As that great philosopher John Lennon said, life is what happened while we were busy making other plans. That is definitely true of the way things have went here at what has become Love Wins Ministries.

As I have said elsewhere, I had never intended to start a nonprofit, or to have volunteers, or to even earn a living doing this – but all of that has happened, and more. And most of it has happened in the last six months.

Two years ago, I would have paid you money if you had sat down long enough to listen to my ideas about poverty and faith and how we in the church do a really good job of excluding the poor. These days people pay to hear what I have to say-and sometimes even act on it! I have a growing file of letters and emails from people thanking us for the work we are doing, for speaking out, for loving radically and for inspiring them to do the same.

And then there is the ‘other’ file – the one from the people who believe I am “loving people straight to hell”, who believe that I have crossed the line, those who, when you boil it down, feel threatened and scared, so they write letters (anonymous, usually) to churches that support us, or comment (anonymously) on blog entries or articles I have written. As my long departed Greaat Aunt would have said, “Well, bless their hearts”. Indeed.

Yet and still, we go on. So far this year, we have added three faith communities to our support team, helped a couple transition from living in a tent to living in an apartment (Karen always describes her place as not just as an apartment, but always adds “with a pool!”), bought countless shoes and boots, served several thousand biscuits and many gallons of coffee and spent more hours at Wake Med hospital with folks than I want to count.

And none of that would happen without you and your prayers and your financial support. So, it may sound trite or whatever, but I seriously thank you for helping us to love radically, for allowing me the time freedom to build this thing, for helping us show that, well, Love Wins.

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!

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.

We will experience some downtime this afternoon as we work on the site.

Thanks for understanding, and we hope to have it back up soon.

I know I seem like I have slacked off, but this is a busy time of year for those of us who help churches love folks who live outside. Before Thanksgiving, I spoke 7 times in 10 days – I was running around like the proverbial chicken with my head cut off.

We are spending some behind the scenes time working on the website – our goal is to make it easier for you to interact with it – easier to volunteer, easier to donate, easier to figure out what we are all about.  Hopefully that will happen right around Christmas time.

Meanwhile, keep praying for us, and check out this post my friend and volunteer par-excellence Chad put on his personal blog, about rethinking giftgiving for Christmas.

Thank you for loving and supporting us, and I hope to get back to regular programming here quite soon.

Just a quick note that I am swamped this week and next – so there will probably not be any blog updates from me until the 1st of October or so. I may try to coerce some of my co-conspirators to write more so you do not feel completely ignored.

Thank you for all your love and support. Go love somebody!

As some of you know, now Love Wins Ministries has office space, generously donated by a local church that supports us. I now have a desk and file cabinet (both also donated by supporters – thanks guys!).  We are very thankful for all the love and support, and I am thankful that I have a place to get admin work done without Felix (my cat) trying to get on top of my laptop.

We really do need a desktop computer and monitor for the office, however. Right now, I am shuttling my laptop back and forth, but it really is not powerful enough for some of the programs we need to use, plus it, like me, is getting old.

If you have a desktop computer and/or monitor you are not using, we sure could use it. Ideally, it would be running Windows XP or Vista and located in the RDU area so we could arrange somebody to come pick it up. Of course, we will give you a reciept so you can write the value of the donation off on your taxes.  If you think you might be able to help, please leave a comment on this post or email me directly.

Pardon the liberty of posting a personal item here (It does not happen often – I have a personal blog for that) but many of our supporters and like-minded folks would, I think, like to know that I, Hugh, am now engaged to the lovely Renee.

We are planning on getting married in October of this year, surrounded by our friends and family. If you want to know more, I put together a site just for wedding information – www.hughandrenee.info, where you can get all the details as they become available.

We now return you to our regular programming.

If you are reading this via RSS, click through to the website for a minute…

At the top of the page you will see our new logo, rendered for us by my friend Amy over at Like Water Designs. I think she did an awesome job. The graffiti look at the top relates to the slightly sketchy, underground sort of thing we do, while the very corporate font at the bottom relates to our attempt to be organized and professional. Like us, our logo is in tension between two worlds.

If you need graphic work, give Amy a chance. She was awful good to us.

To go with the new logo, we are doing some rennovating to the site as well. We had so many pages and resources, it was getting a bit unwieldy. The bones are in place, and they will be fleshed out over the next few days.

Thanks always for your love and support!