chris Stewart, the RCMP regional commander in Port Hardy, whom I met in Port McNeill earlier this month. Chris told me about his encounter several years ago with a drunk his officers had brought in off the streets, and when he helped him get his shoes and socks off, maggots fell out from his feet. That helped spur Chris to make changes in the way such people were treated in his region.

Saturday morning, with "Mayvember" threatening to turn into "Juneuary" (in other words, a hard rain was a-fallin'), at least half a dozen people came in asking for clean socks. Praise God, several new pairs had just walked in, courtesy Barbara, our new volunteer (who'll be working with Janet on Ladies' Day -- Tuesdays, 1-4pm).

The response is good when we put out appeals for socks (and underwear!). Francis Heng and his wife, who started Big Give Vancouver, have moved to another effort, "Spare Some Socks". They did a major sock-drive just before Christmas and showed up at the Gospel Mission Christmas dinner with 450 pairs. We've only just recently given out the last of them.

But there's something missing: the socks go out ... and then they're gone. So we are launching a NEW INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY ... (drum roll .........)

THE VANCOUVER SOCK EXCHANGE

("That's so bad," said Marty, a schoolteacher getting his life back together after being suspended for drug use, "it's good!" Aha! Endorsement!)

And yes, I mean "exchange". We have laundry facilities, which are mostly used for towels and some clothing that has been discarded at The Lord's Rain but is still usable.

The idea is that during the Saturday opening of The Lord's Rain, people can come in and swap the socks they're currently wearing for a new (or new-to-them) pair. We'll take in the returned socks and if they're still wearable, we'll wash them in bleach and hot water and get them ready to hand out again.

So if you'd like to invest in the new VSE (which is a lot surer thing than the old one was), just bring your investment to The Lord's Rain when we're open -- Monday 1-3pm, Tuesday 6:30-8:30am or 1-4pm, Friday 1-3pm or Saturday, 6:30-10am -- or to Gospel Mission (upstairs) between 6:30 and 7pm.

If you can't come during those times or don't have transportation (or patience to deal with the City of Vancouver's Dig-Up-The-Roads-To-Irritate-Drivers-Program), contact me and I can pick them up.

I must say, I've been very impressed at the quality of the donations we've been receiving since we started. It's been usable, and people have been grateful to get them, whatever they've been. The Book of Malachi (1:7-8) contains some powerful passages about what the Lord thinks of "Junk For Jesus", and I'm glad to say there's none of that here. Thank you!

The Mouse & The Parking Guy

2010-05-30T15:52:00.000-07:00

The Parking Guy is kind-of a fixture at the lot where we rent a parking space for the Mission. When the City of Vancouver closed some streets and severely restricted parking and stopping on others during the Olympics, it threatened to put a serious crimp in our ability to do our work at Gospel Mission. Not only was Cordova Street made a no-stopping-24/7 zone, but Carrall Street was dug up for the completion of the Carrall Street Greenway. They suspended work during the Games, but have closed the block outside the Mission again, while they lay in decorative streetcar rails, supposedly evocative of Vancouver's history (to be precise, the Powell Street Line branching off into the old Carrall Street Carbarn, which is now a trendy office building).

So our only option was to rent a parking space -- a remarkably prescient move, in fact: even without the ongoing street work, parking regulations on Carrall have changed.

The Parking Guy is one of numerous people on the DTES who perform little "services" for people, hoping to get a couple of bucks here and there for their efforts. In his case, he offers to assist people in buying tickets from the self-serve machine at our parking lot. Sometimes, people do need a lot of help figuring those machines out: he often provides a human presence that should make people feel a bit more comfortable about leaving their cars there.

I say "should", because he does have the look of a drug-addled panhandler who some people might consider more of a threat than a help.

Anyway, Amelia and I arrived there Saturday afternoon and were walking past him when he called out something incoherent. It took me a second to realize he was talking to us.

"Say what?" I said.

"There's a little baby mouse here," he repeated.

I paused and looked over, and sure enough, he was crouched beside a little thing-with-a-tail that was lying on a piece of paper beside the ticket machine.

"Is it still alive?" I asked.

"Yep!"

"H'm," I said, for want of anything more intelligent to say. We walked on. Amelia said they weren't there when she went back to get the car about 10 minutes later.

The image, though, stuck around. Damon Runyon (whose writing formed the basis of Guys and Dolls, my all-time favourite musical) wrote a short story called "Johnny One-Eye", about a crook-on-the-lam who befriends a stray kitten who's lost an eye; I couldn't help thinking there was a kinship between the Parking Guy and the little mouse. Both could be labelled "social detritus": who would think twice about a little mouse -- which might actually be an undersized rat -- or about some toothless, pathetic-looking guy skulking around a parking lot -- who might actually be a threat? In both cases, we'd say, "is it still alive?" and then walk on. Heck, with the mouse, we'd probably scream and run or reach for the Warfarin.

But the caring the Parking Guy had for that little creature reminds us that there is humanity among the people in that area. That little spark only needs love and hope from as many sectors as possible to fan it into a bright light. Who knows how long that little mouse would live? And yet the Parking Guy was willing to just sit next to it, even though in worldly terms he might have been powerless to do anything for it.

We may think we're powerless in worldly terms to turn people's lives around, but if we remember that there is One who has all the power necessary and just requires us to be the conduit for that Power, all it takes is for us to sit next to someone, too.

Surely, the presence ...*

2010-05-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

There are times in our services at Gospel Mission that the Lord "calls an audible at the line of scrimmage"** and things take off in an unexpected -- and amazingly powerful -- new direction. Saturday, I'd come to the Mission with the notes laid out for what I thought was supposed to be the sermon. Then, sitting in my office beforehand, another topic came to mind, and I wondered if there was a connection between the two topics and whether there was an elegant segue from the one to the other.

So, as I do when confronted with a situation like this that could be confusing, I simply said, "OK Lord, You show me what You want."

After the music service, I had already planned to precede the sermon by showing the segment from "100 Huntley Street", which profiled The Lord's Rain. I have to confess, as I looked at the segment again, with its images of the drug use and filthy alleys and rough-looking characters, there might be a hostile reaction among the guys. Partway through, the Lord said, "get them talking about it," so when it was over, I asked if there were any comments.

And people did start talking. They thought it was accurate and fair -- both in portraying the situation and in showing The Lord's Rain and what it does. The segment quotes Brendan (whom I've referred to before as one-half of our resident "glam couple") saying The Lord's Rain brings a sense of community, of people who truly care -- something he said was lacking elsewhere in the area. I asked the guys if we'd achieved that. It was unanimous: we have.

(Sense of community is a big deal on the Downtown East Side. The closure of the Health Contact Centre has sparked angry protests -- some of them tying up rush-hour traffic this past week -- even though the services, the official line goes, are being duplicated elsewhere. But as my friend Sandra Thomas*** writes in the Vancouver Courier, the Contact Centre provided that extra dimension: human contact. There's another dimension to the Contact Centre's closure, which, as is so often the case, concerns the matter of who stands to benefit from the Centre being closed. Stay tuned.)

And Jeff -- who's been coming to The Lord's Rain for over a year but only recently started coming upstairs to the services -- put it succinctly. "Thank you," he said. And everyone applauded.

On the one hand, I no more take personal credit for this than a baseball bat can take credit for a home run; but on the other, that sense of being obedient to God and "getting it right" is indescribably satisfying.

We were then left with about 15 minutes for the sermon, and by then, the presence of God was palpable. We talked about the sense of community that Brandon mentioned and the amazing ability we all have to confess our faults, pray for one another, and bring those faults together to the Cross for healing.

So at the Lord's reminder, I pulled out the foundation Scripture for my sermon last week at the Full Gospel church in Port McNeill -- which is one of our biggest supporters in a variety of different ways. The Scripture is John 20:11-18, where Mary Magdalene is weeping at the tomb, because "they" had taken away the body of Jesus. Jesus, I told them, was the only person who had seen her the way God intended her to be seen, and that had given her hope. Dead or alive, His body would remind her of that hope, and now, not even being able to see the body, that hope had been ripped away. That, I believe, was why she was weeping -- or, more accurately -- sobbing uncontrollably.

"They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." Notice that she doesn't even talk about the body: they've taken away her Lord.

And we talked about the way that Jesus tells Mary not to "cling" to Him, because He hadn't yet ascended to the Father, but after He had done that, He would send the Comforter -- the Holy Spirit -- who would be the new hope for Mary and for everyone else. Don't cling to anything in the world, Jesus is saying: cling to that Comforter. In fact, when we receive it, we find the Comforter clings to us.

Hope -- more than programs or money -- is the overriding need in the Downtown East Side; but also, the people in the area -- particularly those in that room -- "get it". They know that they need that hope, because the world sure isn't providing it. And for that, they're several steps ahead of a lot of rich folk, who cling to material things and are so blinded by the "god of this world" that they don't realize how much they need Jesus.

When we feel that we're totally bereft of hope, usually all we have to do is turn around -- like Mary -- and Jesus will be right there, calling our name.

Afterwards, some of the guys came up to talk about their hopes and where they wanted to go in their lives. Warren, for instance, has reappeared on the scene, about nine months after coming in the first time, asking for prayer because he hadn't felt as close to God as he had in the past. He said he received a Word at that time that helped him re-focus (I can't remember what it was): now, he says, he's back on track and some Native evangelists (notably Clarence Vickers) are urging him to start preaching.

Steve talked about having disabilities, but he's refusing to let them run his life and he's determined to show society that he can be a productive person.

Garvin -- whom I'd met before on the street but had never seen him at one of our services -- talked about going to Ottawa to take part in an anti-poverty protest on Parliament Hill; we prayed for wisdom and Grace and for the right people to be put in his path and for the Holy Spirit to give him the words he needs.

It was, in fact, an amazingly powerful service. There's no other way to sum it up. Can't even think of an appropriate way to conclu

================

*(There's an engaging and self-deprecatingly amusing story connected with that hymn, "Surely, the presence of the Lord is in this place". For a long time, I had difficulty remembering whether the line was "surely, the presence of The Lord is in this place" or "surely, the presence of God is in this place". That reached its nadir when, one Sunday morning, both versions tried to get out of my mouth at the same time and I belted out "surely the presence of Gord is in this place".)

** Another case in which I'm certain football was created to provide analogies for our relationship with God.

*** Sandra also gave us a mention in her previous column, noting the 2nd anniversary of The Lord's Rain.

They get it

2010-04-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

Talk around The Lord's Rain yesterday spent some time not on how the Canucks would do against the Kings that night, but on the volcanic eruption in Iceland. And since Danilo is from Nicaragua, which has seen more than a few devastating earthquakes, people also noted the 'quakes in Chile and Haiti and did the math.

