Thursday, June 12, 2008

being Jesus to the poor in downtown Charlotte

I just wanted to let you know about a cool "kingdom thing" that's happening downtown among the poor of our city. Read this post from earlier this week to see some of my background thoughts.

My friend Todd Brower, who is a part of ridge church, started this crazy cool thing in downtown Charlotte. He had a heart to help the homeless who live on the streets right here in our city and he would see them and take them out for lunch. He started buying them lunch and saw the impact he was making on a few and then decided God wanted him to do something more. He started telling these homeless guys he knew to invite their friends and he would buy their lunch too.

NOW it's turned into something much bigger. If you go downtown on any given Wednesday at 2pm to Fuel your heart will ignite with passion, love, and an overwhelming sense that Jesus is totally digging what's going down there. Todd buys lunch for (anywhere between) 50-90 homeless men, women, and children every single Wednesday at Fuel Pizza. Pretty flippin' cool.

Our lead pastor Chris told me about it and even blogged about it here. Todd and I and some other guys pray together on a lot of Thursday mornings and I got to know him better there. So, I went with him a couple times to this God thing that's happening downtown right here in our city. I was amazed. God was in that place & He was lovin' it. I had an overwhelming sense that "this" is what the Church is supposed to be doing! Todd or his friend Jimmy give a quick talk from the Bible while everyone is eating. Some of them listen intently while some are staring out the window and some even gobble down their pizza and take off in the middle of their talk. That's not really important though. This is a couple guys full of love for the poor trying to act live Jesus would be acting if he lived here in Charlotte.

I love being there. I love being around these people. They have their own culture. Todd has so many cool stories of these people who have come back to him months later after they've gotten jobs, apartments, and their lives have often been changed by Jesus because of Todd's initiative to do this for the poor.
So, I was thinking... Todd's just a normal guy (heading towards baldness, but I found out recently he used to have a rocker mullet of which I would post a pic if I had one) just like you and me are normal people. (He's just using a pizza joint for God's glory and to help the poor like Jesus would.) He's doing this crazy cool thing for the poor, the good of the kingdom, and the fame of Jesus. What could you and me do?

2 comments:

Kelvin said...

man, that is such an awsome ministry. This guy gets it! Kinda ironic, but Jenny and i actually were blessed with the opprotunity to take a homeless guy out to supper one nite...at fuel a few months ago.

patrick mitchell said...

That's awesome man. Maybe, the poor who hang around Fuel will notice that God's peeps love them like Jesus did.