This email went out to our list of supporters and interested folks on December 22nd of 2009. We send something like this out most months – if you would like to get on that email list, please go here and give us your email address. Of course, we won’t share your info with anyone, and we won’t fill your inbox with crazy spam. (Or even sane spam.)

Dear Friends,

Typical non-profit wisdom says to send an end of the year introspective email to your list, telling of all the great things your organization did over the last year. I get that email from ministries and causes I personally support and I swear they are all written from the same template.

Doing it that way, I would tell you the victories of the last year – the new churches we partnered with, the dozens of new volunteers we picked up, the new relationships we added. That email would mention the addition of Saturday morning to our weekend breakfast line-up, the new leaders who have emerged from the ranks of our volunteers, the generosity of the 20 or so regular donors who contribute monthly, so we can budget and buy shoes and food and pay me enough to cover my rent and (most months) my groceries.

But in that email, Karen gets lost. Sure, we helped her get prescriptions filled, and she’s one of dozens for whom we bought shoes. But that email would not, could not, tell you anything about the tent she lives in with her husband since there is no shelter they can both be in and be together. You wouldn’t know that one very cold night after dark I got them blankets and sleeping bags that your money provided. Maybe you read on the blog about her being sexually assaulted, but you wouldn’t have heard about us standing in line together to get her seizure medication filled, or about her crying into my shoulder last week when she came to terms with this being her first homeless Christmas. That stuff just doesn’t fit into your typical Christmas email.

But I am OK with that, because we are not your typical homeless ministry. Three winters into this, I still feel funny calling this a ministry or organization – it is just me and some folks like me trying our best to love very broken people no one else wants to love. Over the last year, some of you have came alongside us, physically and financially, and helped us do that. And we are very grateful. We could not do it without you.

Others might be testing us, feeling us out. I understand that. There are lots of folks out there asking for your time and money, and they have awesome statistics and inspiring stories. They have great letterhead and warm and fuzzy emails and tales of success and overcoming adversity. That’s what they do, and they do it well.

But if you want to learn to love people everyone but Jesus has given up on, if you want to be blessed by people who have nothing to give you, if you want to see love win – well, that’s what we do, and we are pretty much the only ones out here doing it. And we would love to have you along for the ride.

(If you want to get your donation in before the end of the year, do that over here. We have to have it postdated by the 31st for it to count for 2009 – plus it helps us in our budgeting for 2010!)

Love Wins. Always.

Hugh Hollowell

This email went out to our list of supporters and interested folks on November 24th of 2009. We send something like this out most months – if you would like to get on that email list, please go here and give us your email address. Of course, we won’t share your info with anyone, and we won’t fill your inbox with crazy spam. (Or even sane spam.)

Dear Friends,

It’s that time of year again. Crisp air, turning leaves and talk of holiday plans. And if you are in a church, odds are your church has talked about some way to reach out to the homeless.

In the last three years, I have heard all sorts of plans to reach out to the homeless over the holidays – everything from a hot plate dinner taken to the park to a worship service designed especially for the homeless, complete with nativity re-enactment. Seriously – with a baby Jesus and everything.

I know you folks think I am something of a cynic, but even I recognize that the intentions behind every one of these outreach plans are good and loving (or at least, I prefer to think they are). But that is not the point.

The point is, those outreach plans have nothing to do with the very real people with very real fears, hopes and dreams that live outside. Instead, they are more often about us, and how this will look to the community and on our website. Or what we think we ought to be doing “this time of year”.

If we really want to be a blessing to those who have less than us, we really ought to have some conversations with them instead of just talking to them. After all, would your faith community plan an outreach to the Latino community and never discuss it prior to launch with a single Latino? I didn’t think so – or at least I sure hope not!

And if we have those conversations, we will hear about the 10 plates of food they are offered on Thanksgiving day… and how no one comes out to feed them in the middle of May. How they get 30 blankets in December, but how they shiver in March.

You see, those of us who live indoors (Normals, some of my friends call us) tend to believe that because we live indoors we are instilled with insight as to what the “less fortunate” need. Because they are the broken ones, not us. Or maybe our “unbrokenness” is a front we keep up, to hide how screwed up we really are.

That is the story of Jesus, anyway – that we are all broken. That none of us have our stuff together. And that the only thing that can save any of us is love. And not just the last 45 days of the year, but every single day. And if that sort of love is going to take root, maybe we ought to start listening to each other.