"This is It, isn't it?" said Cindy. "This is all part of The End."

I affirmed it for her: it's exactly what Jesus told us would happen. And we have to remember what He told us to do: get ready and help others to get ready.

I looked around the place. There was no one in that room that I would have called "stupid". Addicts, down-and-out, mentally ill, whatever ... hardly urbane sophisticates ... but stupid? Not even in that ballpark.

But they get it: they see what's going on and if they're not altogether sure how to handle it, they have an idea where to turn (coming into The Lord's Rain is a good idea, right there). Some of them are starting to realize that there is a way to face these things Jesus warned us about without being fearful.

Come to think of it, isn't that usually the way with people who "get it"? Peter and John were "unlearned men", all the Apostles were generally rough-edged characters except for Paul, and he was a very poor speaker. Moses stammered. Jesus was the carpenter's kid.

Need I go on?

Cindy's story Pt 1

2010-04-07T06:17:00.000-07:00

There have been some people who come into The Lord's Rain who make me cringe. They're an attitude on two legs, constantly demanding things we don't have or things we won't give (one guy came in four days in a row for a pair of gloves and after we cut him off on day 2, he actually bulled his way behind the desk to get another pair -- kind of like a cat that knows there's a piece of salmon somewhere in that bag; I've stopped being astonished at the brazenness - I just say, "gerrahtavit!" and physically remove the person). Recently, I wrote about Cherie and I think I've mentioned Nelson, one who asked for prayer, and about whom Shannon said, "that guy positively glowed when you prayed for him!"

Cindy is another such person. A year ago, I suspected she was shooting-up in one of the showers, so I called the ambulance. As we continued to yell at her to come out of the shower, she suddenly burst out, stark naked, asking if we were satisfied yet - she'd come out. She got dressed and stumbled out and when police caught up with her, she was weaving into traffic on Hastings in her sock feet.

But in the past four months, she's been coming back to The Lord's Rain - and a very changed person, to boot. Since we "formally introduced" each other, she's never failed to call me by name; she always says "please" and "thank you" and has a pleasant greeting for us when she comes in.

Yesterday, she said, "does God talk to you?"

"Oh, yes."

"Does He ever tell you to do things you really don't want to do?"

"Oh- yeah!" and I told her one of my experiences. "What about you?"

"I think so. I think He's told me to minister to other people. I'm scared to do that."

"Who isn't? But you know: He'll never give you more than you can handle. You might take on more than you can handle, but He won't give it to you; so keep listening and know that He'll give you the strength you need."

"Just baby steps," John put in. "One leads to another and then another ..."

"And you'll be surprised how easy it is, once you take that first step."

So we prayed for strength for her, and the conversation took a different tack. She talked a bit about how her mother had raised her with a bit of knowledge of the Bible and how even in her addiction, if she did something wrong, her conscience wouldn't give her peace until she'd made it right. She told us she'd had a baby, but had given it up for adoption, and how she felt for the single mothers on the Downtown East Side.

She held up a Christian magazine we had there. "Can I take this with me?" "Sure," I said. "I haven't been able to read because of my addiction," she went on. "The other day, I found a Spanish Bible in the bushes by the park. Just having it with me, I felt changes inside. Then I met a single mom who reads Spanish, so I gave it to her."

"You see what happened?" I said, "God's already got you ministering to someone."

She told me she had a tattered Bible of her own at home. "This woman down the hall knocked on my door the other night and asked if I had a pipe and a lighter. I said no, but she came in and started breaking up her dope to share it. She was doing it right over my Bible -- using it like a table -- and something inside me said, 'isn't anything sacred to you?' So I said, 'don't do your dope over that! That's a Bible!' And then she said, 'well, I guess I can't share my dope with you if you don't have a pipe and a lighter.' and she went out. There was a time I'd've gone crazy -- run after her, or go out and do anything to get a hit. But that time - I just knew I had to take a stand: something had to be sacred to me."

There are others now -- and will be more in the future -- who make me cringe when I see them -- as Cindy did up till six months ago, but seeing the changes in Cindy show that transformation is possible, with sufficient prayer and patience. In June, it will be six years since I first started ministering at Rainbow Mission, and while I went down hoping to see an Azusa Street-type revival, I know now that if I'd actually expected that, I'd have been out of there long ago. And if it had happened, I probably would have been out of there long ago, too, taking credit as the "catalyst" for the revival. But the changes that we are seeing in people's lives over time are truly God At Work ... and you know they're real and lasting.

Pastor Cal Weber at Westpointe Christian Centre had an interesting analogy recently: he said that water running over a rock has the same effect as a hammer -- it just takes longer. (It also does a more complete job, eventually reducing that rock to sand, when someone using a hammer might be satisfied with just having a bunch of smaller rocks. Sand, you can re-shape in any way you like; small rocks -- not so easy.)

That would be why the whole concept of The Lord's Rain involves running water.

Pray one for another ...

2010-03-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

The developing theme in the messages in my Saturday night services at Gospel Mission is based on James 5, and the passage that begins, "confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed". The idea is that the people we serve -- "street people", "downtowneastsiders", whatever you want to call them -- are just as qualified to witness to and minister to others as any preacher. That's what Jesus' Ministry was primarily about: bringing God home to people (and vice versa) with His Son as the connection (and only connection, I might add). The Lord's half-brother is telling us that when we sit face-to-face and talk out our issues and pray together not for validation but to be healed of those issues, Jesus is with us to support us. It's important, too, to talk out those issues with people with whom we have a common experience.

This morning at The Lord's Rain, we saw some of that in action. Cherie is a young(ish) woman who's been a fixture on the DTES for quite a few years. Achingly pretty, and when she smiles, you want to bottle whatever it was that made her smile and give it to her to inhale whenever she can. She doesn't smile much. Indeed, there are times when she snarls at everybody and everything and is someone who, when I see her approaching, makes me either cringe or cry.

There's a line in one of our songs, "Daddy's little princess/pokin' her arm/she was a beauty once, they say": I thinks of Cherie when I think of that line.

Anyway, Cherie came in this morning, quite obviously whacked-out on drugs: barely able to stand, much less hold a cup of coffee. She had that peculiar gait that you see in people on drugs: their centre of gravity manages to stay put, but their knees bend slowly, and they rock back and forth - never quite falling, but not someone you'd let hang onto the Royal Doulton. She needed fresh clothes, and I was able to rustle up some new underwear and a pair of women's jeans that came in recently.

I've mentioned Shannon before: a 30-something woman who comes in with her husband. Both are weaning themselves off a variety of drugs, and she's one of the very few women I've met who's actually told me -- in a very matter-of-fact way -- that she had been a prostitute to support the drug habit.*

It wasn't just drugs that were Cherie's problem this morning. She also had a black eye. She told me she'd been beaten by two guys last night over $10. She was trying to eat as she told me, but her jaw still hurt and it was hard. Evidently, this girl needed to wash up and change. Shannon was outside, so I went and got her.

Shannon has been helping out at The Lord's Rain for a few months now, often just by sitting and listening to people and talking to them. "Confess your faults, one to another," right? She came in and sat with Cherie for a few minutes, then took her into one of the shower stalls. Shannon came out a few minutes later, fuming. "She's a working girl, eh? What makes guys think that just because a woman's a prostitute they can just beat on her?"

There's no constructive answer to that. 15 minutes later, Cherie came out in her fresh clothes, blow-dried her hair ... and smiled.

It was a morning where I saw James 5 at work: Shannon -- who certainly has her "stuff" together more than Cherie does -- talking to her, encouraging her, helping her with both the spirit and the physical need of getting her into the shower and getting her changed, and giving her hope.

Hope. That's the smile inducer Cherie needs, and it can't be kept in a bottle. Instead, it needs to flow in a constant stream -- from God, through Jesus and then through each of us, as we build one another up.

Just like James says.

=========
*I gag when I hear the expression "survival sex trade". It sounds so legitimate, doesn't it? Doesn't anyone realize what an indictment that is on our society? I remember an anecdote about New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who would in his role as Chief Magistrate for the city, preside over Magistrate's Court one day a month. One day, a man was brought before him who was charged with stealing bread. The man told him he was unemployed and unable to feed his family. LaGuardia accepted the guilty plea and fined him $50. Then he suspended the sentence, and fined everyone else in the courtroom $1 for living in a city where a man had to steal to feed his family and ordered the sergeant-at-arms to pass the hat, starting with himself. He then turned the money over to the man. LaGuardia could have stopped at suspending the sentence and called it something like "survival larceny", but he made the others present -- and those of us now, three generations later -- stop and think about where we are in this mess.

Letting go after 20 years ...

2010-03-15T07:22:00.000-07:00

I realized this past week that it was 20 years ago that I got a chilling phone call. It was from the mother of a friend of mine, Peter Hegan. Pete and I had been friends since childhood -- had played together and, as we got older, jammed together with him on guitar and me on piano. We wrote songs together -- or actually, worked on each other's songs, bringing new dimensions to each other's material. He was quite a good poet, with a Biblical background: mine tended to be love-struck pop-flavoured mush, but it was all part of the growing up experience.

Probably the most important thing about my friendship with Pete was that most of the world had long since dismissed him as a waste of skin. He had been adopted as a baby, and for whatever reason never did fit in with anybody. He was smoking cigarettes by age 8, and while I had been on a one-child campaign to wipe out smoking in our lifetime (starting with my parents) and basically wanted nothing to with anyone who smoked, I still hung around with Pete.

He failed a couple of grades -- something he wore almost as a badge of honor -- and, since being a misfit was his main claim to fame, cultivated that sort-of outlaw image. Pete's salvation, it turned out, was Salvation. Around 7th grade, he dropped out of sight, and re-emerged around 9th or 10th grade as a completely different person. He had gone to some kind of juvenile rehab camp and then, he told me, "I woke up one morning and said, 'Pete, you are one f**ked-up kid!'". He immersed himself in two things: the Bible and his guitar.

Musical talent was something he had going for him. He quickly outgrew his local guitar teachers, and having spent some time driving cab and working in the bush ("ya gotta come loggin', Drew! Money's good, and you can buy an electric piano so we can play gigs together!"), he headed off to California to study guitar with the legendary Vicente Gomez.

"I walk in there, and the first thing I say is, 'hiya, Vince!'. Jeez! He nearly threw me out right there! From then on, it was 'Professor Gomez'!"

I noted that it was one of the first times I'd ever seen him show respect to anyone.

