Fun & Important Project

Feed my starving children is a massive organization and project that allows folks like us to get together and create food packages for humanitarian aid around the world. The items are shipped wherever they are needed. We have been invited by our good friends at Peachtree Presbyterian Church to join them in this endeavor. This would be a group small group, Bible Study group, or Sunday School group project to do. You would sign up one time and go serve together. You’ll have a blast a play a role in helping solve a critical need in the world right now. I believe this food is targeted for East Africa, which has been ravished by famine.

Here is the website where you sign up.

Community Volunteer Opportunity

This is from a friend of ours in the community. They need your help. This is a great opportunity for anyone looking for a simple and meaningful way to serve the senior citizens of our community:

“YOUR HELP IS NEEDED! Senior Citizen Services needs your help delivering Meals On Wheels any Saturday you choose.
This is something a family with childern of any age can do together or some friends might team up for.
With the poor economic conditions we are facing, the demand we are experiencing calls for more volunteer help.
Please contact: volunteercoordinator@scsatl.org or call: 404-351-6194.
Extra help registering volunteers and packing meals is also needed for Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve mornings.”

Thanks,

Bob Wiesman, Community Liaison
Senior Citizen Services of Metropolitan Atlanta, Inc.
770-238-8864 (Cell)
www.scsatl.org

Our mission: To support senior independence through meals, shelter, education and community.
Check out their website

http://www.scsatl.org/faith_based_communities.htm

God is present

God shows up in crazy places at times. Last week I participated on a panel for a summit on the problem of Human Trafficking. It was a fantastic gathering of experts from all different disciplines. Great Event. I didn’t have one really surprising thing happen. The most impacting, memorable takeaway for me was something I wouldn’t have predicted going into the event.
The very first panel of the day was a group of prosecuting attorneys and law enforcement officials. Their goal was to provide us with examples of the issue. They laid out examples of the crimes they work against. They detailed the cases they made against human traffickers in the state of Georgia. As they presented each case they would show on screen slides of evidence they presented during the trial. It was very informative and interesting. Yet, the most impacting slide I saw was not really acknowledged. It was shown on the screen but the contents of the slide were never read. The audience was just left to read it, as it was simply stated as being an entry from the diary of one of the victims. The diary was put into evidence to connect the victim to the trafficker. I’ve posted the page below:

This was from the diary of a young victim of human trafficking. God meets us in our darkest hour.

It was like reading a Psalm of lament in modern day. It hit me hard. God is with us during everything. The girl who wrote this was in her teens at the time. She felt God’s presence in her life in as dark a time as one can have. She was being forced to have sex with 10-15 men a day according to the prosecutors. God is present. God is in this issue. God brought her out of her torture via hardworking officials who feel a daily burden to bring justice. I’m glad NAPC is a part of fighting this issue. And I’m glad God is with us.

Human Trafficking Summit at Georgia State

Monday, August 1 would have been the wrong day to commit a crime at Georgia State University. About 450 law enforcement, attorneys and community activists gathered to talk about Human Trafficking in Georgia. There were a lot of people packing heat in the auditorium. It was an unbelievable event. In all the time I’ve been involved in this issue, I’ve never seen such a high ranking gathering of people come together with one voice.
The Governor and his wife were there, the head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Attorney’s office, The DAs for Fulton and Dekalb County, the head of Immigration and Customs for Human Trafficking unit, MSNBC report Richard Lui, 4 survivors, and the list goes on and on. I was on a mid morning panel of community voices giving some insight to the paid professionals about how to interact further with the community.
It was a tremendous honor to have been invited. StreetGRACE was a recognized community partner for the gathering as well.
The main takeaway is this: as little as 2 years ago this would have been a sparsely attended event. This one had a waiting list! The hard work is paying off and people are not only recognizing the issue of human trafficking in our community but they are mobilizing to do something about it. They learned about new laws, how to apply them, services available to victims, how it happens, etc. Very practical stuff for the people there in attendance.
Moving forward there is still work to be done, but this was a great progress report for God’s justice being delivered.

Come on in!

