Jesus, shelters and the law

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?

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

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 ..."

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.

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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.

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The "Worst" kind of violence?

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!

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

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?).