We had this cool idea. We'd come out for a show. I'd sit at the piano, and then he'd come out in his plaid work shirt, battered jeans and cork boots, with his 1957 Fender Stratocaster ... then sit down and blast out this Bach sonatina on the guitar ... then rip into some Chuck Berry.

Of course, that never happened, but it was fun thinking about it. Indeed, we never did play a gig together: the only time I ever recorded anything of his was ...

just about 20 years ago ...

Our on-and-off friendship continued as we both wound up in Victoria in the late 80s, but between his business and my work, we hardly ever got together. Getting together to jam became one of those "one of these days" things. His business went under. He seemed to get his head together and find companionship with a motorcycle club that consisted mainly of older people who just wanted to head out on the highway. It looked like he was going to come through this crisis OK.

And then came the phone call.

"Drew, it's Shirley," his mom said. "Peter committed suicide last night."

I'll spare you the details.

Shirley paid for a recording session so I could lay down some of the songs Pete and I had written over the years. My friend Patrick sat in on bass and a session guy filled in on an electronic drum kit; significantly, there was no guitar track. I was able to find a tape Pete had recorded, and we mixed that in with one of his songs. We scattered his ashes around a Douglas fir in Mount Douglas Park and every so often I'd go back and visit the spot -- finding where some of his ashes were still visible.

Unlike George Harrison's rush to the studio after John Lennon was murdered, it took Elton John a few years to come up with "Empty Garden", which is one of my two favorite songs of EJ's ("I Feel Like A Bullet" is the other). Similarly, a "song for Pete" took the better part of two decades to come together.

It started with a riff ... and the lyrics at first sounded like another lost-love piece of tripe: "I can't say that's the way that I thought you would end it/But as they say, that's the way of the world".

Then the lyrics started morphing into something about suicide, and I realized that this was the "song for Pete" ... I titled it, "To Whom It May Concern ..." A little blue-eyed reggae, if you can imagine that ...

During Worship at Gospel Mission on Saturday night, I threw it in -- both as a message to others and a tribute to Peter. I told the guys it was a bit of "self-indulgence", but doggone it, some were reading the lyrics and trying to sing along, anyway ... and as it cross-faded into "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus", I heard the Lord say, "you can let him go now".

And a couple of songs later, I heard Him say something else. "Peter's life is not wasted. He encouraged you, influenced you -- and turned you onto Me as Salvation for anyone. This whole Worship service is his legacy."

At last, I've let him go ... not grieving any more, so much as revelling in the myriad ways we influence one another. As Shakespeare's Mark Antony said, "the good [men do] is oft interred with their bones". Pete's music was the exception to that rule; let's work to make sure that our lives are, too.

There's no way you can say it's what the Father intended

Life is His, all alone, to give and return

There's no way you can say that I thought you would end it

But as they say, that's the way of the world.

"That guy positively GLOWED!"

2010-03-10T08:15:00.000-08:00

Confess your faults, one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much.

-- James 5:16

In sermons both at Gospel Mission and at Westpointe Christian Centre, where I have fellowship on Sundays, the recurring theme has been evangelism and the necessity to pray for others. The words of Jesus' brother (well, half-brother, anyway) are key: we have to go to one another and humble ourselves to recognize our own faults, speak them out and pray for healing; doing so in agreement because Jesus promises that if two or more are gathered in His Name, He'll be there with us. Calling Jesus into the situation guarantees the healing that we need.

One of the interesting things about The Lord's Rain is that, being a street-level outreach without overt preaching, people come in who wouldn't ordinarily set foot in a church. But since it's impossible to hide the light of Christ under a bushel, many of these people also have a measure of faith in God and Jesus Christ, but for one reason or another, are more comfortable talking about it in the less "formal" setting of The Lord's Rain.

Saturday morning, a man came in whom I hadn't seen before. He needed to talk, and so we did: he'd fallen back into a crack habit after being clean for six years, and was trying to pull out. "I haven't used in six hours now," he said, "but I don't know if I can make it. I'm starting to think thoughts that are not me. I'm thinking of hurting someone ... or robbing a bank ... that's not me, man!"

He had been a Baptist youth pastor in years gone by. He explained that, in his recent fall, he'd burned all his bridges with others in the world -- or so he thought. So we prayed together for healing, for answers, for clear direction. It was obvious that he needed to get into detox and rehab ... and fast.

We called Triage, which is a first-level social service group, and since they usually have no beds (one of the earliest entries after the opening of The Lord's Rain tells you something about their lack of space but abundance of compassion), we prayed over the phone call and asked God for favor. This time, they actually had a bed for Terry, so he hustled off to Triage -- and new hope.

Yesterday (Wednesday), he called me to say he had been accepted for Union Gospel Mission's six-month rehab program, and so we keep praying for God's grace and mercy -- and strength. A true desire to be clean, and knowing where to turn to get that strength (recognizing that we humans are hopelessly feeble creatures without Him), is rewarded -- and so is the perseverance that comes with going into a recovery program knowing it's going to be a long haul, not a quick fix.

Then there was Nelson. Nelson has been in before -- totally wrecked on something (probably heroin) -- and he was in no better shape when he came in on Tuesday morning. He spent much of his time slumped over one of the sinks, washing his hands, his face, his hair, over and over again. A shrink would probably have a field day with that imagery. At one point, he fell into a state of incoherent muttering, and then -- as often happens -- would snap back into reality when one of us spoke to him. As I was preparing to leave to go to the office, Shannon, another street person who's been volunteering with us, asked if I would pray over her, especially in light of some trials she's going through with her son (who's 19 and also drug-addicted). I did, and after that was done, Nelson was standing there, looking at us.

"Would you pray for me, too?" he asked.

I laid hands on him and prayed for him: prayed for healing -- the kind of healing God gives, when He reaches past the outward symptoms -- like drug addiction, poverty and loneliness -- and gets to the very root, yanking it out so we can see it, name it and cover it with the blood of Jesus. We all need the courage to face one of our peers and confess our faults, so they can come out into the open and we can hear ourselves talk about them ... and then pray for that healing, as James writes. The prayer over Nelson was for that courage so he can have the breakthrough God wants for him.

The prayer finished. Nelson looked at me and smiled. "Thank you," he said, and left.

"Did you see that?" Shannon said. "He positively GLOWED when you prayed over him!"

"That's God at work," I told her.

We need people willing simply to pray over others in the Downtown East Side. Prayer doesn't cost money ... and doesn't take a holier-than-thou man (or woman) of God: just a willingness to listen and love and see and build on even the slightest improvement in someone's life. Like Terry, fervently desiring to be clean. Or Nelson, positively glowing.

Protest notes and dischords ...

2010-02-23T09:35:00.000-08:00

Ever since the riot on Georgia Street on the first Saturday morning of the Olympics, the media have been playing up signs of a "rift" within the protest movement that's been around ever since Vancouver started preparing its bid all those years ago. Certainly, it was a master-stroke of messaging by Vancouver Police, to declare that the trouble was caused by a criminal element, burying itself within the ranks of legitimate, peaceful protesters. But then there came criticism from within the movement itself, breaking a sort of omerta, according to the media reports.

If one of the Olympic "legacies" is for the "social justice" advocates to re-examine not just their tactics but the raison d’être of these protests, this may have been somewhat worthwhile. Driving past the tent city on Hastings Street this morning, I was struck by the multiplicity of causes: homelessness, the war in Afghanistan, poverty in general, native rights, violence against women; there was even a poster saying, "HARPER + (Olympic rings) = (swastika)".

So the questions go like this:

What do you really want?
How are the Olympics responsible for these problems?
What does "success" look like?
Why do you think this will accomplish that?
After all these years, maybe it's time to change tactics?
Where are you when the Olympics are not an issue?
What are you, yourselves, doing to alleviate the situation? (and don't say, "I'm protesting" or "I'm staging a sit-in to draw attention to ...")

See, the causes these people claim to espouse are generally worthy ones (with the possible exception of the Harper/swastika poster -- what if the PM's kids saw that?*), but as such, the solutions require discussion and dialogue, not slogans that polarize factions.

My daughter, who turns 18 in a couple of weeks, gave what's become the stock position: "all this money being spent should be going to the homeless".

But would it? As Vancouver Councillor Geoff Meggs pointed out in an interview just before the Olympics, millions of dollars are already being spent on the Downtown East Side, much of it on social housing. I personally know of three people who've benefited from that. But there are still problems. The fact is, the money being spent would not have gone towards housing: it would have gone towards something else where people think they can make a buck. And look at all the people who have been given jobs and been able to feed their families because of the Olympics. And look at the infrastructure projects -- many of which are transportation-related and will help reduce dependency on private automobiles (need I point out that you will likely find many of these same protesters taking part in the "Critical Mass" bike rides?).

The biggest problem I see with the protesters here is the lack of cohesiveness. The image they're projecting is that of a bunch of people with a mad-on against the world in general. They may see social injustice and want something to be done about it, but when the rubber meets the road, it's always up to somebody else to fix it.

True activism is to roll up your sleeves and do something yourself -- and I don't mean march in demonstrations. Encourage people who are struggling with life. Comfort people who are grieving. Re-examine your approach. Look for open dialogue with decision-makers to decide on solutions and with people who can contribute resources to make the solution happen. Here's another way of putting it: "... visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and keep [yourself] unspotted from the world." Translation: you have a responsibility to do something constructive to help others -- and don't fall into the world's way of doing things, which can often be to rely on money, power and everybody else to do the right thing.

And where does that wisdom come from? The Epistle of James, part of the Bible ... which has never been more relevant than it is today. And do it quietly, without drawing attention to yourself, because your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you openly (Matt. 6:4), with the satisfaction of success. That is what you want, isn't it?

I, by the way, happen to be enjoying the Olympics immensely. We went to the victory ceremonies this past Sunday, when the entertainment was provided by Trooper and Loverboy. Who among us does not know Trooper's signature song, "Raise A Little Hell", which, aside from being a great way to rev up the crowd at a basketball game, is also encouragement for social activism.

But I got to thinking about that: since, as Paul writes, "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Eph. 6:12), do we want to raise a little hell; or is it more effective to call down a lot of Heaven?

=========

*Actually, the statements of some of the lead protesters in the group have led me to believe that that question is a non-starter. They've already shown they have no conscience about the impact of their words and deeds on innocent people.

UBC Hoops Gives Assist to Gospel Mission (blatant plug)

2010-01-30T15:54:00.000-08:00

UBC's men's and women's basketball teams will be giving a needed boost to Gospel Mission this Saturday, February 6th, with a "fun-raising" event for the Mission.

The Mission is selling tickets to the games against the University of Victoria, and half of the proceeds from those sales will go to the Mission. More importantly, the evening will help raise awareness of the Downtown East Side and encourage students to consider ways that they can make a difference in that troubled part of town. The women's game is at 6pm; the #1-ranked men tip off at 8. The games are entertaining and great family fun.

