Author: Christ's Children Ministries

I had a group of boys and we were in line to attend the Timberwolves basketball game. The boys were typically excited, looking forward to having fun. After we showed our tickets we went through the security line. My group was chosen to divert through the line that merited an extra careful examination of our persons. Surprise, surprise… As we went through the scanner a couple of us caused it to beep, so we had to go back through and empty our pockets. I had forgotten an extra key in my pants pocket so I had to go through twice. No big deal. The boy in front of me was wearing a big winter coat and was asked to go back through three times, each time finding something in his pockets to remove. We all waited patiently. The third time the machine beeped he reached into his pocket and said oops… and pulled out a big, wicked looking knife.

We all looked on with shock, but the security guard simply said casually… “You can’t come in here with that son.” He was given the choice to surrender the knife or leave the premises. He didn’t want to surrender it because it belonged to his father who had recently passed away. I ended up walking with him all the way back to the parking garage and leaving the knife in the van so he could go to the game with us. I shook my head… this wasn’t my first rodeo. This had happened to me a few times. I was frustrated and embarrassed. When you are going with me you know not to bring any sort of contraband like drugs, vape pens or weapons. I didn’t say anything. I was too worked up.

On the way home we had a chance to talk. “Dude, why in the world are you carrying around a knife like that?” He explained that a boy had threatened to kill him at school and he started carrying the knife with him for protection. Now think about that for a moment. This boy is a senior at his school, a school for kids who have exhibited emotional and anger issues, and had been doing well there the past couple of years. Coincidentally the time that he has been with us on the basketball team. He experiences an unprovoked attack and fears for his life. What goes through a kid’s head? What crazy, jumbled emotions cascade through his thoughts? He doesn’t tell a teacher, his mom or anyone; but takes it upon himself to protect himself by carrying a knife, fully expecting this other boy to try to carry out his threat. What child is prepared to deal with this kind of thing? No child should have to. Who knows what he was prepared to do if the other boy challenged him again. Not the typical sort of thing a school age child has to contend with on a routine day at school.

So we talked it out. The fear, the anger, the consequences of choice. We talked about an appropriate response… bringing the incident to the attention of someone at school, telling his mom, etc. I think what finally changed his way of thinking was when we discussed his dad, how proud he’d be of his success at school and what he would want him to do in this situation. We agreed that he would talk to someone at school the next day. When I dropped him off later that night he said, “Thanks Coach”, and went out into the night.

What began as an irritation and disappointment in my mind became a moment of clarity and release for this teenager, and avoided a tragic, life changing incident. A reminder that someone cares, that he is not alone. The grace of God be with him and countless kids like him experiencing similar situations today at school, home and their communities. The Lord give us adults grace to pay attention to what is happening in the lives of young people in our homes, communities and institutions.

     Last Christmas, before our 27th annual church Christmas party, I told Chris that party would be my last. Twenty-seven years of doing all the planning, shopping, cooking, baking, wrapping, bagging, packing and executing so that our people could come together and have fun celebrating the joy of Jesus’ birthday. It always took up full-time hours the whole of my December starting when Nathanel was a toddler and Javan was a little baby, before Ezra ever arrived. It was a lot for a young mom and over the years our party grew from fifteen or twenty people to crowds of a size that we could no longer meet inside our house.  The 27th party was a lovely success and I felt God say, “Well done, my faithful servant!” I felt great peace about my decision and the permission to not have my whole December overshadowed by the many tasks and activities.

     To my surprise, Chris decided in November that he still wanted to have a Christmas party. He has never expected me to take on jobs and fully supported my decision to retire from the party. So, he is in charge this year and has enlisted numerous members of our church community to help with the many tasks. The party is tomorrow and I am more excited to attend this party than I have ever been before. I volunteered to make the annual Christmas punch that everyone loves, but I will otherwise bear no responsibilities and will just be able to visit with the many people I love and play with all the babies.

     Twenty eight years ago a Christmas party without me would not have been possible. But, over these past thirty years God has built this community that we started, of Christ’s own children, to become a family of love who support and care for one another. People often ask us as we move closer to the retirement years if the ministry will go on. We know that Christ’s Children will go on–not as an institution, but as a body of God’s children who care for one another. Chris and I take such joy and feel such satisfaction to see these many children that we accompanied as they grew up love and give back to our community in so many ways. We have the wise and steady man in his forties who is the “big brother” whose counsel is sought by many of our young men who want advice, a social worker who brings humanity and a heart for justice into his work that directly benefits our community, the barber who provides a listening ear and the important community that is the Black barber shop….the young man who helps Chris coach basketball and the highly dependable college student who can be called upon to fill in on providing transportation…Even more importantly, we are seeing a young generation of fathers who are providing for and being present and active in the lives of their children in ways that many of them did not experience from their fathers themselves.