Love Wins. All year round.

PS: If you would like to give to Love Wins Ministries, you can find out how to do that here. You will have our gratitude and a tax deduction, of course, but you will help keep folks warm all winter long- and that is no small thing.

This email went out to our list of supporters and interested folks on  October 10th of 2009. We send something like this out most months – if you would like to get on that email list, please go here and give us your email address. Of course, we won’t share your info with anyone, and we won’t fill your inbox with crazy spam. (Or even sane spam.)

Dear Friends,

Several weeks ago I sat in a room full of pastors from downtown churches in a forum called by the Raleigh Police Department. Ostensibly, it was to talk about how faith communities can properly secure their premises, especially in light of Martha’s murder a few months ago. The gist of the presentation was about church security – having your facilities well lit, etc. And then, they started talking about “the homeless.”

We saw pictures of dangerous criminals (their words), all but one of whom were black, as examples of the sort of people we should be watching out for. (Of course, most of the folks in the audience were white, so this played with their stereotypes perfectly.) Then they presented us all with trespass letters, which, if signed and placed on file with the police, would give them permission to arrest folks found on their property after hours. The entire presentation built to this, and you got the feeling this was the whole reason for the meeting.

There aren’t near enough shelter beds. If you are unhoused and needed a safe place, you might think about going to sit out of the rain under the awning at the corner church. Especially since the church is closed so you won’t scare any of the rich white people who attend there. If you thought this way you wouldn’t be alone. There are several churches downtown where friends of mine sleep – behind their dumpsters, in the shrubs, under the awning. Because it is well lit, clean and generally safe.

The police work for the city, which makes revenue from developers, who sell houses to rich people who do not like seeing homeless people. So the police are under a lot of pressure to “clean up” the homeless problem. The police are frustrated by the churches that have allowed people to sleep on their grounds. So, the police scare the daylights out of the church leaders, throw Martha’s death in the mix, show some scary pictures of black men and convince a goodly number of the downtown churches to put up no trespassing signs, enabling the police to act on those trespass letters they wanted us to sign.

The presenters assured us they did not want to interfere with our mission – they just wanted us to help them keep us ’safe’.

I was the only one who stood up and said that our mission does not call for us to be safe – it calls for us to show extreme love and radical hospitality. I asked the people, preachers and police alike, the following question:

“If you are tired and hungry and alone and have no home and no hope – if you cannot go to the church, where should you go? “

No one had any answers to that. The police officer told me he understood, but that was not his job.

But it is my job. It is our job. To extend grace and love to the other. Not to put up signs to keep people who don’t look like us away.

So I have spent the last few weeks telling my friends who sleep outside that churches are not safe places anymore. That the No Trespassing signs mean they will be arrested. And when they ask me where they are supposed to go if they can’t go to church, I tell them I don’t know. And when they leave, I cry.

Several housekeeping notes…

As you can tell, we are doing an overhaul on the site – this should make it more user friendly and less management intensive in the long run. In the short run, however, it means a bit more work… Bear with us while we get through it.

I sent our (more or less) monthly newsletter out today – where I spent some time talking about Easter and the search for Resurrection in what we do. If you are not getting our emails, please go here and sign up. (We won’t spam you, and never share your info with anyone.)

In the aftermath of the book and all the attention we have gotten, I have gotten quite a few requests to come speak at churches, Sunday School Classes and even a Rotary Club to talk about our mission of loving people without preconditions. If you are in charge of picking speakers for your group, I would love to talk to you about it. Everything you need to know about getting me to come  speak is at my speaking site.

Things are going very well here – but we are very busy – much more so that at this time last year. Hopefully, some actions we have taken to make things more manageable will begin to bear fruit soon. Until then, we will update the blog as we have time and are able.

And one last thing: We have had several new donors come on board – Thank you so much for that! The single largest thing that determines the level of ministry and service we can provide is recurring financial contributions. We would much rather have $25 a month than $500 one time, because we can budget the $25 a month. If you are not making regular contributions and would like to, please consider doing that on this page.

Thanks so much for all the love and support!

There will be details forthcoming, but right now, if you are in the Raleigh area (or want to fly in – don’t laugh, several folk are), save the evening of March 21, 2010.

In Downtown Raleigh (in a venue with plenty of parking), we will hold a shindig/party/blowout/extravaganza that will blow your mind. Seriously.

