Thirty Day Plan to End Homelessness

Ron Hall, who along with former street bum Denver Moore wrote "Same Kind of Different as Me" and "What Difference Do It Make" makes a strong case for churches - ALL churches - to get involved in eliminating homelessness.

Hall believes that the problem of homelessness will never be solved by government. He states "government can neither love a man nor lovingly hold him accountable. The chronically homeless need love, compassion, accountability, and someone to come alongside them and hold them steady as the limp along the winding, pitted road to wholeness."

In his travels, Ron proposes a "Thirty Day Plan to End Homelessness". It works like this: the local pastor or priest or rabbi motivates his or her congregation to adopt one chronically homeless person. Each body of believers, whether it's fifty or a thousand strong, would assume collective responsibility for taking in one person and loving that person back into society.

What the church is offering is unconditional love - part of which recognizes that real love includes loving a person from dependence to independece. The result is up to God.

We are judged by our compassion, how we live our lives, not by how that person we help ultimately lives his. God commands us to love, not to calculate the end game.

What about it, church?

What Difference Do It Make?

Ron Hall and Denver Moore - international art dealer and street bum, respectively - have done it again. The tale of their most improbable friendship, begun in the book "Same Kind of Different as Me", continues in "What Kind of Difference Do It Make."

Denver Moore is a homeless street bum, living on the streets of Ft. Worth. He is wary at first of the efforts by Ron and Debbie Hall to help the homeless in the Union Gospel Mission. Over time, though, Ron and Debbie break through his tough exterior and discover a heart of gold.

Shortly after this, Debbie begins a year-long, losing battle with cancer. Throughout the painful loss, Denver and Ron weave a story of how God uses us all - even when we think the differences are too great.

After the publication of the first book, Ron and Denver's friendship begins to grow and impact people all over the country. They decide to continue their story and write another book. Struggling over the title one day, Ron asked Denver for his opinion. Denver's response: "What difference do it make?

The title is so appropriate because that's their story, told over and over in ways that will grip your heart: one person can make a difference.

Throughout the book, the focus is about homelessness. Over and over, Denver patiently teaches Ron and others about what life on the street is - and how we can see the homeless as real people. Here's a sample story when Ron is hesitant to give money to a homeless man:

Maybe you is right. The thing about it is, though, gifts is free. When you give a person a gift, you is also givin that person the freedom to do whatever they want with it. When you give a homeless man a dollar, you ain't saying, "Here-go b yourself a chicken." If you really wanted him to have some food, you'd take him in the McDonald's and buy him a Big Mac and a apple pie.

No, when you give a homeless man a dollar, what you really saying is, "I see you. You ain't invisible. You is a person." I tells folks to look at what's written on all that money they be givn away: it says "In God We Trust." You just be the blessin. Let God worry about the rest.

More powerful one-liners from Denver:

I notice a lotta folks doin more lookin at the Bible than doin what it says

You got to go inside 'cause that's where God is - in the deepest place inside you

Put a heart in your body where a stone used to be

If you gon' walk these streets with me, you gon' have to learn how to serve these people without judgin 'em. Let the judgin' be up to God

The most personally impacting comment for me was when Denver challenges the reader to be both a blessing and a help:

Blessin means you give a person a little gift to show 'em you think they matters on this earth, and helpin is when you stoop down with a person and stay there till they can climb on your shoulder to get up

God, help us all to stoop down this week.

Catch and Release

In "Same Kind of Different as Me" Denver Moore is a tough homeless man, raised in virtual slavery till a young man, then a citizen of the streets for decades. It was a divine appointment that brought him into contact with Ron and Debbie Hall, two tireless volunteers at the Fort Worth Union Gospel Mission.

Over a period of weeks, Ron tried to initiate a friendship with Denver - to no avail. Then when he least expected it, the following comments from Denver shook Ron to his core:

"I been thinkin a lot about what you asked me - 'bout being your friend." He looked up from his coffee, fixing me with one eye, the other squinted like Clint Eastwood. "There's somethin I heard 'bout white folks that bothers me, and it has to do with fishin."

"I heard that when white folks go fishin they do somethin called 'catch and release.'"

"That really bothers me," Denver went on. "I just can't figure it out. 'Cause when colored folks go fishin, we really proud of what we catch, and we take it and show it off to everybody that'll look. Then we eat what we catch...in other words, we use it to sustain us. So it really bothers me that white folks would go to all that trouble to catch a fish, then when they done caught it, just throw it back in the water."

"So, Mr. Ron, it occurred to me: if you is fishin for a friend you jus gon'catch and relase, then I ain't got no desire to be your friend."

Suddenly his eyes gentled and he spoke more softly than before: "But if you is lookin for a real friend, then I'll be one. Forever."

Denver Moore knows about friendship. Self-described as someone with "layers of street on me a mile thick," Denver, in that powerfully simple exchange above, unveiled a whole new meaning of friendship to Ron Hall - one that would sustain them both in the days ahead.

The book is "Same Kind of Different as Me." It's a true-life story of what happens when we allow God to break through our histories and past, in order to write His future on our lives.

As Denver says: "I used to spend a lot of time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we wadn't ever gon' have no kind a' future. But I found out everybody's different - the same kind of different as me. We're all just regular folks walkin down the road God done set in front of us."

Holiday Volunteers

The book "Same Kind of Different as Me" continues to impact me in a powerful way. First, a little backstory: my friend Dean, a member of our community group, said he picked up a great book a while back and was reading it on a flight to the West Coast. Near the end he struck up a conversation with someone sitting next to him. He felt impressed that God was telling him to give the book away to his seatmate - which he did. We don't know the rest of the story, but I have no doubt the book will make an impact on that person's life.

Why? It's because Denver, a homeless man of the streets of Fort Worth, has words like this:

Lemme tell you what homeless people think about folks that help homeless people: When you homeless, you wonder why certain volunteers do what they do. But these folks was different. One reason was they didn't come just on holidays. Most people don't want the homeless close to em-think they're dirty, or got some kinda disease, or maybe they think that kind of troubled life gon' rub off on em. They come at Christmas and Easter and Thanksgivin and give you a little turkey and lukewarm gravy. Then they go home and gather round their own table and forget about you till the next time come around where they start feelin a little guilty 'cause they got so much to be thankful for.

Like I said, I'd been watching Mr. and Mrs. Tuesday. They wadn't like the holiday volunteers. They'd come ever week and talk to the homeless folks, and not seem to be afraid of em. Talked to em like they was intelligent. I started to think Mr. and Mrs. Tuesday might be trying to do some real good 'stead a just making themselves feel better 'bout being rich.

"Same Kind of Different of Me" is a powerful story of the most unlikely friendship developed over time between a tough street bum named Denver and Ron and Debbie Hall. It's a story you can believe in, because it resonates in the love God has for his children - all of them, no matter what their address or stage in life.

It's a lesson we all can learn - Thanks, Denver, for letting God speak through you.