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Archives For November 30, 1999

Raj’s Perspective on Lunch

Charles Kiser —  July 2, 2008 — 4 Comments

Raj is a good friend of ours in Dallas. I’ve described him to others before as a “person of peace” for us — someone who has shown us hospitality and opened doors for us into new relationships and organizations since we’ve been here. He’s very well connected in Dallas — so much so that he’s running for City Council next year. He’s excited about what we’re doing and has been a big supporter.

I’ve also described Raj as one of the most philanthropic / spiritual of non-religious people I know. Many of us religious people, in fact, would do well to take note of the way Raj lives his life. I think it is, in many ways, close to the heart of God.

Raj sent us some reflections about his experience at the Neighbors Lunch that I want to share with his permission. Thanks, Raj, for these profound and affirming thoughts.

As a relative outsider, well not really…Meeting Charles has been a great experience for me as I have a new friend, but more importantly a friend that comes from a very different viewpoint in my life then is traditional for me.

I have truly enjoyed meeting all of you this past week. Charles, Julie, and Ryan with the COOL last name… The lunch event on Saturday was a really neat experience. Meeting folks that are homeless and truly have a different perspective in life always teaches me something. Regardless of where, and or what path you have taken or have arrived from we are truly blessed. While I have struggled with my personal faith, I have always found that helping others in any capacity is a function of serving in God’s eyes, in God’s name, and in God’s true expectations of us as humans. To that end, meeting those less fortunate is more than writing a check. Its more then giving a hand-out, its sharing hope. In many ways, its what we all do in our day to day lives. Share hope, passion, compassion, and kindness with other humans. Doing that service for others, while not enabling them, only drives them to help themselves is my opinion.

As I travel back from CA on another business trip, complaining about this or that, I am reminded reading the Storyline blog … that I am blessed. Blessed to have friends, blessed to have an education, blessed to know right from wrong, and blessed to be able to do something about improving the quality of live for others. I am grateful that God has given me so many blessings and tools to help me with my life, but I find more valuable the tools he seems to give me to help others. To that end, I believe your lunch this past Saturday is a small but significant example of what your group and church truly brings to the table in God’s name. The ability to help others, show others, lead others, and encourage others who may have no vision or understanding of how to improve their quality of life.

So… I do believe that improving the quality of life for others is part of your mission. I am glad to have shared it with you, and I hope to help you all again in the near future. It has been my pleasure to learn from you all…

In Community Connection, Justice
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Neighbors Lunch Update

Charles Kiser —  June 30, 2008 — 3 Comments

Our Neighbors Lunch on Saturday was a tremendous success. Thanks to all of you who sponsored and prayed for our experience. We enjoyed a spaghetti lunch at Spaghetti Warehouse in Downtown and cultivated relationships with our new friends: Wesley, Darrel, Cindy, Lowell, Chad and Marjorie.

After lunch we helped Lowell and Cindy move some of their stuff into storage space near Downtown, and we also assisted Darrel in getting a monthly DART pass for July so that he could get around—he sells papers Downtown. I’m delighted the way our service to them emerged naturally out of mutual friendship.

Chad Matthews said it well in an email to me:

Looking up and down the table this afternoon, I keep thinking how RIGHT everything about the situation felt. “Bingo!” I kept saying to myself…. I believe with all my heart that our meal this afternoon was as close to “church” as I’ve been in a long, long time.

Chad and Marjorie have just left for an 8 month tour of major U.S. cities as a way of exploring what’s being done on behalf of the homeless in our country. I’d encourage you to check out their website: www.ILoveEvelyn.org.

This is just the beginning. We’re continuing to dream of ways we can go deeper into building relationships with our new friends and neighbors. I’d like to see us host a similar event on a much larger scale and partner with other organizations in the area to do it.

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We’ve hired Scott Ellis, current President of the Dallas Junior Chamber of Commerce, to do some web design for us. He is responsible for the new DJCC website and we’re excited about working with him. He’ll build the site on a publishing platform called WordPress so that we can maintain it ourselves without having to outsource to someone who knows HTML and all that stuff. (That last sentence may have been more than many of you wanted to know.) Civic organizations are good for networking on many levels.

We should have a site up at http://www.storylinecommunity.com later this month. We’ll keep you posted.

In Justice, Marketing
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Meet Your Neighbors

Charles Kiser —  June 23, 2008 — 4 Comments

We’ve wrestled for a while to find ways the Storyline Community could take initial steps into the ministry of justice in Dallas. Thanks to the epiphany of a sharp teammate, we found the perfect starting point.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, we’ve learned of the importance of cultivating relationships with our poor and downtrodden neighbors—not treating them as charity cases or objects of evangelism but as friends with dignity and respect. These friendships serve in turn as the foundation of our ability to serve our neighbors in a meaningful way.

After all, how can we know the needs of the poor and needy unless we know the poor and needy?

So we’ve decided to get to know our neighbors. In partnership with Chad and Marjorie Matthews of I Love Evelyn (pictured in the top left and bottom right on the left), we’re hosting a meal at a restaurant in the West End of Downtown. Chad and Marjorie will bring their friends (many of whom are currently on the streets); we’ll bring our Storyline friends. And we’ll all share a meal together and simply get to know each other.

The dynamics of sharing a meal will be significantly different than serving our neighbors a meal—not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m only hoping this meal levels the playing field a bit and helps us to see each other as peers and equals.