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for seniors and students from age 7 to the end of high school. To purchase tickets, please contact Ass't Pastor Drew Snider by email: drewsnider@gospelmission.net.

Today's Riddle ...

2009-12-18T08:55:00.001-08:00

Vancouver City Council has just voted to allow Mixed Martial Arts events in the city.

Last night, one of our elders at Gospel Mission was mugged: beaten and robbed of $40. We are praying for Bill's quick recovery, that the money will be restored to him and then some, and that the people who did it to him are forgiven and will be brought to repentance.

But here's the riddle: why is one form of people bashing people legal and the other not?

And here's another: are the people cheering the Council decision the same ones who would be outraged at the revelations of animal cruelty at a Wild Animal Park? Or those who nod sagely at the large adverts on buses telling us to buy free-range eggs because cages are cruel to chickens?

Sports Illustrated has, or used to have, a whimsical little section titled, "This Week's Sign That The Apocalypse Is Upon Us".

I think I have a suggestion for this week.

Pigeon Park - back open again!

2009-12-18T07:08:00.000-08:00

It's been the subject of a fair bit of cynicism and suspicion ... and no little frustration on all parts for various reasons ... but one of the focal points of the Downtown East Side is back in business, as it were. Pigeon Park officially re-opened on Tuesday (Dec. 15), after being closed for several months for the work on the Carrall Street Greenway.

Pigeon Park is the primary reference point for Gospel Mission/The Lord's Rain. Barry Babcook occasionally refers to the Mission as "The Pigeon Mission" (although that's becoming less and less common) and for about four months, it was really hard for us to describe to people where we were located, because "Pigeon Park", for all intents and purposes, didn't exist.

One interesting little anomaly: I think I'm stopped illegally in this picture, because there's a "no stopping/bus zone" pictogram at the front of that space ... but no sign at the other end. There aren't any buses going down that block, anyway, but as you can see from the trolley overheads above the car (look closely), the buses will be back soon.

What's really neat about this is, here is our little church - right in the midst of this lovely Greenway. People taking advantage of the new facility, be it for biking or walking, will see Gospel Mission, and I believe will start to see the good-news stories that are coming out of both the Mission and The Lord's Rain. People might suggest that the Greenway and renewed Pigeon Park are connected with the great bogeyman called "gentrification", but I say this Greenway is really a pathway that will, at last, bridge that Great Divide between the DTES and the ROTC (Rest Of The City). As I've said before, we have to stop looking at the poverty and homelessness and hopelessness issues as a matter of Us and Them. It's Us and Us, and once we get our heads around that, we'll be more than halfway there.

Besides, don't people in the area have just as much a right to nice-looking streets as those in other parts of town? Just like a shower and a fresh set of clothes, there are times when sprucing up the outward appearance can do wonders for the inward reality.

What I really like about the renewed Pigeon Park -- and the Carrall Street Greenway -- is the message the city is sending to the area. With all the beautification going on as the city prepares for the Olympics, that's a stretch that could have been ignored -- but it wasn't.

And yes, it is called -- now and forever -- Pigeon Park. There was some talk that it would be re-named "Pioneer Park", in the way that other parts of Vancouver grope for signs of "heritage", even as 21st Century high-rises (oh-so-environmentally-friendly, dontcha know) sprout like ragweed around us. But no: the official Vancouver Parks sign proclaims that Pigeon Park it shall be. Really - no other name would have gotten any traction at all.

Mind you, there's a certain historical/heritage aspect to the name Pigeon Park, because I seem to recall a time back in the Hippie 60s when there was a controversy over making that the official name. Must check with Chuck Davis - he'd know.

Not that the renewed park doesn't have a streak of ersatz history. I think I noted in a previous post that they'd installed streetcar rails in the pavement. I believe the streetcar did run along that route (the old BC Electric carbarn is across the street, now home to an art gallery and a variety of offices, including those of Red Robinson and Bruce Allen), but what makes the rails such a strange addition is that they fool nobody. For one thing, they run at sidewalk level, not at street level. On the other side of the carbarn, on Pender Street, streetcar rails also cross the sidewalk and then continue running across the street. If you really tried to run a streetcar along those tracks, that'd be a heckuva bumpy ride going from the sidewalk to the street.

There are Biblical analogs to Pigeon Park, as well. I've written before that the DTES is Vancouver's "Samaria", and Jesus makes special mention of that area in His instructions to us. When Jesus journeyed towards Galilee, He went via Samaria and then stopped and rested beside Jacob's Well, a place that had over 2,000 years of history behind it even then. It was a place where you could be guaranteed to meet a Samaritan. Pigeon Park is right at the edge of the original city limits of Vancouver, and would have been a site of some kind of settlement -- right back to the native Indian villages prior to the arrival of the white man -- for generations.

Jesus went out of His way to reach out to Samaria and Samaritans, and we need to remember that He also called on us -- His followers -- to make that a priority.

New brochure for the Mission

2009-12-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

Went to the "White Breakfast" yesterday morning, laid on by Business in Vancouver magazine, where the topic was philanthropy. Some notes will come later, but here's the text of the brochure I handed out to anyone who wanted. It's a good overview of who we are and what we do.

Gospel Mission
serving up “Jesus with the skin on” since 1929

Follow that “pillar”
In 1929, the area of Vancouver along Hastings between Cambie and Main was the happenin’ part of town. A look at the City Directory of the time shows theatres, restaurants and consulates all along that strip, anchored by the Dominion Building on one end and the Vancouver Public Library (now the Carnegie Centre) on the other. There were three major department stores – Woodward’s, Eaton’s and Army and Navy; Chinatown, with its blaze of neon, was a block away; the Pantages Theatre was on that strip, and Mr On Lee’s seafood joint had already been there for 17 years.

That year, in a storefront next to that famous neon seahorse, the Apostolic Church of Pentecost (ACOP) set up its first Vancouver church: Gospel Mission. Later that same year, the Great Depression hit.

Gospel Mission has a history of “following the pillar”: moving either physically or spiritually ahead of the curve, as God has directed, to be in position to catch the most vulnerable, forgotten and abandoned in our city. In the 1940s, the Mission moved kitty-corner to its current location at 331 Carrall Street, right at the edge of Pigeon Park, just in time to catch people trying to recover from the experience of the Second World War. As the “happenin’ part of town” moved west, others who fell through society’s cracks wound up in what was becoming known as the Downtown East Side.

Gospel Mission is housed in one of the oldest buildings in Vancouver: a two-storey brick pile, built in 1888 – two years after the Great Fire – and now across the street from one of the city’s worst locations for drug dealing, prostitution and violence. The “pillar”, like the beacon of cloud by day and fire by night that guided the Israelites through the wilderness, has stayed in that location, but in 2007, its form changed.

Showers of blessing – the Lord’s Rain
One of the obvious things about people on the Downtown East Side is that they’re generally filthy. Living on the street or in shelters, that’s hard to avoid. But it’s also obvious that they’d rather be clean. We saw people come into Gospel Mission and wash up at the laundry tub at the back, drying their hair with dishtowels, and wanted to do something about it; in late 2007, God provided the motive, opportunity and means.

One of the ground-floor spaces in our building came vacant, and even though we had zero dollars to make it happen, our landlord gave us the opportunity to draw up a plan for a showers facility.

From the beginning, God made it clear that the project was His will. Two days before our deadline, pledges came in totalling $4,000. The Oasis Church in Duncan, which has supported Gospel Mission for many years, put together a work party to build the stalls and sub-floor; a plumber who was “saved off the streets” at Gospel Mission donated his labour (and much of the material); Andrew Sheret, Ltd., donated four shower enclosures and the fittings; financial contributions, large and small, started coming in as others caught the vision. The media played an important role at key times, telling the public what was going on. On one occasion, a door was left unlocked through an oversight and some tools were stolen; when a TV report was aired, an anonymous donor stepped forward with a large cash donation to replace the tools and keep the project on track.

The Lord’s Rain, so dubbed by Judy Babcook, wife of senior pastor Barry Babcook, opened on April 30, 2008. Since then, it has provided more than 700 showers, thousands of cups of coffee and, in a glorious twist on The Law Of Unintended Consequences, a community place where people can escape from the streets, find good conversation, ranging from the Canucks to current events to others on the street to the Bible. We don’t outwardly evangelize, but the people who come in know who we are. That understanding, plus the fact that The Lord’s Rain exists to provide one of the basic needs of human life – cleanliness – brings the Light of Christ to that dark area and puts the Gospel into action. “Jesus with the skin on,” is the way senior pastor Barry Babcook describes it.

Further, the fact that The Lord’s Rain came about not through government programs or a single large corporation but by a group of private individuals and businesses with their unique gifts infuses the place with the intangible sense that people do care.

“Homelessness” is a typo
Much is said about Vancouver’s “homelessness” problem, but the metrics often refer to the number of people living on the street versus those in shelters or single-room-occupancy hotels. But are those “homes”? Matters like drugs and crime and mental illness are closer to the core of the problem, but the real root cause is hopelessness. Without Hope, why should someone try to beat drugs? Why should someone reach out for help? Why should someone even want to get up in the morning?

At Gospel Mission, we believe that Hope is found in the Gospel: the good news that God has not given up on His people and has already gone to extraordinary lengths to draw them close to Him. People need to know that it is possible to transform their lives and move forward, regardless of their situation, background or age.

We’re small – like the point of a spear
After its move from the Hastings Street storefront to Pigeon Park, it took another 50 years for Gospel Mission to expand beyond its “Upper Room” to street level. But as Jesus says, “ye shall know them by their fruits”, and the fruits of this Mission are tangible. We take joy in seeing changes coming over people, whether they get jobs, make a firm decision to move away from the area and its personal memories and issues, or just get a handle on their anger and pain. Personal victories like that seem small, but they drive to the heart of the problems that afflict people in the area. Those people can also go out and encourage their friends by their own examples.

A good place to philanthropize
Recently, The W. Garfield Weston Foundation provided a donation of $15,000 to Gospel Mission, out of a special fund the Foundation set up to help organizations at a time when other contributors might reduce their giving because of the current fears of economic downturn. The Foundation has given us permission to mention this contribution to encourage other businesses and foundations to follow that example.

Generous in-kind donations from Cobs Bread and Waves Coffee also help defray our food costs.