We will be celebrating:

• The launch of our own, independent nonprofit status (until now, we have been sheltered under another org.)
• That book we were featured in? The author, Karen Spears Zacharias, will be here to sign copies and read from the book

We will have live music, Love Wins merchandise to buy, books for sale, food to eat, friends to meet – rumor has it dancing may even break out!

More details will be coming soon – location, times, etc. – but hold that date!

My friend Jenny gets it right about serving food to poor people in Moore Square. This is the sort of post that lets me know my work out here is accomplishing something.

After my short bit the other day about day labor, I wrote a long piece for my friend Karen’s blog. If you want to know what the life of a day laborer is like, you may want to check it out.

There is lots going on here I want to tell you about, but right now I just do not have the time. However, check back tomorrow, when we introduce you to a new blogger on our site, tell you to save a date and much, much more.

Not sure if you have seen it, but you ought to catch the book excerpt in this week’s Independent. It’s the second chapter of Dick Reavis’ book Catching Out: The Secret World of Day Laborers.

I haven’t read the book yet (But it is on my Amazon wish list – hint, hint), but the excerpt was spot on with my considerable experience with day labor pools. If there is any thing more depressing than not being able to work, it is the horror of investing 14 hours or so only to walk away with something like $35, assuming you actually get picked to work today.

Just a quick heads up that we have updated our list of things we need. If you or your organization is looking for something to collect for us, here are the things we currently need.

And of course, we still need your financial support. Nothing impacts our ability to be a real presence in the lives of our friends who live outside more than your continued financial support.

Right now is a blur – in case you didn’t know, Raleigh got hit with about 6 inches of snow over the weekend and the city pretty much shut down. I am still trying to locate several friends that live out in the woods that no one has seen in several days.

As always, your prayers are appreciated.

My friend Karen (who wrote the book our ministry is featured in) keeps asking questions, so I keep answering them! Her latest question is this:

Is there a difference between a homeless person and a panhandler? If so, how do their needs vary and what are some of the ways in which we can respond to the needs of the homeless?

or, put another way, and in a form I recieve much more often:

Are panhandlers homeless?

I answer her over at her blog.

In January of 2009, I got an email from Karen Spears Zacharias – she was writing a book for Zondervan on the relationship between money and Christianity.  She asked me if I had anything to say.

Yes, it seems I did.

She came down on very cold day in February and watched us eat biscuits and coffee with some of our friends who live outside. We then went to Starbucks (she was buying – what can I say) and she picked my brain for the next 4 hours or so.

We talked about how a white-bread middle-class guy ended up working directly with the very poor and homeless. We talked about how money screws up our perceptions and how we have turned God into a kindly Santa Clause who loves us more than he does “them” – whoever “them” happens to be right now.

In any event, she went home and worked her writerly magic on my no-doubt rambling thoughts and turned it into a chapter of her newest book – Will Jesus Buy Me a Double wide (’Cause I Need More Room for my Plasma TV).

Here is the copy from the back of the book:

What does it really mean to be blessed by God? With Southern charm and razor-sharp wit in Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?, author Karen Spears Zacharias shows how the prosperity gospel has led us astray from true Christianity and helped create people and churches focused on greed. Zacharias unpacks story after story of families and individuals using the name of God as a means to living their own good life. You’ll hear shocking tales of those who exploit the gospel for their own gain, and mega-evangelists who live in million-dollar mansions with children groomed from the cradle to sell the message of Christ while their parents rake in the cash. Discover churches that have modeled themselves on Wall Street and unbridled materialism, and see what is happening to them now. Is this the good life? You’ll also meet some unlikely folks who live with genuine biblical integrity. People who know that God is more than some cosmic genie who gives them an easy life, a fat bank account, and a second home in an exotic location. Come discover stories about authentic Christianity and the true good life in Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?

I have read it, and I have to tell you, she makes me sound great! Seriously, the book is hitting the shelves the beginning of March – but you can preorder your copy now. In fact, preordering is good for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that all the books that are preorderd count as sales (for bestseller lists, etc.) on the first day. And pretty much, the first week’s sales are what determine if a book is successful or not.

In addition, a portion of the proceeds of the book are coming to Love Wins – it seems we have turned Karen into a believer in our no-holds-barred style of loving.

Go preorder your copy now. Then at the end of March, when she is passing through the Triangle, you can ask real nice and she will probably sign it for you.  (More details to come on her Triangle appearances as soon as we nail down times and dates, etc. )