The Seeing and the Weeping of it. [part two]

Micah 6:8 says;
He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

The church over the past several generations has become good at mercy ministries and in some cases we've even become great at being merciful to those around us; donating to others our provisions, serving the less fortunate, sharing the Gospel with the down and out and demonstrating genuine compassion for the least, last and lost among us.

But are we great, or even good at providing justice?

God said through Micah; "do justly..." Do we weep over the injustice of a neighborhood that no longer can be afforded by it's residents? Are we concerned with the plight of our brothers and sisters, who attend our services but return to the drug infested neighborhood in which they live?

In short, could it be that the Great Commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself" means that we must do more than the mere spiritual transformation of a person? Mercy causes me to share Christ for the purpose of Spiritual Transformation but justice causes me to share Christ for the purpose of Social Transformation.

Please remember that as the Church in your City, you are the most powerful certainty on the planet! No other entity has God said "Jesus is the Head of you." But also please know my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, if we're not careful we're going to lose the right all together to be heard in our communities.

Love mercy - please. But while we're at it, let's add justice to our plans, action steps, strategic sessions and yes ... to our prayer for one another. Then I think we can be like Nehemiah, who when after the weeping went to work to bring justice to a troubled city.

What do you think?

Dan Rogers

The Seeing and the Weeping of it [part 1]

Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men of Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, which were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem.
And they said unto me, The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned.
And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of heaven.
Nehemiah 1:2-4

The gates and the walls of his beloved city were in ruins, and his fellow citizens were in harms way - now that's worth crying about!

You get the idea, walls and gates were very important to a city because of the protection and safe harbor they provided and represented. When the gates and walls are in ruins, it's very indicative of the overall condition of the city and it's citizenry.

If Toledo had walls and gates, what would be their condition?

You guessed it - "it's crying time."

Maybe it's time for us to step up and step back from our daily grind for a minute. What do we see? No, not just the obvious - what do we see? What is the condition of our people? Does it break your heart to see the hungry and the homeless? Does it mess you up to see thousands return to our city each year from incarceration? Do you weep over the victims of domestic violence? Are you crying?

First cry - then serve. That's Nehemiah's story. He allowed himself a moment to get messed up over the bad news of his home town, then he went to work to fix it. Perhaps in some cases we get too busy in the service and work of others, we forget to let something of ourselves break first.

When we follow Nehemiah's example and first weep over what we first see, then our action plans, and to-do lists, and economic development plans, and educational plans, and regional growth plans become better organized and better implemented, because we've seen the beginning from the end.

What do you think?

Dan Rogers

Do we 'Nehemiah' our City?

Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men of Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, which were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said unto me,
The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned.
And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of heaven.
Nehemiah 1:2-4

Toledo, like many mid-west cities, is in trouble.

Toledo is in fact the 13th fastest shrinking city in America, we have an entrenched political climate, a failing public school system, and a community of civic leaders who seem to have an endless penchant toward examining the fuzz in their navel while the city we love teeters somewhere between broken and busted.

In the course of the next several posts I would like to develop with you the following, regarding Nehemiah's responsiveness to bad news concerning his home town.

Nehemiah;

• Received those who knew the condition of the city,
• Asked questions regarding the cities condition,
• Heard the news
• Sat down - stopped his normal and daily routine,
• Wept - openly expressing the pain of the news,
• Mourned the reality,
• Turned to God with fasting and prayer concerning the cities condition.

Do we 'Nehemiah' our city?

What do you think?

Dan Rogers

A Mark on their Soul

Psalms 130:2-4

Out of the depths I cry to Thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.

Recently on a Saturday morning and while making breakfast for friends, I foolishly reached for something on the stove without looking first. The result, you guessed it ... a burn on my hand.

For the next several days that rather sizable red mark was a constant reminder of the careless action that created it. In the same way, all of us can be careless with our lives by "reaching" for something without looking first. The results can range from a slight reprimand to loss of job or family .. or even death.

Unintended consequences.

The verse above is key to understanding God's role; (psalm 130:3), “if You Lord would mark me, or keep in mind the things I have done wrong, how will I be able to stand it?” It’s a good question with a great answer supplied also by the psalmist in verse 4; “But with you, there is forgiveness.”

Every day, hundreds of men, women and families arrive at one of the ministry sites of Cherry Street Mission Ministries living out the unintended consequence of homelessness due to careless actions. They bear a kind of mark on their souls. Just like my burn, their mark is a constant reminder of things gone wrong, decisions which have gone badly and families left in disaster.

Like the Psalmist, they're crying out from the depths of their soul. The weight of incarceration, addiction, abandonment and homelessness crashes in on them every day. Can you imagine with me the joy and relief that comes on a person, when they begin to realize and accept that ‘In Him (God), there is forgiveness’, that our God has not marked them but rather desires to remove the mark of failure and addiction that's on their soul?

I hope, this is true for all of us today as we cry out to God for relief from our own failures and the weight of consequences we didn't intend - may we all find Him faithful in forgiveness.