The really cool thing about ministering the Gospel is that it doesn’t cost much. A Bible, love and a good set of lungs have always been the tools of the trade. But James writes, “if … one of you say unto [a destitute person], ‘Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled’; [but] give them not those things which are needful to the body, what doth it profit?” (James 2:15-16). Gospel Mission is a church first, not a “feeding program”: but meals are provided, as well as the showers and a warm refuge. We’re all volunteers: contributions go directly to the service: for rent, utilities, groceries and maintenance.

Building The Lord’s Rain started when there was incredible prosperity: not many could see global financial crisis, just as it was when Gospel Mission was founded in 1929. But God knew what was coming: that people would crash out and His servants had to be there to break their fall. It’s not about providing more shelters and more programs: we believe it’s about giving people hope that the world can’t give so they can clean up, turn their lives around and move on – to make room for the new ones coming in. “The poor ye shall have always,” Jesus says, but He doesn’t say they’ll be the same poor.

Canada’s Worst Postal Code -- or Whitest Fields?
Jesus looked at Samaria – which, like the Downtown East Side, was a land of outcasts – and declared, “the fields are white for harvest”. So much “bad news” is reported about the area, but we see a lot of good news at Gospel Mission. We also know that in business, people are loath to invest in things that are not successful: they want to know that their investments do pay off. We have seen how investments in Gospel Mission so far are successful both for individuals and society as a whole. There is good news, plenty on which to build further.

Jesus also said, “the labourers are few”, and Gospel Mission is always in need of volunteers – people motivated by love to help make a difference by listening to people and encouraging them; showing them there is Hope.

We’d love for you to visit us some time:

Services:
Sunday – 12:30pm
Monday, Tuesday, Friday & Saturday – 6:30pm
Wednesday Bible Study – 7pm
Thursday Movie Night – 7pm

The Lord’s Rain:
Monday & Friday 10am-3pm
Tuesday 6:30-9am
Saturday 6:30-10am
Tuesday (Ladies Only) 1-4pm

For more information, please contact:

Barry Babcook, Senior Pastor,
604-328-3987; or
Drew Snider, Ass’t Pastor,
604-803-3199

Beaming at the Mission

2009-12-12T07:37:00.000-08:00

We are beaming this morning after last night's service at Gospel Mission. One of the messages I like to come back to is that anyone can share the Gospel with others - and that the guys (women come to the Mission services, too, but I call them all "guys") are uniquely qualified to witness to other street people, since they do have that shared experience.

This isn't a return to the belief I held for a while, that my own experience was too "white-bread" for people on the DTES to relate to. I finally got rid of that when the Lord reminded me, "you nearly died, and I saved you. That's all that matters. Now tell them about it." No, it's a question of people overcoming any thoughts that you have to have "Rev." in front of your name or a string of letters after it in order to preach the Gospel, but that each and every one of us is "allowed" and empowered to be Jesus' witnesses. His commandment to us in Acts 1:8 is directed at everybody.

Friday nights suddenly came vacant about 6 weeks ago, and we spent some time praying for another "team" to step up. It's a great opportunity for a church from outside the DTES to move into this vital mission field. After all, as I've mentioned before, Jesus' instructions to us in Acts 1:8 are to minister to "Samaria" -- land of the outcasts in our own backyard -- even before we turn our attention to "the uttermost part of the earth". But then Kim, Lincoln, John and Bill, who manage to fill in for me on Saturdays, said, "why don't we do it?" Barry and I prayed about it, and we've decided to try it out for a month.

Last night was Night One of the new team, and listening to Sean -- a fellow Bill brought in from the Salvation Army -- leading Worship, it hit me: this was the start of that "peer ministry" the Lord had put on my heart two years ago. Lincoln led the service, Kim gave a very well-researched message about God's desire for His people to prosper in all ways, Bill and Fred (who was very much involved at Rainbow Mission) made the food.

People were riding a "high" afterwards: they pulled it off, and I'll be interesting to see how far the Lord takes it and where it goes.

(Kim was also riding a high after seeing himself on the cover of the Vancouver Courier, featured in a story about "Free Geek". Check it out.)

***
And amid the hubris, something had to give. Fred had just been to the memorial for a young woman who'd died of an overdose. They were friends: he'd just seen her in a bar, and she told him, "I have to go home now". "You need to stop drinking, is what you need," he said. That evening, he saw the coroner's van outside the hotel where she lived and they were taking out a body. The next day, he found out who it was.

"She was always happy," he said. Can we say with a straight face that someone who was wired to drugs and booze on the Downtown East Side was "happy"? Oddly enough, in this part of town, there's a certain plausibility about that.

It turned out, she was one of four people of the same family who died in the past 10 days. One of them was Bingo, a man who came into The Lord's Rain often -- and sometimes upstairs to Gospel Mission. He was given to wearing colourful ties and keeping himself fairly neat. Apparently, he contracted food poisoning.

Amid the beaming and buzzing from a successful Opening Night for the new Friday "team", something to remind us about the reality of the job we have to do.

***
And another reminder of that reality: arriving this morning at The Lord's Rain, I came down the alley between Cordova and Hastings ... watching the rats darting back and forth (NB - we've had NO rats at Gospel Mission in well over a year: another sign God is protecting this place!) ... and there, in one of the doorways, was a young woman, tying an elastic around her arm, getting ready to shoot heroin. She knew I saw her, but it didn't matter: she was getting fix, and that was all that counted. But about half an hour later, she came into The Lord's Rain for coffee and a bun. At least she had a warm, dry place to come to.

The poor will always be with us, Jesus tells us, which is something we have to keep remembering when we see scenes like that or hear about Bingo and Fred's friend. Jesus didn't say they would be the same poor people. We're kidding ourselves to think we can ever eradicate poverty -- sorry, Bono: we can't make poverty history -- at least, not for the world. But with the Gospel and God's blessing, we can give hope to individuals so that they can make their own personal poverty history. Friday night at Gospel Mission showed us just how possible that can be.

Blessings where you can find them

2009-12-03T07:36:00.000-08:00

The funny thing about doing ministry in an impoverished area like the Downtown East Side is, it's hard to get "good news" stories Out There. There are some endeavours that almost thrive on bad news -- health and climate change research, for example -- as if people would stop paying attention (and stop giving money) if it looked as though the problem were licked.

Or look at it this way: if a mining company were to explore over and over again and come up snake-eyes over and over again, would you support it? Do you invest in a company that repeatedly reports failure?

So with Gospel Mission and The Lord's Rain, I prefer to tell about success; the blessings that have come raining down on the place: the indisputable signs that God's hand is on both the Mission and the Downtown East Side and encourage people that their money, efforts, supplies and prayers are well-used.

So to that end, let's look at some of the blessings I've seen lately around the Mission. It's a symbiosis, to use a really poncy intellectual term: the ministry blesses people and the people bless us.

One of the most palpable is the sense of community at The Lord's Rain. Creating the showers facility has raised ministry to a new level, so that whether people come in for a shower or not, that spirit of permanence and caring brings a new hope and optimism. Conversations range through the Bible, personal issues, current affairs, and really important stuff like the Canucks and the Lions.

Barry
He arrived from the Regina area about six months ago, and it's been easy to remember his name: with the remnants of a mullet, he bears a striking resemblance to Barrie Melrose, the sometime coach of the Los Angeles Kings. Unfailingly polite, a sharp dresser, especially considering he's been moving from shelter to shelter; he brings a measure of class to the Mission. Rather like Chet, who came at the same time as Barry, from the Six Nations Reservation near Ottawa (his is a story that's still unfolding).

Recently, Barry set out to find an agent to kick-start his acting career. Turns out, he did some TV and films in Saskatchewan and decided to try to get similar work in these parts. "It was a choice between getting an apartment and finding an agent, and I went for the agent," he told me.
This past week, he signed on with an agent and went for photo shoots. He certainly has a "look" and the kind of intelligence to work well on a set, so this is, definitely, a sign of hope for him.

Richard
"Have some coffee, Drew: it'll wake ya up!" That's Richard's catch-phrase, and he'll say it whether I've just arrived and haven't tucked into one of Danilo's signature brews (provided as a major blessing from Waves Coffee) or I'm working on my third.

To look at Richard, you could easily label him. He's native, tall and gangly, always wearing a toque (even in the summer), and his herky-jerky motion, whatever he happens to be doing, is a sign of current or former drug over-use. He has a capacity for our pre-mixed coffee (Danilo mixes the sugar and whitener in ahead of time) that is amazing, which almost doubles when he picks up "another cup to take to my ol' lady".

I'm beginning to think that Richard's "ol' lady" is a bit like Duffy on "Duffy's Tavern" or Maris on "Frasier": a character talked-about but never actually seen. Be that as it may, Richard's appearance continually reminds me how wrong you can be if you judge a book by its cover. This past Saturday, I brought in some Christmas cards for the people at the Mission to sign, and I did a double-take at Richard's penmanship.

"You have great handwriting," I said.

"I'm an artist," he replied. Ink and paper is his specialty -- he also carves, but doesn't have any tools at present. I'll take him some paper and pens on Saturday and turn him loose. Maybe -- if he does requests -- I'll get him to do a hummingbird for Amelia. Another native artist on the DTES -- name of Angelo -- did an ink drawing for me of a wolverine. I like wolverines. Amelia said, "why didn't you get a hummingbird?" So now I'm on the lookout for a native artist to do a hummingbird.

Anyway ... Richard's blessing: he'll be getting a room of his own in the "social housing" component of the new Woodward's development. He's really looking forward to it, and rightly so. A lot of the rental housing in the DTES is not noted for the cleanliness or attention to maintenance. What's intriguing is that this is the same Woodward's development that was the target of protests by the rent-a-mobs a few years ago -- indeed, the same ones who formerly occupied the space that is now The Lord's Rain. Go figure.

Kim
I've known Kim for years -- back to the days at Rainbow Mission, in fact -- and seen him grow in the Lord. By that I mean, he's gone from being the guy who showed up just as the message was ending, in time to get the food, to someone who fills in for me giving the message on nights when I'm not there (last time, he and Lincoln took turns). He trained as a cook and started training a few months ago for a service on the Downtown East Side called "Free Geek", which repairs and rebuilds computers and trains people in the area. Recently, he was promoted to a "trainer" position.

Walter
A native from Manitoba, he's heading back to a town near his reserve to work over the winter building cabins. The job takes him closer to his 17-year-old daughter, which means they'll be together for Christmas.

Pete
"Who here has never screwed up?"

I was on a preachin' roll that night. The message was about "belonging" and how we all belong with Jesus and I was heading for Paul's oft-quoted reminder that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

"Who here has never screwed up?" Pause for dramatic effect. One hand comes up. It's Pete.

