: my friend coop : on homelessness :

... we had a good day at Saanichton Bible Fellowship yesterday, as what I dubbed Mustard Seed Sunday @ the SBF went off really well. Chris Pollock, the seed's youth pastor, spoke in the morning, with a few comments about the tragedy on Victoria's streets this last week. More on that in the next post. We followed up with a Mustard Seed Street Church benefit concert, with the Seed's Praise Band kicking things off, and a variety of Seed artists, poets, musicians contributing. Amazing the tentacles of ministry an intentional street church must develop ... food bank, Hope Healing Farm, youth outreach, back-to-school supplies, counseling, advocacy, social assistance navigation, you name it.

This is may favourite picture of my buddy Jordon Cooper, taken by his almost 9 year old son Mark. One of the smartest people I know, and that's saying something, Jordon is a voracious reader. And a sage football fan, as both of us are Denver Broncos and Notre Dame Fighting Irish fans. Anyhow Coop works these days in a leadership capacity in a Salvation Army shelter in Saskatoon, SK. He just had an article published in NextWave magazine on the complexities of homelessness, and a way faith communities could be part of the solution. Between his intellect, his reading, and his blogging, he's honed quite an articulate voice on things.

Maybe you will find this helpful as you process your locale's homelessness challenge?

dlc

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ps. Ron Cole has weighed in on this as well, spurred on by the Coop's article. Well, maybe catalyzed by it? Ron is always thinking about this stuff, but he wrote some of it down here after reading Jordon's article. And then Randy commented on it, and Ron replied ...