     Yesterday, we received a donation along with this note: “I’ve dreamed of the day I would finally be financially stable to be able to give back to Christ’s Children. I hope this isn’t my last donation, but I’m so happy I finally got my first donation. CC impacted my life in so many ways. Merry Christmas!”

     In these days when our donors dwindle and retire or move on to glory, we appreciate every donation. But, I don’t think we’ve ever received a donation that has brought us greater joy. We are seeing a generation of young people who are working hard, building solid careers and homes, parenting with attention and faithfulness, loving God and encouraging one another. I don’t know if we always thought we would live to see such a day, through the many ups and downs over these past thirty years, the heartaches, losses and disappointments. But there have been so many joys and so much love. And Chris and I  are still here, loving and lifting up the name of Jesus. We are celebrating the lovely work of Jesus–that blessed baby who came to turn the values and systems of the world upside down and call people to a new life. We wish you and yours a blessed and joyful Christmas!

     It has been an extremely full fall season for us. Chris has resumed basketball and has one of our grown up guys helping with the coaching duties. It is a win-win. Chris doesn’t enjoy the coaching and our young coach is looking for experience and practice leading a team. I wish I could say that basketball is always a positive, but the world of aau basketball here in the Minnesota suburbs is fraught with the racism that plagues our nation–but manifests itself in behaviors and attitudes our young people have to cope with every day. 

     Chris came home a few weeks ago from an exhausting day of basketball where a parent from the opposing team targeted and harassed one of our players to the point that the man had to be ejected and escorted from the gym. Even though the referee, the opposing coach, Chris and our coach all witnessed this man’s son stumbling on the floor and tripping on his own feet, the parent assigned blame to one of our players and continuously verbally harassed and berated him until he was escorted from the premises. 

     As Chris, who was scorekeeping on the bench as he does now during games, was intervening in the situation another older white man started yelling at him, asking him what he was doing, he had no business speaking, he was only a scorekeeper!!

    Another of our young men, who lives in Edina, had a man walking with an aggressive dog, set his dog upon him as the ninth grader walked home from school, forcing him to run all the way home with the dog nipping at his heels. That same young man was falsely accused of making a threat at school and ended up spending several days in juvenile detention without any apologies upon his release.

     This is the kind of everyday racism that our kids and Black men of all ages have to put up with all the time. It doesn’t matter who the president is or what day of the week it is, there are plenty of people here in America who are ready to tell them that something is their fault, they are trouble, they are less, they don’t deserve to speak, figuratively or literally. So many people are blind to their own prejudices and bigotry; they don’t care what kind of harm they cause to others and choose to ignore that they are the devil’s handiworkers.

     It is this kind of climate, this kind of world, in which our young people must live. How did a fifteen year old feel, being attacked and berated by a grown man in his forties? What kind of inner trauma and suffering is inflicted when you are treated like a criminal, a troublemaker, a problem? When you have done absolutely nothing to account for such behaviors toward yourself, how do you come to feel about the world around you, when it is hostile and unwelcoming or cruel?

     Chris has often had one of the boys tell him that I am one of the only white people that they have a genuine relationship with–where I am not connected to them by a job or position, where I hold no authority over them except that built by relationship and respect for Chris and for me. I don’t take that position lightly. The way I show love to the boys is through service– I make them food, bake them brownies, wash people’s clothes, provide transportation and most of all, I try to reflect every single time I see them, that I am delighted–so that there is a human face to  Jesus’ love for them. 

     However, I know that none of the things I do can begin to affect what the world has already inflicted on them because of the color of their skin. I know that is why, even after all these years, we remember all the time, Tom Skinner’s adage, “It takes God to be a Black man!!” Only God can heal the hurts the world inflicts. Only God can build minds and hearts and characters in the midst of a harsh and difficult world that seeks to steal and kill and destroy. We ask that you pray for our young men and that you pray for our misguided world–one that elevates the powerful and cruel and ignores the harms and hurts inflicted upon the powerless. May you be one of those who prays everyday to ask God what your part is in bringing God’s kingdom alive in our world as you do justice, love mercy  and walk humbly with the one who loves us and who especially loves those the world despises. 