70-something, alcoholic (on and off the wagon), in and out of prison most of his life, Pete was the most miserable sod you'd ever want to meet when I first met him; but in the past year and a half, it seems he's realized there has to be more to life than what he's been going through, and has changed considerably. Lately, he was diagnosed with cancer. He actually laughed when I asked him how he was. "I got cancer!" he said. And now, with exquisite timing that would have made Jack Benny proud, he sticks up his hand at my rhetorical question. We've been praying over him, and I believe his coming closer to God came just at the right time for this new challenge.

Lincoln
From what I know of him, Lincoln has always believed in and always sought God, and lately, he's been finding who he is in the Lord -- and who the Lord is in him. Breakthroughs like that are huge: he now fills in for me when I'm away, either going solo or partnering with Kim.

Shannon & Brannen
I mentioned Shannon in a previous post, in deep conversation with Howard when I arrived at The Lord's Rain one morning: an indication of how people who come to Gospel Mission and The Lord's Rain often counsel one another. This couple are on the methadone treatment program and have a variety of chronic ailments from drug abuse. Recently, Brannen got a job at the hotel where they live; the living accommodations are, by their account, atrocious - mold, leaky roof, underheated - but they're a great example of the blessing of having each other to help face those trials.

The Cobs Kids

Here's one outta left field for you. As we've mentioned before, we receive bread products from the new Cobs Bread location in Caulfeild (West Vancouver). It brings me closer to full circle, because it's just a chip shot from Caulfeild Elementary School, where I went in 6th and 8th grades more years ago than I'd care to remember.

There's a high school in the area, and some of the people working at this new Cobs are students at that high school, and picking up the bread on Monday nights has brought me in touch with a couple of them. They are both very interested in the work going on -- particularly at The Lord's Rain. West Van is an exceptionally affluent area -- much moreso than when I lived there, 30 years ago -- and anything that gets these kids thinking about what they can do -- and more importantly what is possible to be done -- is the seeds of a major blessing for the future.

It would be prideful to say that these blessings come because of Gospel Mission and The Lord's Rain, but there's no denying that we are part of a distinct move of God over the Downtown East Side. If you unpack Ezekiel 40, which describes the building of the Temple in intricate detail, you'll see that each of us has a job to do, but the entire plan, in the final analysis, is in God's hands.

What's more, we get to be witnesses to that move -- and to tell others about it.

It's easy to portray the people on the Downtown East Side as pathetic victims, but on the principle that death and life are in the power of the tongue (Prov. 18:21), if we keep on hammering that message, then the situation remains the same. We can bear witness to the fact that there are VICTORIES going on as we speak, and these people are just a few examples. These are just the ones I've seen, and as soon as I hit "publish post", I'll probably think of many more examples of people being blessed. Watch out for sequels.

But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 15:57).

Shelters - rights and responsibilities

2009-11-19T16:01:00.000-08:00

The president of Union Gospel Mission, Bill Mollard, raises some interesting points in his op-ed piece in the Vancouver Sun on Nov. 11, about the provincial government's new emergency shelter law.

The law gives police the authority to force a homeless person to go to a shelter when the weather is particularly nasty. On the surface, it looks like a good way to keep people from freezing to death. Bill's main point is that forcing people to go to a shelter -- even ostensibly for their own good -- takes away their dignity by taking away their freedom of choice; police officers are not social or outreach workers; the government would do better to support outreach programs. Bill's right on this count: I know a lot of street people who prefer not to go to a shelter. They don't want to be caught up with the fights, the thefts, the attitude problems -- often conflicting with their own -- and the fact that, especially in flu season, airborne sickness in an enclosed space is a concern (whether real or imagined).

I'm not sure I agree, though, with his opinion of the ability of police officers to assess a situation. That's part of their training, and frankly, there are few people I've met on the Downtown East Side who are more compassionate than the cops. For all the paranoia-mongering of the "activists" in the area, the cops are there and they care about the people. The son of some friends of mine at church recently became a full-fledged constable, and while he's been working other parts of the city to start with, he's said his ideal is to work the Downtown East Side and make a difference with the people there.

Then there's that "freedom of choice" issue. A lot of people on the Downtown East Side don't have freedom of choice. People who are mentally ill or so strung out on drugs that their sole aim in life is to find the next hit don't know what's good for them. They don't realize they could die from exposure ... or set themselves on fire by trying to stay warm. What are we, as a society, supposed to do? Are they to die because, at that one particular moment, they're incapacitated? Does our concept of "freedom of choice" and "dignity" take precedence over their right to live?

We leave them to die on the streets in the cold, and they're gone. We do something to help them live another day, and they have another chance to straighten their lives out.

And that leads to the problem I have with the legislation. One of the incidents that gave it added impetus was the horrifying death of a woman last winter. She had made a makeshift shelter with a shopping cart and a tarp, then started a fire to keep warm. Something went wrong and she burned to death. If I recall correctly, she had been advised by police to find a shelter, but since they couldn't force her, they let her be.

What's noteworthy about this is that this incident happened not on the Downtown East Side but on Davie Street, an area noted for self-absorbed self-indulgence. In the summer preceding the incident, I came across Clive, a man I used to know at Rainbow Mission. I hadn't seen him for several months, but this one afternoon, I saw him wandering, zombie-like, past a crowd of partyers waiting to get into one of the bars, the partyers apparently oblivious to Clive's very existence.

I saw the same thing with another woman, sitting in a wheelchair with a ventilator in her nostrils, begging. We chatted for a time and prayed together, and she said no one had even stopped to talk to her.

Did anyone who wasn't paid to be there stop to check on the woman who died in the fire? Funny: I think it's more likely that the people on the DTES would have noticed and tried to convince her to find a place -- and might have been more successful than someone in uniform -- a representative of The Man.

That -- along with the distinct possibility that the aforementioned paranoia merchants will use it to claim that the government wants an excuse to run homeless people off the streets and hide them until after the Olympics -- is what concerns me about this legislation. Is this legislation truly a caring move by government, or a way to wash our hands of a situation by giving the appearance of doing something? It's the flip-side of the "homeless censuses" that come out every so often, laying a guilt trip on society about how many more shelter beds we need. Will more shelter beds solve the homelessness situation? Is a shelter a home? Or is it just a number of beds on a ledger, which someone thinks will indicate that the problem is solved if it equals the number of people who would otherwise be on the street. "Well, we tried," the government can say, and people can go on partying to their hearts' content, since someone else is taking care of things.

Doesn't Jesus call us to be that "someone else"?

Having a "right" is one thing, but we as human beings, children of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, have a responsibility that we are all too willing to shirk. (Note what I've said in the past, that the DTES is "Samaria", and Jesus specifically includes Samaria in His final instructions to us in Acts 1:8.) If we are walking in love towards one another, we take care of one another. Maybe that means seeing if they want to go to a shelter; maybe it means sharing the Gospel and the hope of the knowledge that God has not forgotten them -- and neither have people in the "other half". It's amazing how much warmer you can feel when you know that. I believe that's one of the reasons why Gospel Mission and The Lord's Rain have been successful in achieving transformational revival: we're not a big organization, and our support comes from countless people coming forward in countless ways, with donations big and small, of money, time, labour and supplies, as the Lord lays it on their hearts. That sends an important subliminal message: that "someone else" from "the other half" does care.

HELP WANTED - some real opportunities at Gospel Mission

2009-11-19T07:58:00.000-08:00

This is called "casting your net wide". If you've read anything on this blog before, you'll know that Gospel Mission is small but motivated, and we've definitely had the hand of God on us for blessing in the work that we do. The more we reach out with the Gospel -- straight-no-chaser -- to let people know that God has not forgotten them and that the real turnaround they need is only possible through His Son, Jesus Christ, the more He blesses us with the resources that we need.

We have a couple of "human resource" needs at Gospel Mission, and I'm casting the net here to see who's interested. Sometimes, people don't step up to the plate because they're not even aware that there's a plate to step up to (lousy grammar, but I think you know what I mean). After all, the only reason I wound up ministering on the Downtown East Side is because God got right in my face about it. First, He first placed me at a job right at the worst intersection in Victoria (Broad and Pandora -- ironically, right beside City Hall) and then at a job where I had to run a gauntlet of drug addicts and panhandlers (CKNW, right beside Granville Station). It was then that I heard Him tell me, "these people don't need handouts ... they don't need money ... they don't need programs ... they need Me. They need My Son. And you have to tell them what I did for you."

So here are the opportunities:

1 - a ministry team for Friday nights. A good team would consist of 6-10 people -- one for the Worship music, one to preach, two in the kitchen, and the rest to serve coffee and meals, help with cleanup afterwards, and help disciple people and encourage them to focus their minds and hearts on Jesus and away from "the world".

2 - helping at The Lord's Rain on Tuesday mornings. We recently received a major blessing of bread from Cobs Bread and coffee from Waves Coffee. I need a couple of people to come in on Tuesday morning between 6:30 and 9 to help wrap bread and store it, and to make breakfast sandwiches for the people we serve.

3 - a team to open The Lord's Rain early on other mornings. The Lord's Rain is open Mondays and Fridays from 10-3, but the intent has been to have the place open early -- like 6:30 or 7am -- to give people a place to come after they get booted out of the shelters. We're open at those hours on Tuesday and Saturday; the early opening also gives one time to go to an office job afterwards (I close The Lord's Rain at 8:30 on Tuesdays, so I can get out to Metrotown by 9:15 or so).

The more people can spend time at Gospel Mission or The Lord's Rain, the more they're NOT out on the streets surrounded by the world, and the more they're hearing the Word of God and exposed to the Holy Spirit. (We don't preach at people at The Lord's Rain: it's what senior pastor Barry Babcook calls "soft evangelism" or "Jesus with the skin on" -- living and demonstrating the love of Christ.

The fruits are palpable. We've seen tremendous transformations in people. They're not cataclysmic, shaft-of-light-and-the-voice-of-john-ashbridge-from-the-clouds turnarounds, but gradual, definite, positive steps forward.

If you're interested in making a real, positive difference in an area that for decades has been long on bad news, please contact me.

The windows of blessing are open!

2009-11-17T05:45:00.000-08:00

They come big and small, and in all forms ... last month, we received the check from the W. Garfield Weston Foundation ... this month, it's staple foods for Gospel Mission and The Lord's Rain.

Cobs Bread has an "end of day giving program", where any of its bakemeats (to use the KJV expression) unsold at closing time are given to charities. We have been signed up for the Monday night "pickup" at the new Cobs location in West Vancouver (next to the Safeway just off the Upper Levels in Caulfeild, in what used to be woods where we kids would play while at Caulfeild Elementary School 40+ years ago).

The amazing thing is, when I walked in last Monday night for the first pickup, the shelves were practically full. I was told they have a corporate philosophy that their customers should have a wide selection of product no matter what time of day they walk in ... but I suspect there's also a corporate philosophy to give of their best to people in need.

