“Free to Love”

Sermon by Rev. Dr. Stephen Poos-Benson &

Rev. Doug McKinney (Director of Love, Inc.)

June 27, 2010

Galatians 5:13-18

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

Steve: It is good to be back after being gone for 10 days on a Mission Trip with our young people to Tacoma and Puget Sound. Right now, Puget Sound is waking up to a gray morning. It is gray all the time in Puget Sound. I had the best time there, working with Laurene and the 7 other adults and our 21 high school kids that went. What a great group of kids! The beat of hip-hop and rap is just now beginning to settle out of my soul.

We had a marvelous time working on Puget Sound and then working in the inner city of Tacoma. It was on this Mission Trip that I was reminded of the power of what happens in a community when people come together and the power they have for change. When I was actually in Tacoma is when I realized that this is what Love, Inc. is trying to do and I’m excited that today is “Love, Inc.” Sunday. We have balloons up; it’s a big celebration.

Doug is the Executive Director of Love, Inc. But first tell us who you are as a human being, as a person.

Doug: I grew up in Wichita, Kansas, and I sensed a call from God when I was young, so I kind of reluctantly stepped out and went to a Liberal Arts College: Baker University in Baldwin, Kansas. As a Sociology major there, I didn’t really know which direction I was going to go, so I prepared myself in Sociology and also in Education and had planned to teach in the inner city of Kansas City. I was all set up for my student teaching there but just in case, I also applied and was accepted to graduate school in urban planning at Kansas University.

In the midst of that, in my senior year, I got a call from a church in Rogers, Arkansas, to serve as the Director of Christian Education. That sounded fun and appealing. I like to develop people and since I had an extra semester, I went there thinking I would probably only be there one semester and then come back to KU. I got there and I loved it and it was exciting. It was a church with about 1,800 members--just full of life and people that wanted to get out and do things. I served there for 3 years and there was only one problem with that church, for me, and that was that every Sunday after church, people would invite me out to lunch to meet their granddaughter. After 3 years of that, I thought this is too small of a town for a single guy and so I jumped at the chance to go to a 6,000- member church in Oklahoma City. The anonymity was exciting to me so I applied for the job and became the Youth Pastor at St. Luke’s Methodist.

That church was at a crossroads. It was about 15 blocks north of downtown. St. Luke’s is where they took people after the Oklahoma City bombing. Heritage Hills is a very upscale area and then right next to it is what we would call the ghetto. It was in an interesting neighborhood and I had students from 20 different school districts in my youth group. I had millionaire’s children and I had kids that were from the slums next door, so it was a real challenge.

Interestingly enough, I met my future wife on the first day on the job. I got there and she was leading a choir in this 1,800-seat sanctuary. They were caroling down the aisle and I decided I should meet her! Four years later we were married! Just before that, she had taken a job in Wichita, my hometown, so I moved back there and served a suburban church there, East Heights Methodist, for 10 years. I started out as a Youth and Young Adult Pastor and then moved into adult ministry as I aged.

While we were there, we had two sons, Chris and Andy, and my parents were there. My dad passed away and it seemed okay to move on, so I moved to Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. I’ve served as a Program Minister at a 2,800-member church. It’s a totally different culture: New Yorkers! The further south you go in Florida, the farther north you are. We served there for 5 years and as our sons reached Junior High, we decided Colorado is where we wanted to be.

We moved here and I served at First Methodist in Colorado Springs as the Executive Pastor for 3 years. In our 2nd year, our son Chris was diagnosed with Lymphoblastic Lymphoma and that was a real point of change for me. I realized, in that really tender time, that there was a lot to life that maybe I hadn’t been experiencing. So I decided, as he was recovering from that, to change the direction of my ministry. The next year, I moved to Parker, CO as the Associate Pastor, just serving in a congregation much like the one I started out in. It is a smaller congregation of about 800 members and I served there for 8 years. It was a wonderful experience.

33 years of ministry! I have a passion to develop people. That’s what I love to do and what that looks like is I like to encourage people to discover their gifts and after they have done that, I like to empower them and equip them and then celebrate as they serve.

So with that and being a Deacon in the Methodist Church, I decided that I wanted to change my ministry again. Deacons are a bridge between the church and the world—that’s our call in the Methodist Church. So I decided to cross that bridge and serve in the world and I told my congregation that I was leaving, help me find a job and interesting enough, Love, Inc. had just been established, opening a position for an Executive Director. I took that job 2 years ago this week.

What we were then was an idea, a plan, my cell phone and a computer. Since then, God has really blessed us. We have a facility that we are about to outgrow. We have 600 volunteers and 18 partner churches and those volunteers are people like you who want to get out and serve.

Steve: That’s an amazing story. As someone who has served in one church for 26 years, to see all if the different places where you have served is incredible. But to take over Love, Inc. from an idea, from a laptop and a cell phone to 18 partner churches and 600 volunteers—that’s inspirational. Today, I’m excited that we are going to formalize our partnership with Love, Inc. It has been very intentional work on our part.

