Charlie

What exactly our neighborhood ministry looks like this year is really up to us, the five of us living here in the house on Gregory. Certainly, we all have some idea of what we think that it would ideally look like. Just as certain, we would each come up with something completely different if we were to set about writing our own schedules and programs for the year. That would be assuming we tried to tell the neighborhood that we knew what it needed better than it knew itself. So we decided to wait, give it some room to breathe; we would wait for the neighborhood, for God, to show us the direction we should be traveling in.

We have been praying for some form of outreach that would include the older kids in the neighborhood instead of just the younger ones, mostly under the age of 14. Thursday night of last week the neighborhood whispered a request in our ear. There are some teenagers in the area who have recently come to Christ - and they wanted to hold a bible study in the community house. This house is one of the very few places where there would truly be enough room for everyone (I'm wondering after just one week if even it is big enough) where they also felt comfortable enough to ask about using it. How could we possibly say no?

When Monday night rolled around, 8:00 PM we were ready - not necessarily for the best to show up at our doorstep, but for something to show up. I know that I was skeptical - We've been here barely a month and I can definitely see where people might take advantage of us because of that. This was nothing like that though.

Really, they didn't need us there at all - we were merely the providers of a house of worship - and participants as well. We sat down in the circle along with everyone else, and then Charlie got up to speak.

The kids in this neighborhood have been through a lot - to say the least. Some of them smoke and drink. Some of them have for years. All of their lives have been touched by gang activity. Charlie just got out of jail.

Charlie found God while he was in jail. When he found God, he also felt a call to return to the neighborhood where he grew up, where he smoked and drank, and where he sneered at former Community House occupants and this strange Jesus they kept talking about. He's come full circle now. Now it is his turn to share - and not just in blurbs that he has heard someone else say a few times over from the pulpit, but truly from reading the word himself, from embracing the word and from studying it. Goodness knows he had the time to do it, yet I am amazed that after so many years of shielding his heart from God's love, He was there all along. Charlie knew through it all that he was there.

Whether this ministry needs the five of us city dwellers or not is debatable. Charlie and his friends brought this study into the community house on the breath of the community's needs. Such a study could so easily go in hundreds of directions, but we have chosen to continue watching it breathe as it will - this ministry is a blessing to us as well as to them; Charlie's story may even have impacted us more than it did some of his peers.