So as well as using it for our own needs at the services (and it also means people coming to The Lord's Rain will have breakfast goodies, like Danishes, cinnamon rolls and the like), we'll give it away to those who need it.

One of our biggest expenses -- especially at The Lord's Rain at this time of year -- is coffee, and Waves Coffee is coming to the rescue, donating 20 lb of whole bean coffee a month (anyone got a large coffee grinder they're not using?). Barry receives donated coffee from another company for Gospel Mission (up till now, we'd been buying our coffee for The Lord's Rain), but I'm not sure if they want their name mentioned. Neither Cobs nor Waves has said one way or the other, whether they want publicity, so this is me, blowing a horn for them out of gratitude.

(It's an interesting paradox. Some of our contributors have said they don't want their names mentioned -- they're not after publicity. Others say "go ahead", not so much for the publicity, but to encourage others to help out, as well.)

The Lord's Rain -- it's all about the fellowship

2009-11-07T09:00:00.000-08:00

Busy morning at The Lord's Rain, which isn't surprising, because it's just chuckin' it down out there ...

John arrived early to open up, and I was a few minutes late, and arrived to find Howard and Shannon in deep conversation. Howard is John's roommate, having more or less escaped from a group home. John's been a real blessing to him, giving him friendship and treating him as a normal person -- there's no doubt he has issues, but in his case, knowing that having issues is actually quite "normal" can help a lot.

For her part, Shannon -- along with her husband -- is going through recovery from drug addiction. She has a very kind heart and even though they have next to nothing, they have a strong relationship. And there she is, talking to Howard about his issues, sharing what she's learned from going through her own.

John and Mario are talking Scripture again. John's a charismatic and Mario is Catholic, so you can imagine they get into some interesting discussions. The beauty of it is that, unlike a lot of discussions masquerading as religious dialogue, their conversations don't degenerate into an "I'm right/you're wrong" battle.

It's about the fellowship, and one of the really cool things about The Lord's Rain -- something we'd never envisioned when we launched the project 2 years ago (gad! 2 years this month!) -- is the way people feel free to discuss and explore their faith and the various forms it takes. And we thought it was all about the showers.

Speaking of which, another fellow found us for the first time today. Very grateful for the shower and the dry clothes ... hearing someone say, "I feel like a new man", is wonderful! "I never knew you guys were here," he said, "until I saw someone with the coffee and they told me about the coffee and the showers."

The other thing "they" need to tell others is how to get here. The Carrall Street Greenway Project continues to create an urban adventure in actually navigating around the jobsite to the Mission. On Tuesday, I found the sidewalk blocked on one side and had to cross to the other and move the metal fences to get through. This morning, the sidewalk was blocked about 20' from the entrance, and I had to slide past the workers and another metal fence to get through.

This, too, shall pass (I keep telling myself) ...

Not the most productive conversation with the city re parking during the Olympics. At first, it appeared we might be able to buy a meter hood and pre-empt a parking space during Games Time; then I was told they couldn't do that and besides, people would park there anyway and their Bylaw Enforcement Officers couldn't be everywhere at once ("don't bother working with the system because no one obeys the law anyway"?) ... and of course, if word got out that we got "special treatment", others would want it too.

As Spike Milligan once said, you could explain Einstein's Theory of Relativity to a roomful of monkeys for 6 months, and at the end of it all, they'd still be monkeys.

But (and here's the kicker) "we really want to help you".

I then felt like John Cleese in the cheese shop (to leap to another British humorist): explain the reasoning behind that statement.

Then we discovered that the owners of the parking lot at Army & Navy (a block away) would charge approximately 1/3 of what we'd pay for a city parking meter hood that (apparently) no one would obey, anyway.

Looks like we will maintain our record of never receiving anything from the City.

The wintry winds blow ... and the rain is cascading down .. meaning warm coats and boots and socks will be in demand again ... donations are always welcome -- email me or leave a message at the Mission (604-684-3097).

"Every wise-hearted one ..."

2009-11-04T06:58:00.000-08:00

We've devoted a couple of the most recent postings to the contribution we've received from The W. Garfield Weston Foundation, but the Lord woke me up around 4 this morning with a reminder: don't forget the others!

Right, as usual, Sir. After all, when you hear of a whacking big donation from a foundation, you might be tempted to think, "what good would my 50 bucks do?" ... and the answer is, Gospel Mission -- and especially The Lord's Rain -- was built not on one or two major donations, but on a whole lot of smaller donations.

Indeed, the same day that I deposited the cheque from the Westons, I also deposited a $50 cheque from one friend and US $20 from another. And that's how our Mission has grown.

The Lord's Rain is a perfect example. When we set out to build it, we approached a wealthy Christian businessman to underwrite the project. We were turned down flat. At first, we were perplexed, but then God started to show that He had other ideas. People started coming forward with donations, large and small. Yes, it was two larger donations that kick-started the project, but they were "convincers", responses to our request for a sign that The Lord's Rain was supposed to move forward.

People also started coming forward with their talents. If you read the Book of Exodus, you'll see that the Tabernacle was built by "wise-hearted" people or "those whose hearts were willing" (Exodus 35:10 et seqq.): that's how The Lord's Rain was built.

And that's how it should be. I've said it before: the reason why The Lord's Rain has been successful has been because it was built by a variety of people with a variety of gifts to bring. The love that comes with that effort and dedication permeates The Lord's Rain and shows the people who come in, whether it's for showers or just coffee and conversation, that people from The Other Half really do care.

And that's love ... which sows the seeds of hope ... which sows the seeds of transformational revival.

--
No Plague Shall Come Nigh My Dwelling Dep't.: Heaven knows, we saw enough rats in and around the Mission during the time that work was going on at the old Woodward's site a block away. Prayer, oil and some judiciously placed packets of Wilsarin dealt with that menace, but then came renovations at the hotel-or-whatever-it-was next door and the total destruction of the 300 block Carrall Street. More rats were sighted in the alley and scampering across the sidewalk ... but nowhere near Gospel Mission / The Lord's Rain. We haven't been using Wilsarin, either. Go figure. Praise the Lord, Who protects His people!

What's in a name?

2009-11-03T19:11:00.000-08:00

What a great day.

We received the cheque today from The W. Garfield Weston Foundation -- $15,000, which for Gospel Mission / The Lord's Rain, will go a very long way in doing what we're called to do on the Downtown East Side.

Mark Mitchell, a third-generation Weston and director of the Foundation, came to the Mission along with Carlo Fierro, manager of the Superstore at Rupert and Grandview Highway, where we do a lot of our shopping (Barry buys a lot at the Real Canadian Wholesale Club, too, which is also owned by the Weston Family). Sherry Chen and her shooter, Dennis, came from BCIT to cover the presentation, as did Teddy Huang from CTV.

Teresa and her crew had done a wonderful job of repainting inside the chapel upstairs; as I mentioned before, Barry and some others had done more work on the drywalling at the back. Aside from some newly donated clothes which hadn't been put away, the place looked great.

Chet Lalonde seized the moment to shave and put on a tie.

We showed Mark around The Lord's Rain and up into Gospel Mission upstairs.
Amelia took great pride in showing off the kitchen -- a tribute to the people who work back there while the service is going on -- the Mission is truly a team operation. In his remarks for the cameras, Mark paid us some nice compliments while I took the opportunity to say that I hoped the special fund set up by the Westons to help organizations that help feed and clothe the needy make it through the economic downturn would inspire other such foundations to step up their giving at this time.

L-R Mark Mitchell, self & Carlo Fierro

But there was one little "off" note that got me thinking. When CTV aired the story on the 5:00 news, they referred to us as Union Gospel Mission.

Oops.

I called the assignment desk and the young man there apologized profusely. I didn't catch the latter part of the newscast, so I couldn't see if they made the correction there; the story didn't air on the 6:00 package.

I have to admit, I'd had high hopes for a good story on CTV. It was Peter Grainger's story on CTV back in February 2008, which mentioned the theft of some tools from the jobsite, that led to one of God's "grandstand plays", to show that He was ordaining and providing for this "Next Level" ministry on the Downtown East Side. Janet Dirks, who's now the Alberta bureau chief, has been a big supporter from Day One. So it was a little off-putting to hear that they had gotten us mixed up.

I do go out of my way to let people know that we're two different organizations, largely out of courtesy to UGM; it's an important distinction on both sides, because, while we have similar names, so do Michael and Larry Jordan and, well, those two brothers are JUST a bit different*.

Gospel Mission was founded in 1929, more than a decade before UGM came along. I know there were "discussions" about the name similarities over the years, but those, I understand, are pretty much lost to memory.

So what is in a name?

Why wouldn't we change our name to something like "Carrall Street Church", which is the "secondary" name on our legal documents, to avoid confusion and possibly a lot of lost donations as people think they're giving to one organization but are really giving to another?

It's simple: "Gospel Mission" is the name God gave the Work He ordained through the Apostolic Church of Pentecost back in 1929. To change the name would be to second-guess God. To change the name would be to change the assignment He gave us when we have no right to do so.

To use a tired advertising cliche, The Name Says It All. It's a Mission. It spreads the Gospel.

Would we change the name to avoid confusion and not miss out on contributions? That would be a purely fleshly consideration. If people don't know the difference between the two ministries, whose problem is that? God's? Or ours?

Now, at this point, I was about to fall into the sar-chasm** about media coverage, except that the Lord is right now checking me about being ungrateful towards the media. After all, He's reminding me, it was the media -- like Peter on CTV (not to mention Pamela Martin's ad lib that it would be nice if someone stepped forward to help us), Cheryl Rossi at the Courier, my friends at CityTV, Clint Nickerson and Jen Palma at Global, Rick Cluff at CBC, Robert Groulx on Radio-Canada, Al Siebring at the Cowichan Valley Times and George Orr at BCIT -- who gave us vital ink and airtime when we were getting started.

What matters, He says, is that He knows the difference and He blesses us both in different ways. What matters is that Gospel Mission has succeeded because we're true to the assignment reflected in the name. What matters is that God has tapped people on the shoulder -- from The W. Garfield Weston Foundation, hectoring on other Foundations to keep giving even in tough times, to the anonymous donor who handed me a horse-choking wad of cash when he saw Peter's story, to the young boy who gave us $46 he'd collected through bottles and odd jobs because he couldn't bear to think of the people on the street with no food -- to let them know we have a need and they can fill it. And most importantly, the people on the street know who we are.

And that's what's in the name.