I’m dropping off kids after basketball practice and Michael is the last one in the van. This conversation ensues…

“You know, when I first came to your group I thought you guys were weird… I didn’t know how I could fit in.”

Michael has been playing basketball with us for three years. He is 17 now. He quickly noticed that we are more than a basketball team.

“You guys are different.  Everybody has their own personality and sometimes people get on my nerves… but you all get along. You’re all together.”

This group has been together many years, young men who started with me at elementary age.

“And you… everybody makes mistakes and sometimes we fight but you keep us together. You’re like a father figure to all of us.”

Everyone in this group has their own unique story of family and social dysfunction, isolation, hopelessness and so on. They each struggle with behaviors that are influenced by circumstances of life beyond their control.

“I didn’t know how to handle it at first, but now I feel like I belong.”

Michael came to us purely to play basketball. He was in the streets and his main pursuits were sex, crime and doing drugs.

“Sometimes I can’t believe I’m still with you. I thought I’d be fighting somebody.  When people get on my nerves, I want to hit somebody. That’s how I get in trouble at school. I have anger issues. For a long time, I was afraid you were going to kick me out. I’m surprised you didn’t.”

Michael lied about his age to be on the team and was afraid to tell me because he thought I would make him leave (he’s a year older than everyone else). When he told me he was surprised that I already knew, and hadn’t kicked him off the team. I explained to him that our being together was about more than just playing basketball.  It’s about being a community, in Christ. It’s about learning and growing together into positive young men. It’s about relationships, enduring through arguments and mistakes, working through misunderstandings and bad behavior, supporting one another through hard times. It’s about being a family.

“I’ve never had a group of friends before. I just be myself out in the streets, sometimes with my cousin [who is also on the team, he brought Michael in].  I’ve never had a place to belong. I don’t even be in the streets anymore. When I’m not with you or at school, I stay in the house.”

“Stay in the house” is a euphemism for staying out of trouble.

“I don’t even chase females anymore. I quit that. I decided to wait until I’m ready to get married.”

Now this surprises me (and I take it with a grain of salt). According to conversations in the van, they are all sexually active and looking for their next “conquest”. But this confirms my suspicion that the things they say when they are all together do not necessarily reflect their personal choices. Nevertheless, the expression of this sentiment is a marked departure in attitude from when he first joined the group.

When I drop him off in front of his house, I give him a snack and he says, “Thanks Chris, I appreciate you.”

Our last “big” summer event. I was looking forward to having my core group of young men out to camp. I’ve invested a lot in them the last several years. Many of them I’ve known since they were babies.  I like to think we’ve developed a bond, like family.  I’ve sacrificed a lot to allow them positive experiences of childhood in the midst of lives of stress and struggle.  Me and Lisa have seen them through shootings and gang violence, family and social dysfunction, institutional barriers to success, and plain old bad choices.

The theme at Manhood Camp is “It takes God to be a Black Man!” We deal with physical, emotional, social and spiritual aspects of what it means to be a Black man. Camp was great. We’d been fishing, swimming, eaten good meals, played games, played basketball… even went inner-tubing behind the camp speedboat. We’d had meaningful devotionals and worship times.

But, a disagreement with one of my guys brought to the surface some deep emotional issue and blew out of proportion.  I’ve done this many years and I realized the emotional turmoil from this conflict was likely to cascade from one camper to another and I didn’t have the support there I needed, so I decided to cut our losses and go home. We could pick up things again next week, after people cooled off.

In my final message I made an appeal, based on our relationships and history, asking for their trust… their loyalty… their love.  Haven’t I earned it?

Usually when I give one of my talks there are the usual signs of boredom and impatience, but I look into their eyes and I can see that I’m getting my point across. But this time I could tell I wasn’t getting through to them. Loyalty? Trust? Love? I realized that I might as well have been speaking Greek to them.  In their lives these concepts had no practical meaning. There was zero cultural resonance here. Did they have any of these things to give?

Do they know what love is? Does anybody?

What is love to them? In the hood there’s mom love, there’s dad love, there’s love for extended family, there’s gang love… Those are the truest expressions of the emotion, and it’s all twisted by the dynamic of inner-city life. Even innocent expressions of love are tainted by manipulation, anger and fear. 

How do we, any of us, even know what love is? 

“This is love, not that we love God but that He first loved us, and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1 John 4.10

We don’t deserve it.

We didn’t earn it.

We can’t lose it.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” John 3.16

How can we know love without God?

How can my guys know this love?

How can they show it to me if they have not experienced it?

