ken posted this as a comment to my tent city post, but i really wanted to make sure everyone saw it. i hope he doesn’t mind.
My reason for writing here is simply to clarify a misquote reported in Josh’s blog that I felt might be misconstrued out of context, and as my church is dear to my heart, I felt clarification was in order.
“to follow, ken talked about how he hates the church. it was amazing.”
To set the scene, for the service there were 60 or so “churchin” people in the audience for the Sunday service who were all there attending because a loving, dedicated, passionate woman, Stacy Rankin asked them to help put together a kick tail worship service to change the lives of some of the homeless. These were good people who said yes!
There were also about 20 already saved homeless and formerly homeless, and a half dozen homeless I had thought possibly ready to hang with Christ that I had hoped would attend.
I had stepped away from the service temporarily to tend to a matter. When I returned an individual came to me and reported he was saddened because one of the speakers felt some of the millions spent by churches on buildings would be better spent on the homeless and needy. He felt it was hypocrisy as the speaker is a pastor of a large church.
As I disagreed with this statement on several fronts (And agreed with the statement on some fronts) after verifying the context of the statement with others, I asked to be added to the service which Stacy immediately agreed.
I know the only reason I asked to be added to the service at that moment was because God told me. It was like in the movies, gravitational pull….
Now I had NO idea what I would be saying. I suddenly started to feel insecure and scared as I felt so, so, so woefully inadequate and unprepared as I have never given a message to a bunch of Bible memorizing Christians. I love the word of God, read it almost every day, but can’t remember some minor details like the words of the passage or verse numbers.
I have given thousands of messages: Maybe 15% were God based to church groups, youth groups, school groups and the homeless over the past 17 years, the rest were to drunks in comedy clubs. Most all of these groups have me back so I either must not be that bad or they are desperate with very low budgets (or both, lol).
Don Schiewer gave one of the most powerful messages I have EVER seen or felt. My heart loved and raged. My first thought was feeling ashamed and angry that I had not thought of the scheduling snafu of the coats and service at the same time, (just like having bands down to perform Friday night and we sent the homeless to attend another event.)
My second thought, was God speaking through Don telling me what I was going to say. What courage Don had. I love that man dearly!
I was introduced and stood there, staring at them, and did what any good scared-out-his-wits message-giver would do… started praying to myself. My mouth then opened, and I remember making them laugh a few times but I don’t remember what I said for the most part, but I am sure on a couple things I said.
I told them I had been tight with God since 1990 and Tent City has always been His project. I told them I had been saved last year in one of those multi-million dollar churches with multi-million dollar buildings and thank God they spent that money, and I hope they keep doing it. Surprisingly this got huge applause.
I apologized that I don’t have many verses memorized like they did, but there are two I try to live by:
One I told them was the Matt dude, 6:14 and it went like this:
“Do the sh*t you do and don’t tell anyone about the sh*t you do.”
This got both huge laughter and applause. (It really is Matthew 6:3, so I was close… lol. What do you want for 3 hours sleep over a weekend.)
The other I told them is “Share the Gospel every day, and when necessary…” throwing my hand out and letting them finish the statement with “…use words” from that sissy saint, Francis.
They tie perfectly together. Actions, not words.
The premise of Tent City is to give. And give more, and give some more, and keep giving. We are so rich in so many ways, even when we give even more and more we have so much more left to give. (“I don’t mind stealing bread from the mouths of decadence. But I can’t feed on the powerless when my cups already overfilled.” – “Hunger Strike”, Temple of the Dog, great song!) At first the guests take. And take some more. And some take some more, of everything. Take, take, take. Most of the time without saying thank you. Many think “those ingrates.” Starving people eat as much as they can as fast as they can because they don’t know when their next meal is.
I think we send hand grenade love to them. We pull the pin and throw them love. It fills their heart when the grenade goes off. Sadly our grenades are not consistent in going off. Some are minutes later, hours later, days, weeks, months, or never. When the grenade goes off, just sometimes a man or woman sits there in their new warm clothes thinking “Why? Why are those people so nice? What is this Jesus thing they are SHOWING me?”
