Urban Ministries: Visit One

The beauty of being a salaried employee is that from time to time I can show up late to work - as long as I get my work done - which is exactly what happened today.

Tilden, Stephanie, Kristy and I spent the morning with a couple hundred 'neighbors' (i.e. homeless people) at Charlotte's inter-faith Urban Ministries - they have a soup kitchen at the facility (an old train station on Charlotte's North side). They have other groups that come in to serve drinks, which is what we did. We brought 200+ bottles of water and served them during the meal. I've added some names of the people that we met on the right.

But, holy eye-opening. Charlotte isn't a HUGE city by any means. But it's estimated that there are 5,000 neighbors living in the county. That's incredible to me.

What's even more intense is the diversity of the people that we met. Didn't expect to find an English major, or an Airplane Mechanic, or a master carpenter, or a high-risk loan officer from a major financial institution. But that's exactly what we found.

We also found out that there is a lot of stigma - a lot that isn't so much grounded in fact as it is in ignorance.

God's doing and continuing to inspire some amazing things.

Grace.