This is not a love anyone is entitled to… it can only be given, or received.

It’s not a love engendered by family, romantic partners or friends.

How can we learn love in this faulty world of sin?

How can we learn love when no one around us knows what true love is?

Without God, we are the blind leading the blind.

But True Love has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

True Love enables us to love when no one loves us in return.

True Love elevates us from our circumstances and allows us to experience God’s presence in our lives.

We don’t have to play the game of manipulation, distrust and fear.

So how can my young men learn True Love?

By me loving them… the way Christ loves me.

Postscript:  This has turned into a long letter but I have to tell you the end.  I spent a long drive home thinking and praying about what had happened.  After a night to sleep on it, I decided to go visit the young man at the center of the conflagration.  As soon as he opened the door, he apologized for what happened and outlined his missteps, repenting of his behavior. I was speechless, but tears came to my eyes. For this young man to come to this conclusion on his own and make this confession to me was huge… flesh and blood didn’t bring him to this point.

It takes God…

I was watching my boys at practice the other day. I’m amazed at how long I’ve kept this group together. They have never been easy. They have difficult attitudes, deep seated emotional issues, and lots of ongoing trauma. It was hard for anybody to be around them. You could take them out of the hood but you couldn’t take the hood out of them. I’m in my twilight years of doing ministry and I didn’t think I’d have the patience to spend years in their development. But, I kept them together… or rather, the Lord did. They stayed with me. They put up with my preaching, my lectures, my admonitions… my “God talk” devos, our church services and house gatherings. They slowly changed… but change they have. Basketball attracted them, but belonging made them stay. They are not perfect, but they have grown.

One young man, for example… every time he jumps in the car when I pick him up for basketball practice I breathe a sigh of relief.  Whenever I drop him off it’s with a prayer that the Lord be with him and watch over him. I’ve known him since he was ten years old (he’s fifteen now) and it’s always been like that. He’s a decent kid, but he’s always been attracted to the streets and been a magnet for negative attention from the streets.

He’s really a walking testimony to God using this ministry. He’s had to deal with so many social struggles that he should be a statistic.  I came along in his life right at the point when his family, the school system and the courts were all ready to give up on him. 

Basketball is what does it for him. With his size and strength, he could easily have been a good athlete in school, but a lack of structure and support in his life negated that possibility. Sports with us is different: I pick you up (no matter where you are) and I take you home. Plus, you get the added youth activities, camps and trips. Being a part of our team means being a part of community, relationships and support in every part of your life. No matter how disjointed his life, no matter how far out in the streets he gets, he comes for basketball.

He’s constantly at risk… recruited by gangs, tempted by criminal activity, involved in ill-advised sexual activity, neighborhood violence… he’s surrounded by it all.  All of our kids live in this environment but he regularly relates tales of close encounters with gangs, police, shootings, etc.  He’s got the marks and scars on his body to bear witness and the emotional ones too.

But he’s alive (many of his peers are not). He’s not in jail. He’s in school and he’s become a more stable person. He knows the Lord, he has friends and community, and he’s abandoned a lot of self-destructive behavior. We want more for him. We want a secure future through education and training for gainful employment. We want him to be able to experience everything God has for him in this life. We want this for all of our youth. 

This summer we will be offering various activities and experiences designed to help them grow as individuals and grow in community with each other and the Lord. We are planning a basketball camp, a trip to Chicago and various fun activities and gatherings. Can you make a special gift beyond your usual giving to help us keep them constructively engaged this summer?  

The Lord bless you, and thanks!

I have been thinking today about the sacrament of brownies…..

     When I was a girl I was required each week to memorize parts of the Lutheran Catechism before my confirmation in the church. The catechism had long passages full of big words and big ideas which I guess might be inevitable when humans try to distill the mysteries of God and faith down into words that they can make children memorize. To be honest, all those many passages I learned and recited every week to get my check mark are long gone from my memory. 

     The dull and dry church of my childhood did not have great preaching or great music or great prayers. But, God always makes God’s own heart known and so I did carry from that place real and true experiences of the One who made me and loves me. I carried away years of singing the liturgy and hymns and all those beautiful words of the Bible set to music that are carried still in my heart after all these years. I carried away the Bible stories told in months of Sundays. And probably more than anything, I carried away the kindness of church ladies who loved me, who were happy to see me and who made a great party for me when I won a large denominational scholarship to college.

