It’s that time of year again. Yesterday our church commissioned the youth summer mission trip team. Nine teenagers, three adult leaders, headed to Atlanta for a few days of work. Good kids, good sponsors, and a really good project practicing dirty faith among the kind of people Jesus loved. They will join thousands of other churches on the ubiquitous Mission Trip that is standard summer fare for church youth groups throughout North America. If you’ve followed this blog for awhile, read Dirty Faith, or heard any of my radio interviews, you know I’m kind of on the fence about short-term …

Didn’t expect to meet God there . . . Over the past decade, I have had the chance to experience grace in some very unexpected places. In a remote village in Mexico, while holding the baby of a teenage prostitute in Brazil, on death row at Angola prison in Louisiana. These are places of darkness, but as I read the New Testament, it becomes more and more apparent that these are the places where Jesus walked. These are the people he loved. This is where we encounter grace. We are lovers of structure, of hierarchy, of people who understand their …

Day 29:  30 Days of Prayer for Hope If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. (Isaiah 58:9-10) It’s tough work, this caring for kids the world has abandoned, exploited, and abused, but it is what we are called to do. And from the very birth of this ministry, hundreds of you have stood alongside us — investing in …

Day 28:  30 Days of Prayer for Hope But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses. (Acts 1:8) Several years ago, a group of young Hope graduates formed their own church. A couple of years ago, we watched as a group of former street children—young women who had been trafficked as little girls and young men who had escaped cycles of drug abuse and poverty—were introduced as the church leadership team—the ministers of the fellowship. The really impressive thing is that this is a serving community, missional in the truest …