It has been a while since I updated the blog here, but it is not because nothing has been going on; it is because too much has been going on.

• As I told you a few weeks ago, I have moved to a much more convenient apartment closer to downtown.  While this is an overall gain,  the 101 things you need when you have a full apartment that you do not need when renting a room means I am at the dollar store almost every day.
• Yesterday was my birthday and I got to spend the night before with the awesome folks over at Merge – we had dinner together, they baked me a homemade chocolate cake and we broke bread at the Lord’s Table after that. I love communion…
• I mentioned on the blog a few weeks ago that I had been wrestling with burnout earlier in the year. Well, be assured that I am much better now (although I do appreciate the emails that came in from those of yo worried about me). It was just a matter of not having a realistic schedule and goals.
• The work continues, and with near 100 degree heat, everyone is running to ground during the day. People who used to be in the park all day are now to be found at Cornerstone, in the library and drinking very small drinks at local coffee shops.
• There is more I want to tell you about churches that have come on board to support me, cool new people I have met and some success stories, but honestly, they all need their own post. So, hopefully this weekend I will get some computer time and bring you all up to date.

You see, we operate from this crazy premise we see in the teachings of Jesus that love, once given, spreads and grows (sorta like yeast, or a mustard seed…) and takes hold and, in small ways and in incremental bits, works to change us, then each other, and then, the world, working towards truly making it on earth as it is in heaven.

That is my favorite line from May’s newsletter, which many have said is their favorite of mine. If you have not subscribed, now would be a great time to do so. I will get the online archive of May’s newsletter up next Monday.

As I mentioned yesterday, I don’t have a lot of time to do serious blog posts. I wish I did, but I just don’t. However, I do grab quite a bit of internet time, but usually in short snatches. With that in mind, I created an account for Love Wins on Twitter.

Twitter is a way I can post short (less than 140 character) messages about anything… to let people know where I am going to be, to give quick status updates, to request emergency help for people. Because of a neat plugin for WordPress (the software that runs this site), once a day all our Twitter updates will show up here, in one group, as a blog post.

I see several advantages:

• You, the blog reader, gets a better sense of what I do day to day. Obviously, I won’t be able to post everything I do (my phone and twitter do not see eye to eye, so I am limited to Twittering when I am at my desk), but you will get a better sense of some of the behind the scene activity.
• Google will like that the site is updated daily, so that should help the search results.
• Twitter, among a certain demographic, is huge. This will allow me to reach that demographic with our crazy message of Love in the name of Jesus. Hopefully, this will translate into some of them deciding to partner with us to change the world.
• When I find links to important websites, I can publish them on Twitter, so you can read them too.

Will this work? I am not sure. I hope so, but then again, that is just my nature.

If you are on Twitter, we would appreciate it if you followed Love Wins.

I looked at the website statistics for the website this morning and realized that I have not been very present on ye olde blog here.

The cold simple truth is that there is only so much of me to go around. Most of my life is taken up with ministering to homeless and poor folks, meeting with churches and Sunday School classes and such that want to help me do that and, unfortunately, raising funds to free me up to do those first two things. Once a month I write a newsletter and the time to do that always gets stolen from somewhere else, it seems.

Here are a few updates, in no particular order, to get you caught up until I can get back to regular posting.

• I moved from my very uncomfortable, very skanky room over by Lion’s Park (which has no lions in it… I checked) to my very cool, very close to downtown, very affordable (Thanks, A&J!) apartment. There are several reasons for the move, including the fact it ends up being cheaper, it is much closer to the areas where I hang with homeless folks and much saner. It is in a ‘transitional” neighborhood, which means you live a block away from a $400,000 house they are renovating, but you may still find a homeless man asleep on your front porch in the morning. The neighborhood is a lot like my ministry, in fact, bridging between the affluent and the poor.
• There for a while, I was dangerously close to burnout. I was working hours no sane man should be asked to work. Thanks to Bart & Lisa, I have began taking a full Sabbath day each week to recharge (which is why your emails probably won’t get returned on Saturday, nor your phone calls answered). Indirectly, this is also why the blog posts got cut back, too.
• Also thanks to Lisa, some progress is being made on the fund raising front. I really am just no good at organizing, so her pushing me in those weekly meetings to get off my rear and build some structure to support me is a good thing. I have one church that is on board with providing some monthly support and three members of that church provide some individual support. Plus, they have helped me with emergency funds for rent or other basic needs for folks, meaning that frees up my meager funds for other stuff. I promise to write more about fund raising in a separate post.
• I am getting some invites to speak to groups – this is something I am very excited about. More on this later too.