    And this brings me to brownies! Over the past thirty-five years, I have baked countless pans of brownies. For some reason, brownies, more than any other baked good, became the means of grace at my house.  On Easter weekend Chris was driving the boys over here for church and as usual, somebody in the van says, ”Do you think Lisa is making brownies?” They have to come expect and to hope for brownies. And over all these years, I have come to believe that brownies are a sacrament here, perhaps not equal to bread and wine or water and blessing, but a sacrament, a MEANS of GRACE, nonetheless. 

     Every single pan of brownies carries with it these kinds of messages– I see you. I love you. I missed you. I was looking forward to being with you. I made something just for you. Those messages are straight from the heart of God. For me, for them, for us together. I was taught long ago that the sacraments like baptism and communion were the means of grace through which we could physically partake of some intangible spiritual reality that God would impart to us. And so, just as I carry the grace imparted to me through the love of the church ladies of my childhood, I pray God may be alive in me and in my love also.

     I carry yet another pan of brownies, warm and cut, to our basement gathering room and just like every priest and pastor before me, I bless them and offer them as a means of grace that each boy will experience that message from God that they are seen, that they are known, that they are waited for, longed after. That they are loved.

Lisa and I just returned from a trip to Ghana. It was a deeply rewarding experience for me,  enriching both culturally and spiritually.  We were saturated with exposure to Ghana’s historical import… being the first African nation to gain independence from colonization, as well as its ongoing struggle to achieve its vision of a unified, independent Africa, each nation free from international predators and dependent on its own rich natural resources to be what they can be as a people. I explored the roots of my African heritage and resonated deeply with cultural values of unity, community and family which my own community often seems to have lost or had stripped from us here in America. Everywhere the message to us was “Akwaaba”… Welcome home.  So, I drank deeply of the experience and immersed myself in my cultural heritage.  My prayer was to get everything I could out of this trip. It wasn’t what I expected… but it was more than I anticipated.

One of the most deeply moving experiences was visiting the Cape Coast Castle. Africans captured from all over West Africa were brought here after being marched hundreds of miles away from their homes.  They were imprisoned in the worst deprecating and dehumanizing conditions, as many as 200 people crammed into a dungeon for sometimes up to three months at the end of which time they were marched through “the door of no return” out to slave ships awaiting them on the beach, to be taken away never to see their homes or family again.  My mind can’t fully conceive the level of suffering or the spiritual anguish my ancestors went through.  Millions died in this terrible industry of human suffering.

Our guide asked us to reflect: If you could speak to your ancestor who survived this journey… the marches, the dungeon captivity, the middle passage, slavery in America… what would you say to them.  You are the remaining lineage of ancestors who sat in this dungeon and were brought across the ocean, what would you say to them today?  All I could think of was to say thank you… If it was not for you, I wouldn’t be here today. Because you survived, a whole people sprang up after you. Because you did not give up hope. You survived. I exist because of you… by the grace of God.

It hit me that this is the message I give my young men here every time I am with them. They struggle through the social and spiritual quagmire of urban life which threatens to suck from them every vestige of hope or joy in life.  Keep keepin’ on, I say.  Don’t give up, don’t despair. Just keep doing the things you’re supposed to do. Work hard at school. Stay out of trouble. Don’t hang around with negative influences. Don’t succumb to racism and don’t allow your circumstances to take control of who you are. Most of all, remember who you are. You are a child of God. God is with you. God loves you.  He is with you, to deliver you. You can make it. Just hold on!

Many of them do… some do not.

We offer a lifeline through organized sports, recreational activities, mentoring, Christian discipleship, and lifelong relationships.  I return home with renewed vigor for the ministry God has called us to and the strengthened conviction that this can only happen with the Lord, the emancipation of young Black men in our inner city communities and the single-minded purpose to simply reach out and grab someone’s hand, and help them along the way.

As we marked the winter solstice yesterday, the words buried in my heart from a childhood of Lutheran Sunday School Christmas “pieces” memorized were echoing…

             “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” Isaiah 9:2

This holiday season my heart has been tender as I make my daily rounds, to see the pains of this world for so many in my circle of love.

On the many mornings, I wake in the wee hours and pray… for the hearts of our two teenagers who were recently wounded in a drive-by shooting of their home and for the loved ones battling illness or depression or drug addiction…

On Sunday, as I listened with someone about the untreated mental illness of their family member…

On Monday, as I messaged and called the different friends who are starting chemo and radiation treatment this month….