I shared with the church folk that when you minister to the people in the streets (or anywhere) you need to talk to them in a language they understand. Actions are a universal language. And the right words in the right language, of course. Are we to talk to a German in English or German? The answer is whatever language they understand.
Coming up to a homeless man, starving, on a road to certain death if he stays on the streets and handing him a tract and saying “Jesus loves you” is not a language they understand.
I told the crowd you need to tell them Jesus loves you in their language.
“Jesus f’in loves you” (and not saying f’in). Some jaws dropped, others applauded. But the message resonated. Afterward half of the crowd, including many of the homeless hugged me afterwards. About dozen people came up to me, hugged me, and told me they “f’in love me.” (and not saying f’in) God rocks!
I expounded on that topic and then told them I hate churches and religion, but I love the people. Some jaws dropped and others sat up to listen. Churches get too big, and it is hard to ably respond.
Paraphrasing what I said, I think churches are the boot camps and headquarters that train and deploy us to be soldiers for God. And like any organization there are some good soldiers. Sadly, many soldiers sit around the headquarters telling each other how great of a soldier they are, never daring to leave the HQ as there is no way to get shot or wounded in HQ. Instead they sit there telling each other what they WOULD do if they were on the front lines.
I told them our Church Team contacted 300 churches and maybe two dozen did anything at all. I pointed out they (those in attendance) were some of those churches, the ones that could, would and did respond.
I told them that my multi-million dollar church at first had great difficulty figuring out what Tent City is and what needed to be done, but eventually came around. (Except the band, Sam and Mark jumped up right away and said yes. Thanks!)
My job is to give people the opportunity to get involved. That’s all. It’s not to talk people into getting involved. Basically when asked, CedarCreek as a church said no at first. Then Jennifer Meloni, a true soldier of Christ did not give up. She went to every officer in the chain of command at CedarCreek. She explained what we were doing and what we needed and the church responded by helping to get the word out. I think that is great!
I was glad to see the band Friday night, not only cause they rocked, but they were from MY church. Sam was so connected as usual, Lindsay… wow, our God gave that girl such a gift. Jason sang a song solo, I never knew he has such a great voice and could easily sing lead, and probably will once his confidence is built up, and the rest of the band, thanks tons!
None of the people from CedarCreek we invited to speak or play at the worship service could make it. That saddened me, but things happen the way they are meant to be.
As for Josh’s perceptions of me as a goof and a baby Christian, I am both. But those are only two of the slices in my pie. Keeping it simple, I think humans are all like pies, cut in slices, each slice representing a trait, gift or experience. Some pies are cut in more slices than others and some have thicker or thinner slices, but all have the round pie.
I am very happy to be the goofball at church who makes some people laugh and others to think I am an alien. (I especially love the alien part. For six months I LOVED telling Ed jokes just to watch him shake his head and mumble like Lurch on the Addam’s family. Sadly, he is on to me and gets me now. He has even started telling me jokes, some of them funny.)
I can now safely return to my role as a goofball who looks forward to serving next weekend in Sam’s Fusion (a quid quo pro he requested) and getting immense joy in production for New Community.
Over 1000 documented guests and volunteers came down to Tent City over the 48 hours of love and resources we delivered to the homeless. (This number doesn’t include bands, visitors who popped in and others who did not register. Everyone of those 1000 plus walked away with something after helping us deliver $50k of services for a cost of $600. God rocks!
For the 600 or so volunteers that came down over the weekend, if we did our job well everyone got something good out of it. And if we did our job well they also got something bad out of it. This conflict will cause reconciliation and they will have to uncover where they stand in their heart, and then reconcile that to where Christ stands. Pretty nifty, eh? God rocks!
p.s. - Next year we are giving the coats away AFTER the worship service. We will need some additional volunteers, let me know if you want to be one of them
- Ken Leslie
Anyway, Joshua asked me to drop you a note while he is away maintaining his weight on the open seas (definition: eating well but not gaining any weight.) It immediately hit me to write to you on one of the topics I cover when I give speeches about health and wellness. It is the topic of Commitment. Lack of consistency is the #1 reason people fail to lose weight permanently. This is also the very first topic that I cover when dealing with overweight clients. It guarantees me at least a 10% drop out rate – which ironically, is the goal.