=========
*According to Answers.com, MJ idolized his older brother to the extent that he chose #23 as his jersey number with the Bulls because Larry wore #45 and he wanted to be half the man his brother was. I saw Larry play for the Chicago Express in the late-unlamented World Basketball League (I was PA announcer for the Vancouver Nighthawks): wonderful player - but at 5'8", well, you do the math.

**That's a neomorphologism meaning to utter one cynical remark, which leads to another ... and another ... until you're out of control and into a festival of negativity. That's an original. You're welcome to it.

... His hand is stretched out still ...

2009-10-29T07:13:00.000-07:00

Today is Thursday, October 29 -- the 80th anniversary of the Great Stock Market Crash, which many pinpoint as the start of the Great Depression.

Whether that was the exact turning point is open for discussion, but the date is significant for Gospel Mission, because the crash happened just after the Mission was founded -- and the history, as I piece it together, is a study in God's planning and provision for His people.

Simply put, it illustrates that God is always ahead of the curve.

Gospel Mission was planted by the Apostolic Church of Pentecost in 1929, which -- if my historical knowledge serves me right -- was a time of great prosperity up till the stock market crash. GM was first established in the Hastings-and-Abbott area (we moved to 331 Carrall Street in the 40s), which itself was a place of great prosperity in Vancouver. If you look at the City Directories for that time period - and up till the early 50s, in fact - you'll find that what is now Canada's Worst Postal Code was a happenin' part of town. There were law offices, consulates, restaurants, theatres (including the Avon -- originally the Pantages -- where my parents met) and the Carnegie Public Library (now the Carnegie Centre).

Why set up a rescue mission in the midst of that prosperity? Because God knew what was coming -- not just with the depression but the aftermath of World War 2, when soldiers who'd been demobbed but couldn't re-adjust to civilian life -- perhaps because of medical/mental conditions -- would wind up in that area and then the gradual transition into what it is today -- and He knew He needed His people in the area to help catch those who fell.

Now consider this: The Lord's Rain was conceived and built at a time of great worldwide prosperity. Things were bad enough on the DTES, but the Global Economic Downturn hit around the same time that The Lord's Rain opened and you can expect more people would fall victim to the effects of the downturn -- or at least of the fear of the downturn -- and wind up in the area.

Of course, we couldn't see that downturn coming when we took on the project. People who stepped forward to help financially and with funds and labour might have been spooked if we'd started the project just 6 months later, when the economic storm clouds were rolling in. Again, God moved ahead of the curve to make sure His influence -- His Hope -- would be there for people to see.

So the anniversary of the Crash of '29 has an interesting connection with Gospel Mission -- something that none of the people who actually planted the church could have anticipated. As with so many other things that God wants -- including The Lord's Rain -- people respond out of obedience, without knowing even a tenth of the reason why they're supposed to.

And as we obey Him, His hand stays stretched out for blessing.

Gospel Mission gets major $$$!

2009-10-29T05:42:00.000-07:00

Here's the text of a news release I've just sent to the media. Praise the Lord Who provides!

(In case the "serious bread" line is lost on you: the Weston Foundation grew out of Weston's Bakeries and the family now owns Superstore, Loblaws, the President's Choice product line and a bunch of other grocery-related concerns.)

News Release Oct. 27, 2009

Weston’s provides serious bread for Gospel Mission

Gospel Mission Society and its ministry, The Lord’s Rain, which provides showers for people on Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, have received a major boost to their financial resources from a major Canadian charitable Foundation.

The W. Garfield Weston Foundation has selected Gospel Mission to receive a grant of $15,000 to go towards its work in what some call “Canada’s Worst Postal Code.” Mr Mark Mitchell, a Director of the W. Garfield Weston Foundation and a third-generation member of the Weston family, will present the cheque at a small ceremony on Tuesday, Nov. 3 at 9:30am at Gospel Mission, 331 Carrall Street.

This contribution is part of a one-time special program initiated by The Foundation to help organizations like Gospel Mission make it through the current economic downturn. In all, $1.8 million is being divided among 120 groups. Further information about this special program can be found at http://www.westonfoundation.org/tigs/Pages/default.aspx.

Since Gospel Mission and The Lord’s Rain are run by volunteers (except for one paid administrator’s position), money contributed to the Society goes directly where it’s needed most: rent, utilities and supplies.

"We are very pleased be able to assist Gospel Mission in providing guidance and food for people in need,” says Mr Mitchell. “For 80 years, it has ministered to people regardless of race, gender or background, while The Lord’s Rain literally helps people ‘clean up’. We’re confident this contribution will have a direct and immediate impact."

“The provision for this ministry has been a case of the Lord tapping people on the shoulder – individuals, businesses, churches and organizations – to contribute as and when needed,” adds Drew Snider, Assistant Pastor at Gospel Mission. “This contribution makes it so much easier for us to minister the Hope that people need to turn their lives around.”

Founded in 1929 by the Apostolic Church of Pentecost, Gospel Mission is a church that has served Vancouver’s Downtown East Side through the Great Depression, World War II and countless economic ups and downs, helping to catch people who have fallen and encouraging them with the knowledge that they are loved. The Lord’s Rain opened in April 2008, providing showers and a place where people can escape from the street and find friendly conversation (not to mention free coffee!).

Att’n assignment editors: the media are invited to the cheque presentation on Tues. Nov. 3 at 9:30 am. The presentation will take place at Gospel Mission, 331 Carrall Street. Due to the roadwork currently underway in the block, the best parking will be on Cordova Street between Abbott and Columbia.
-30-

When is a "charity" not a "charity"? Hmm ...

2009-10-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, I posted a remark about an item in the Vancouver Sun, stating that non-profit groups and charities were feeling the pinch from the recession. Then I started ruminating on that phase, "non-profits and charities", and thought of something.

Let's see if can express this without seeming smug or self-righteous.

See, my comment on the item in the Sun is that Gospel Mission / The Lord's Rain was that no one interviewed us for the article, but if they had, they would have heard a different observation, namely, that the Lord will provide. And, indeed, He does. God does not experience recessions. So any kind of contribution -- from the big-ticket blessing from The W. Garfield Weston Foundation to an unexpected gift from the family of a gentleman who died recently and had been a supporter of ours in the past to an offering collected from the memorial for our dear sister Candy -- is a case of God at work.

But why us? For the true answer, look at us as an example that can apply to anyone else. To begin with, we declare that God is our source for provision and that so long as we are doing the work He has called us to do, we know we can rely on Him: not gaming revenue, not government whims, not companies that might tighten their belts in tough times.

Specifically, He has called us to bring the Light of Christ to people on the Downtown East Side, because from His Word comes the key to everything. Social justice, human rights, homelessness, poverty, crime, drug addiction: turn to the Word of God, and you'll find the solutions for all of that, and what more needful area can you think of than the Downtown East Side -- or any of the other "Samarias" all over the western world? (What do I mean by "Samaria"? Check out this blog entry.)

And He's sending the distinct message that those who answer that call won't have to worry about provision. Recession or no recession, He keeps coming through for us in ways that are so wondrous, they can only be God At Work, and we give Him the praise and the glory.

And what about the non-profits and charities that are feeling the pinch? The same provision God gives to us can go to them, too, if they take a moment and consider whether (a) they're doing what God has called them to do and (b) they're doing it His way.

***
An intriguing anniversary
Thursday, October 29, will mark the 80th anniversary of the Great Stock Market Crash, which many pinpoint as the start of the Great Depression. Whether that was the exact turning point is open for discussion, but the date is significant for Gospel Mission, because it occurred just after the founding of the Mission.

Huh?

Gospel Mission was planted by the Apostolic Church of Pentecost in 1929, which -- if my historical knowledge serves me right -- was a time of great prosperity up till the stock market crash. The Hastings-and-Abbott area, where GM was first established (we moved to 331 Carrall Street in the 40s), was a place of great prosperity in Vancouver. If you look at the City Directories for that time period - and up till the early 50s, in fact - you'll find that what is now Canada's Worst Postal Code was a happenin' part of town. There were law offices, consulates, restaurants, theatres (including the Avon -- originally the Pantages -- where my parents met) and the Carnegie Public Library (now the Carnegie Centre).

Why set up a rescue mission in the midst of that prosperity?

Because God knew what was coming -- not just with the depression but the aftermath of World War 2, when soldiers who'd been demobbed and maybe had debilitating medical/mental conditions would wind up in that area and then the gradual transition into what it is today -- and He knew He needed His people in the area to help catch those who fell.

Consider this: The Lord's Rain was conceived and built at a time of great worldwide prosperity. Things were bad enough on the DTES, but the Global Economic Downturn hit around the same time that The Lord's Rain opened and you can expect more people would fall victim to the effects of the downturn -- or at least of the fear of the downturn -- and wind up in the area. Again, God moved ahead of the curve to make sure His influence -- His Hope -- would be there for people to see.

So the anniversary of the Crash of '29 has an interesting connection with Gospel Mission -- something that none of the people who actually planted the church could have anticipated. As with so many other things that God wants -- including The Lord's Rain -- people respond out of obedience, without knowing even a tenth of the reason why they're supposed to.

****
Take neither purse nor scrip ...
The Lord's Rain got put to work in an unusual way this past weekend. I got a call from Peter Carlson, International Prayer Director with Grace Extended Ministries in Beaverton, Oregon. He'd heard about us through a mutual friend, Thor Tolo, the radio personality who interviewed me twice last year about my book, A Very Convenient Truth. Thor and I have become good friends since then, and he had no compunction about giving Peter my number when he found out Peter was leading a group of young missionaries up to Vancouver for a conference at Glad Tidings Church.

Funny thing is -- and you have to understand the way the minds of men and women of God work -- they piled into their vehicles and headed north without having a place to stay. 10 of them. And they called on Wednesday, with the conference starting on Saturday.

Well, we didn't have a place for them to crash, but we did have a place where they could shower-up, so on Saturday morning, five of them trooped over to The Lord's Rain to do just that. We also opened up for them early Sunday morning, which we don't normally do.

It was a great time to talk and compare notes about missionary work -- particularly work with urban poverty (a much better term than "the homeless", if only because you can have a roof over your head or a shelter bed and account for one less in the "homelessness register" ledger sheet and still not have a home) -- and pray together and encourage one another. It was also a wonderful blessing to be a part of the equivalent of Jesus' sending out the 70 disciples with the instruction not to take anything with them, but to rely on the hospitality of the people they met along the way.

("When I sent ye out, lacked ye anything?" He asked; "Nothing," they replied.)

And where did they crash? They stayed at "614", which is a ministry run by the Salvation Army's War College, about 2 blocks away. It just happened to be a ministry that they had wanted to connect with.

See what I mean about God providing in ways we can never imagine?