On Tuesday, as I dropped off cookies off to my elderly neighbor down the street who has lived with cancer for so many years and now is in his last days. He called me “sweetheart” again when we said goodbye and I came home and cried at his skeletal state… 

On Wednesday, as I talked with a young couple with full-time jobs and wages so low they struggle to make ends meet and a neighbor still grieving the painful loss of a loved one…

On Thursday, as I made soup for a friend having surgery in the days before Christmas…

We have sometimes been told that our letters bear too much sadness that people don’t like reading them. Life would be easier if we were not privy to so much heartache and pain. 

However, I feel the great and beautiful and heavy weight of the grace of God that we are here in this very real world of the shadows and darkness of human existence. 

For it is for this very world and for these very people 

that the God of Creation, 

the God of the Universe, 

the God of the seas and the mountains and the earthquake and the cyclone, 

the God of the still, small voice

came as a baby, 

as a very human being, 

to be Immanuel, 

God with us. 

I hold in my heart, often through tears, doubts and struggle, the truth that that great and mighty God is present with us in the suffering and pain and trials and injustice of this wicked world. I base my life on the truth that God is not a God who is far off watching our pain and our struggles, but that Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit is indeed Immanuel, the God who is with us. And that our dear Jesus, who knew what it is to face oppression, injustice, suffering and death is with us when we hurt and when we cry. And he is here to show us the way through the shadows and the darkness and the death, to follow him through to new life and resurrection.

So dear friends, whether this is a bright and shiny Christmas for you, or one where your heart and spirit are sore or sorrowing, we are reminded,

That through the suffering and the pain, there is HOPE and his name is Jesus. And in those moments, like when I am standing with my neighbor whose life is wasting away, I can say, “Let’s Pray” and cling to the hope that Jesus’ very real presence and very real life can be alive for us in this hurting world.

That is the joy of Christmas.

  These weeks since Thanksgiving have been full of reflection as Chris and I approach the thirty year mark of our years in ministry as Christ’s Children Ministries. We have been thinking of the hundreds of children, youth, adults and families who have passed through our lives–some for short periods and some as permanent parts of our family and community. 

     And as we reflect, we have also had cause to remember our faithful donors who have contributed financially to keep this little non-profit going over all these years. It is through your kind and generous donations over these many years that we have been able to live, minister, work and raise our three boys here in the city.

     As most of you realize, our organization is unique, in that we know almost all of our donors in some kind of personal way. Many of you are friends who have known Chris and I since we were young and have chosen to support the call we felt to serve children and families here in the city. You have been our faithful companions in ministry across the decades. Some of you are friends we met along the way, as God brings us together. You are people who have become special to us by your choosing us and supporting us faithfully. Each time we open letters, make deposits and do bookkeeping, we see and remember and give thanks for each of you.

     We know that some of you pray for us very faithfully and we have felt the strength of those prayers over the years. We meet regularly with another couple, dear friends who have also spent their lives ministering among those who are marginalized and disregarded here in the city. Over the years, the four of us have seen many who have come to live and minister here who end up moving on, often to places where the call is not quite so demanding or so filled with obstacles and heartache. When we meet with these friends, we talk about the things that have been able to keep us here, still working and praying and loving people in the name of Jesus. By God’s grace, we have been able to keep our eyes on Jesus–not on the markers of success or stature or respect that the world gives. If we needed that, we would have folded long ago. I am also convinced that one of the things that has helped us weather the many heartaches and hardships of these past thirty years, is the faithful prayers of God’s people. 

     Thank you for praying for us. It is such a challenge to be people who hold and carry the hope of Jesus in places that are so often filled with despair and brokenness. Your prayers have been able to carry us along, especially me, when sometimes my heart is so heavy that I can only pray through the Spirit. The comfort I have derived from knowing that my broken heart is being carried by some of you who I know are praying for me, for us and for the people we love so much, is beyond measure.

     And somehow, we have made it all these years…sometimes with some extra and sometimes, with just enough, God has provided for our needs. And we are thankful. Every time a donation comes in, we see and know where it has come from and the people who have offered it. I think of the many, many funerals that I have attended of God’s people over these many years who were those who supported us. Just last season, I attended the homegoing celebration of a widow who had sent us a monthly donation across decades. Even as the numbers of our donors become ever smaller and people’s circumstances change, we are thankful for each one of you who supports us through your gifts and your prayers. We are trusting that the grace of God and the prayers of God’s people will continue to sustain and keep us on this path of lifting up our beautiful Jesus and his great love here in Minneapolis. May the beauty and the power of Jesus’ great love be a blessing in this Advent season as we prepare to celebrate the miracle of God choosing to become one of us.