What is the value hosting the community? Why open our doors to our community for events? Is there a value to it? What if the speakers say things we don’t totally agree with? Does that make it a bad event?
Answers to these questions are subject to personal opinions. Because this is my blog, I’ll offer my opinion!
I see lots of value in hosting the community even if it means having some provocative discussions. I believe NAPC has a large asset in our location. We have been blessed with a very strategic location in the city. However, it is not that strategic if we remain isolated from the community. We steward our location regularly in being a location that the community can come together in. Why is that valuable? Because we are hospitable to the community with our location we earn credibility in discussions. We earn the right to be heard in the community. We have demonstrated a willingness to listen to many different viewpoints and decide to agree or disagree but still be respected regardless of our answer. That is not something to take for granted.
Sometimes church consultants and conference speakers will pose a question to pastors that goes something like this: “Would your community miss you if you went away tomorrow?” The point of this question is to have church leaders really determine whether they are impacting their community. Are they meeting as a holy huddle with no care for the outside world or are they in tune with their community in such a way that the community would truly miss them if the church went away. I believe that if NAPC disappeared it would be a devastating loss to our community and I think many leaders in our community would agree. I believe that because of the way we host our community for gatherings. Just the other day, Habitat for Humanity used the BMC for an retreat meeting. They appreciated our hospitality and we were able to contribute to a great organization’s mission of helping literally billions of people seeking shelter.
I think we should keep opening our doors as much as possible for groups in our community to meet. Being known as a church that cares about our community seems right in line with our vision of knowing Jesus and making Him known.

What I’ve been up to

There hasn’t been a post for a some time. Here is why:

Stepping Out at VBS from North Avenue on Vimeo.

Event for your calendars

NAPC will once again open its doors to the community for an event targeting the issue of the commercial sexual exploitation of children. This CSEC event is a book tour stop for Rachel Lloyd. She is a survivor of this issue and now runs an organization in NY called GEMS. This will feature her reading some from the book and a panel discussion on the issue featuring NAPC friend Kaffie McCullough of A Future Not a Past and StreetGRACE Executive Director, Cheryl Deluca Johnson. The event is free.
So mark your calendars for Wednesday July 13, at 6:30 pm in the Sanctuary. We could use some volunteers to be greeters and hosts, so if you can help with that, please let me know at Phil@napc.org

Dreaming of what could be

Kids are more aware of things than we could ever imagine. I am reminded of that every time I spend time with kids. My wife Stacey and I are a part of a fantastic young adult small group at NAPC. As a part of the involvement we have been helping with an outreach to kids at one of our local community partners the Atlanta Dream Center. The Dream Center has multiple ministries reaching out to kids in the Old Fourth Ward right behind our church and also to other at risk neighborhoods over by Georgia Tech and the Georgia Dome. These are kids coming from extremely volatile, low-income situations. The kids are exposed to things on a daily basis that we only see on tv or in the movies.
For the past 4 months we have been doing a Vacation Bible School like activity time on the first and third Sundays of the month. We take an imaginary journey to a destination like France, Egypt, China or Greece and teach the kids a little bit about the culture, food, do a craft and sing some songs. The kids loved it. They got to experience some new foods, learned some bits of history through crafts like kite making for China and received a Bible story connected to the theme.
The past week was my week to lead. We chose a slightly different route for a theme and went Under the Sea. I taught the story of Jonah. During my telling of the story I interacted with the kids about the city of Nineveh and how God wanted them to start obeying him and stop doing evil things. I asked “Can you imagine if everyone in Atlanta did good things and obeyed God?”