What do you think?

Dan Rogers

Can we end poverty and poverty causing homelessness for an entire community?

WOW!

Can we end poverty and homelessness for an entire community??

As you may know, Cherry Street Mission Ministries has been ending poverty and poverty causing homelessness for individuals for 60 years. I think we've proven again and again, with staggering accuracy, that it's more than possible to end the chronic cycles of destruction in a person's life.

But that's not the question for today is it? Can we bring an end to the nightmare reality that thousands of our fellow citizens and their children are in fact without a home in Toledo and the surrounding region?

If you can only see the obvious, the answer is NO!!

HOWEVER - if you're willing to work, serve and intention yourself beyond the obvious and are willing to spend and be spent without a consideration for time, then the answer is an overwhelming YES!!

Poverty, incarceration, homelessness and addiction (just to name a few) are downstream issues, created way upstream of today's reality. When we end homelessness for a single individual, we do that in the downstream reality - they come to one of our facilities, we serve them and minister the life of Christ to them and they become restored and return to our communities.

But in order to solve the downstream realities for an entire community, we need an upstream solution. We are only experiencing the plight of poverty and homelessness as a community because there is a "factory", if you will, that's creating it.

We must also come to terms that the ultimate upstream reality begins with the parent. It's often been said that it takes a village to raise a child, meaning that it takes all of us to ensure the child's success. After several years of thinking this way as a community, I think we can say with relative certainty that not only is this line of thinking not working, it's failing miserably.

Don't you think the more accurate statement is, it takes a village to raise and support a parent and it takes a parent to raise a child? I do - the parent is the beginning of the stream and they need our overwhelming support.

At Cherry Street we always say; "Time is not a factor when the inevitable is being pursued". I guess, the biggest question we must answer is; Are we willing to take time off the table so that a better day for Toledo may emerge?

What do you think?

Dan Rogers

What does the lack of affordable housing have to do with Homelessness?

Gentrification. I'm one of those guys who love to see old areas of the city revitalize - especially abandoned areas where commerce is once again thriving and people are returning to live and raise their families. Bringing a community back to life establishes fair market housing and that attracts other people and businesses to the area, which leads to more revitalization and so on it goes.

Of course without a carefully thought out development plan, there's a down side to gentrifying an area - lack of affordable housing. The ugly side of bringing "life" back to an area, is that little or no thought is given to the life (people) already living in that area. Again without a careful plan that benefits all people, for every block that is revitalized affordable housing gets pushed out or down to the next block until it vanishes completely.

Many of the women and men, especially the men, who come to our facilities for shelter or transitional living are caught in what we refer to as the "Housing Sandwich." With more than 8,000 men and women coming from our correction facilities into Lucas County each year, many of them do not have a home to return to. Incarceration isn't the only contributor to the housing sandwich. If a person who has been without a home for an extended period of time, gets back of their feet, they to will be unable to move from our care to their own home. So for many, the sad reality is, lack of affordable housing brings them to us and lack of affordable housing keeps them with us - that's how the lack of affordable housing contributes to the homelessness of our fellow citizens.

Here's today's question; "What happens when we merge a ready labor force (homeless men and women), with all the abandoned houses in our city (between 400-500 conservatively) and education in the building trades (plumbing, electrical construction)?

The return of affordable housing! Simple, yet complex - what do you think?

Dan Rogers

What's the number one cause of homelessness?

Let's get the familiar and obvious answers out of the way:

1. Alcoholism?
2. Illegal or prescription drug use?
3. Incarceration?
4. Pornography?
5. Gambling?
6. Economics?
7. Lack of affordable housing?
8. Illiteracy?

If you said yes to any of the above, you've certainly identified a number of contributors to homelessness. In fact the number one contributor of homelessness among men in the United States is alcoholism and the number one contributor of homelessness among women in the U.S. is crack cocain. Incarceration - huge! We have more than 8,000 men and women coming into Lucas County every year from our corrections centers. Gambling? No one wants to talk much about the down sides of something so fun and"innocent" as gambling. Economics? Ohio still hasn't seen the economic recovery of most states, so our state and region wide economic woes definetly contribute to homelessness. What about pornography? This is the number one contributor to sex crimes and the making of sexual predators - I know, shocking isn't it?

But what about the number one cause of homelessness? Ready? It's the lack of knowledge!! That's right, the Bible says people perish because of it. The reason why the ministries of Cherry Street have been widely successful is because we know that the obvious (the list above) is simply the product of something else.

You can prove this by thinking about all the times you've failed, or made a bad choice or decision. You can track the wrong done to the lack of knowledge; either you didn't know, or you did know and chose to ignore it anyway. Either way, it was the lack of knowledge applied that brought about the negative outcome. How have you corrected these bad decisions moving forward? You've made sure you've got knowledge working for you.

When we introduce knowledge into the lives of the men and women we serve, their lives begin to change - from the inside out. Of course, the knowledge that we unashamedly apply is that of God through Christ Jesus.

Dan Rogers