Well, there you go – some things that should have made it into the blog, but did not. I hope you will stick around. You may want to subscribe to the RSS Feed so you don’t miss anything, or sign up for our monthly (more or less) newsletter.

I have no idea what happened yesterday, but out website traffic took a huge jump upwards. We had about 800 visitors that clicked through to our site from their email inbox, so all we know was there was a link to the site in an email. I have no idea who was talking about or, or what they had to say. I hope it was nice.

Anyway, as a result, we had a huge number of new folks subscribe to our monthly newsletter. Some of them are asking for back issues and, to tell the truth, I had been planning on creating a newsletter archive one day anyway. Sooooo…

As of now, you can go here to get back issues of our newsletters.

(No, it is not your imagination. There was no March newsletter).

Speaking of which, if you are not a subscriber, now might be a really good time to subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

Several people have asked how they could make donations of money via PayPal or through their Major Credit Card. Before we could not do it, but now we can.

If you will go to this page, you will have the option to either make a one time gift or a regular automatic contribution.

While either one is appreciated, right now, our biggest need is for reliable, predictable income. If you are able to commit even as little as $5 or $10 a month, this would go a long way in helping us to write a budget and take on bigger projects.

Well, it is if you subscribe to it.

If for some reason you haven’t yet (I know you have been meaning to…), you can go subscribe to our newsletter on this page. We will not sell your info, send you spam or otherwise flood your inbox.

As a blogger, there are sometimes things I want to point out or link yo that are not worth cranking up ye olde blog.

It was for these things that a tumblelog is just perfect.

I have created one for the site here; if you are bored, read the ramblings of an urban missionary – the link is in the nav-bar up top, and excerpts are in the sidebar.

Enjoy.

My friend Renee was in the hospital this week and had to have heart surgery, so I spent most of my week also in the hospital, sleeping on what can only be charitably called the world’s most uncomfortable cot. However, she came through surgery OK so she is now on the good drugs, feeling little pain and generally up to her old tricks. There were some scary moments along the way, but God is good and all is now well.

While sitting there, eating hospital cafeteria food and getting fat, I talked to some folks I trust and it looks like the next step for me is to start a 501c3 non profit to manage the work I do with the homeless. It will force oversight (something that is needed) , it will make it easier for people to donate money and goods (also needed) and it will give me some credibility when talking to churches and other nonprofits.

This does force other issues, though. Issues like:

• What is the long term plan?
• How do we measure success?
• Is there a growth plan? Do we want to build this and expand to other cities?
• If we had money, what would we do with it?
• Do we just work with the homeless, or all the poor?
• What do we call it?
• What would day to day look like?

All of these and more are running through my mind. I have answers to many of them, which I will expand on in future updates, but these are all questions that must be answered before kicking this thing off.

Meanwhile, I will still be out there, plotting goodness and creatively loving folks. Maybe I will see you out there.

I have been working away to make this site more user friendly and more functional. With that in mind, I have began the redesign of the website.

I hope to make it more functional, more user friendly and, quite frankly, more attractive, Right now, I only feel qualified to speak on the last point… I like it a lot!

Note the row of navigation tabs at the top of the page: you can now get some tips to help the homeless, you can subscribe to our free homeless newsletter, you can contact me and you can read more about how this website came to be (this last page will be changing a lot soon… it is in line for a rewrite).

Well… what do you think?