Phil teaches the Story of Jonah to kids at the Atlanta Dream Center

This was meant to be a bit rhetorical on my part. Maybe “Uh huh or really good.” No what I got next was moving and a reminder.
An older elementary aged child named Sydney said “It would be so nice. I could actually walk around outside. I could maybe play outside at night. I could walk down the street.” All of this was said with a sort of dreamy smile, as if you could actually see her imagining this. Roxie Chess, NAPC’s new Children’s Director, was sitting with our group and we made eye contact with the same reaction. Wow.
These kids get it. They know the world they live in. They dream of a day when things are good. They dream of Heaven on earth. Many of us that live in privilege take this for granted. These kids don’t have a choice. This experience has continued to motivate and remind me about why God calls us this hard work now. Why continually reach out into tough places like drug invested Atlanta neighborhoods? The kids. The kids. The kids. God loves his kids and gives us glimpses of his work in them if we sign on to His mission.
The wonderful thing about this project was that we interacted through a great partner in the Dream Center who is regularly teaching the Bible and giving hope. These kids knew the Bible stories better than us. From memory they were recounting Jonah’s trials. We were able to come alongside and provide some special extra experiences to give these kids hope for their futures. Allow them to dream about what else is out there in this world.
Many times a post like this is ended with a call to prayer. Sure I can say that. But really want I want you to do is act. I want you to find that calling into tough places and serve God. I want you to get aggressive and go make it happen. Find a community partner (we have a large list:)) and GO MAKE IT HAPPEN. Be a mentor, volunteer at a summer camp, volunteer at the Atlanta Children’s Shelter or the Day Shelter for Women and Children. Just do it. I’m here to help you find a place, but don’t wait on me. If you ask God to guide you…oh He will, just be prepared to answer the call.

Staying up to speed

In case you haven’t noticed our culture and society is speeding up. Attention spans are shorter, the demand for more information is well…more demanding and nobody is quite sure what to do with the constant change in technology and how we use it.
I’m noticing the full spectrum of this in our ministry partners both locally and overseas. Some are embracing trends and trying their best to get better everyday. We have some others that are more in a maintain stance. Do enough to be around but not pushing forward. Then there are a few that are resisting new trends and are thus having trouble figuring out what to do next.
If I was running a non-profit right now, there are three things I would do to make sure I was staying up to speed.
1. I would make sure I was exploring every possible strategic collaborative partner. The days of working independently in silos are over. The problems non-profits are tackling are too complex to go it alone. We also have access to people all over the place. The excuse of a lack of connectedness won’t work.
2. I would invest financial resource and mental energy into communication technology. I would make sure that people in the community and around the world are hearing from my organization in relevant channels of communication. It doesn’t mean I’d do everything available, but I would be keeping up to speed on what we needed to be doing.
3. I would ask the question everyday of what are we the best at? If we don’t know we need to figure it out. If we do know than, work to get even better at it. If we are spending energy on something we aren’t good at, then how do we partner with someone so that we can do what we do well and focus on that. Organizations need to have a razor sharp focus about what they do.

How is this my problem?

I get a very similar speech all the time. “I need the church to help me out of a crisis.” Okay, there are many people that experience major hardships everyday. That is nothing unusual. Sometimes the person will go so far as to say they will never ask for any more help ever again. That is a dangerous statement for several reasons. First, the person is banking on their ability to solve all the issues they face in life…an ability that literally backfired in this moment. Second, why would you not want to be able to count on the churches help in the future. Part of being a part of a church community is to participate in helping and being helped. Third, that line tends to come from someone that will never walk into the church again or will walk in the next time they need help. Both are not ideal.
So once the pitch is made, 99 out of 100 go something like this:
Me: “I don’t think we’re going to be able to help you with that bill.”
Assistance Seeker: “Why not?”
Me: “In this case we don’t have the funds in our emergency to cover your overdue rent.” (many different reasons come in here upon assessment of the situation)
Assistance Seeker: “I thought this was a caring church!”
Me: “It’s very caring, we just can’t help here.”
Assistance Seeker: “I can’t believe your calling yourself a Christian.”
Me: “I’m sorry you feel this way, but you’re always welcome to worship here.”
Assistance Seeker: “I’m never coming back here again.”
The first time you have this conversation, it’s difficult. You feel bad. But then after 100 of them you realize it isn’t about you or the church. Someone this person is looking to place the blame for their own problems and shortcomings on someone else. They need a bailout and they don’t care what damage they do or what they say to get it. They have no relationship with the church or any interest in developing one, yet they want the benefits of community with the church. Sometimes the church will still assist in a spirit of grace. But, for the most part I’ve tried to reserve our emergency assistance for those we have relationship with and trust me there is plenty of need there.
Taking responsibility for one’s actions is difficult to do. We’ve seen the rich and poor dodge accountability. The rich executives of failed financial institutions and many in the margins of our society that have made poor choices and now have to deal with those. At some point maybe people will learn that the quickest way back from the bottom is to admit you messed up, confess, ask for forgiveness and then change your ways. Until then, it will continue to be someone else’s problem.