Imagine the possibilities of a movement in which people begin to show interest simply in getting to know their poor neighbors.

I’m excited about this event and think it has the potential to keep us moving in the right direction when it comes to justice issues. We’re praying that God will open our eyes to injustice in the midst of conversations with our neighbors.

In Hospitality, Justice
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Justice and the Mission of God

Charles Kiser —  May 12, 2008 — 17 Comments

One of the first appointments we made after arriving in Dallas was with Larry James at Central Dallas Ministries. We desired to get to know what was going on in the city in terms of community service and development, and CDM is making a significant impact in those areas. We asked Larry how we might come alongside CDM and partner with them in community development.

He said a couple things that got my attention. The first was that not many churches ask that question. Most are concerned with volunteer opportunities for their members and avenues for evangelism among the poor. The second thing: he encouraged us to build relationships with our poor neighbors. Personal relationship would benefit both us and our neighbors more than any token volunteer hours could.

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We met Chad and Marjorie Matthews several weeks ago. Chad was a youth pastor in east Texas for a few years. He recently quit his job and, after receiving an unexpected monetary gift, relocated with his wife to downtown Dallas. What do they do now? They hang out with the homeless every day. They take them out to lunch. They have them over for dinner. They offer chauffer services when someone needs a car to get around. They call what they do “I Love Evelyn,” the name of the first homeless woman they met in Dallas. Chad says with a gleam in his eye, “We just want to see what love can do.”

Porche and I recently went to eat lunch with Chad, Marjorie and their friend Wesley. Wesley is intelligent. He is a man of values. He is a man of integrity. He is a man of gratitude and humility. He is 67 years old and looks 47.

When Wesley learned that I was a “preacher”, he cautioned me not to be like other preachers who were in it for money or renown. When I asked him what counsel he would give me as a preacher he said, “When you get behind that pulpit, you better not half-step it; you better bring it all. Tell the truth.”

Wesley, by the way, doesn’t have a home right now. He sells newspapers on a downtown corner so he can make ends meet and save up for a new place.

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A couple weeks ago I volunteered with a non-profit organization in town called SoupMobile. It is directed by a man named David Timothy, affectionately referred to as the Soup Man. Every week day he prepares lunches for the homeless in downtown. Around 1 p.m. he loads it up in a van and drives to the Day Resource Center parking lot, where hundreds of people line up to receive a warm meal. His friends always know when he’s coming because he plays the Rocky theme song through speakers attached to the exterior of his van.

On the day I helped out, I gave away 600 hot dogs in 60 minutes.

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Ryan and I came back from the National New Church Conference with some new resolve to listen for the needs of our local community by conducting some form of a community needs assessment. In short, it entails meeting with community leaders at every level—business owners, school counselors, social workers, non-profit organization directors, elected officials—and in one way or another, asking them what are the needs of the surrounding community.

The hope is that by doing so, we can develop relationships all across the city that will open doors for joint partnerships to do good things for the city and its inhabitants: to help the poor; to curb injustice; to be good neighbors to all our neighbors.

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Why spend our time doing such things? Why not pour all our efforts in meeting people who are far from God and joining in their spiritual journeys? Why not hold off on “benevolence-oriented” ministry until the church gets off the ground?

Because to us, these things are expressions of one facet of God’s fully-orbed mission in the world: justice. Not justice in the American sense, but justice in the biblical sense. In the Scriptures, particularly in the OT prophets and teachings of Jesus, justice (or righteousness) means taking care of the needs of the poor, the downtrodden, the widows and orphans, the aliens.

We’re having justice conversations because justice is what God is already doing in the world and we want to join him. We want to begin to be the kind of church now that we want to be five years from now—and that means participating in some way in all the facets of God’s mission.

James puts it well: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (1:27).

In Justice, Mission
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Week in Review

Charles Kiser —  April 29, 2008 — 1 Comment

We had a good time in Orlando at the conference. I ended up seeing lots of people I would have never expected to see there. And we learned a thing or two, which is good. It was fun staying in a big house with several other Mission Alive people, and riding around in the rental car with Les and Logan, Mission Alive church planters in Savannah, TX.

One thing from the conference I’m chewing on is a session in which I learned about conducting a community needs assessment. It’s a big commitment and a long process, but the benefits seem astounding—it would provide us with invaluable community relationships and also a sense of what gaps exist in community service. One of those gaps might be an opportunity to start a special justice initiative that we can champion as a church. I’ll post more later about this.

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We didn’t waste much time when we returned to Dallas. We hosted the kickball party on Saturday. About 20 people showed up for the festivities. All in all, it was a smashing hit. Several people from the party will join us for our first house church gathering next weekend.

The X factor was playing “crazy kickball”, in which every person was required to hold their drink in a red solo cup at all times, whether kicking, catching, or running. Let’s just say we got plenty of drink on us.

If playing kickball sounds like a flashback to 3rd grade, know that there is a kickball craze among young professionals in our area. We promise we’re not totally missing the mark with our weird ideas.

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Please pray for our first house church gathering coming up this weekend. We put on a preview gathering on Sunday night with several of our friends, after which they gave us feedback about their experience. It was exciting to me the way a meal and good conversation drew people together, even those who didn’t know each other very well beforehand. I love helping to create community.

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The justice post is coming soon.

In House Churches, Justice, Prayer
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