Doug and I have talked on several occasions. Doug has met with the Church Council and the Church Staff. We’ve really thought through this and we think it is a wonderful partnership. We have told you about Love, Inc. in the bulletin and in the Ecumemo but sometimes it doesn’t really sink in until we have “the guy” here with us. So Doug, what is Love, Inc.? What is this church getting into by partnering with Love, Inc.?

Doug: I always tell a different story every time, but I’ll give you what is. Our mission is mobilizing the church to transform lives and communities in the name of Christ. Volunteers like you are invited to volunteer for different things. They follow their passion; they follow their time, their skills and abilities. Volunteers step forward with Love, Inc. and they serve in different ways.

Volunteers who are good listeners serve in our Clearing House. The Clearing House is where people call with a need and the volunteers that do that listening direct them to resources that are already effective in the community. Imagine yourself being in need. What would you do if all of a sudden your income just disappeared? What would you do if things changed rapidly for you and you needed help? We invite people to call Love, Inc. and a volunteer directs them to places like Interfaith, Jeffco Action, human services departments, to doctor’s care and things like that. With that, they make those referrals but they also connect them with volunteers where a volunteer can make a difference, doing the kinds of things that you are doing.

Love, Inc. works to direct people to those areas. The Clearing House is that place where it all comes together but following that, we hear the need. Sometimes the needs are challenging. People look at those needs. We take large needs that people have when they call and we try to break them down into manageable pieces. Sometimes people are hesitant to do that, to reach out to their neighbor, because they look at their neighbor and they say that’s huge—if I step out and I help, I might get stuck and I might not be able to get away from that.

Love, Inc. takes a large need and they break it into manageable parts so that if you are a person who has volunteered to give somebody a ride, for example, you can do that confidently, knowing that you give a ride today and somebody else will be coming in tomorrow. We take huge needs and turn them into manageable parts and allow each person to do what they do best.

That’s how Love, Inc. works and it’s a partnership of churches, so we look at different needs in the community and when we discover a need, we try to fill it with a gap ministry.

Steve: To take it one step further, give us a specific example of how it works among all the different churches through Love, Inc.

Doug: Imagine it’s October in a different setting—it’s not hot outside—and I’ll give you an example of how it works with Love, Inc. and without Love, Inc. This is a true story in a different community but one similar to what happens here.

A gentleman we will call Grandpa comes to your church and he says I need some coats for my kids. Your church is a “with-it” church and you say Grandpa, we want to help you. So we find out the sizes and you send out an email to the congregation and you look in the lost-and-found and you get those coats and you tell Grandpa to come back next week and we’ll be able to get those coats for your kids. Grandpa comes back, he gets the coats; his need is met.

With Love, Inc. you would probably handle that a different way. You’d tell Grandpa that we want you to get those coats; we’re a part of a Love, Inc. network so we want you to call Love, Inc. and talk to them. So Grandpa calls Love, Inc. and says he needs coats for his grandkids. Love, Inc. says thank you for calling. We’re so glad you called. We want to know what’s going on with you but we know we can get coats for you so tell us what sizes you need. They tell Grandpa that we have a church that has a Coat Ministry and we can send you over there or we can have someone deliver the coats. So what else is going on, Grandpa? Tell us a little bit more about what your need is and how we might help. He says these are my grandkids. My daughter is on drugs and she had an incident where she had to go into rehab and the kids came to me one evening and they were just in my home.

Tell us, Grandpa, where are your grandkids sleeping? They have pallets on the floor. You know what Grandpa? We have another church in the network that does a Bed Ministry and we could get some bunk beds over to your house sometime in the coming week. Would that be helpful? Absolutely. How about school? Are they in the same school or did they have to make a change? They came across town so I just took them to the nearest school. You know what, Grandpa? We partner with Interfaith and Jeffco Action Center. We can call them and they do a Backpack Ministry. So we could get a backpack to you for each of the kids.

Grandpa, tell me a little bit about meals. How is that working for you? I haven’t cooked for a long time for anyone but me. Grandpa, we have church volunteers who would bring a meal over to your place and they can bring some recipes that are easy to fix. Something that you could manage with your kids. How would you like that? That would be really helpful.

Grandpa, how are you doing personally? I never thought this would happen to me. Grandpa, there’s a church that has a Wednesday night program. You can go to their Support Group and you can talk to other people who are going through tough times and there’s a kid’s program and they can get a good education too.

You see, either way Grandpa got his needs met. He got the product from you or another church, but he got a relationship with churches and he got to see the Body of Christ at its best with Love, Inc.

So that’s how it works. Basically, all the churches work together, volunteers serve in different ways and we are with people as they connect with resources to keep them focused on getting back on their feet.

Steve: In our conversation last week, when Doug and I sat down to talk about this, he talked about the statistics. We think problems like this happen far away from us or in the downtown area, when the need is really right here. Listen to these statistics about what’s happening right here in this neighborhood.

Doug: Two years ago, when I started this, I didn’t know a whole lot about statistics and I looked at our website that was created before I got there. It said that in Jefferson County there were 175 students that were considered homeless. In fact, that’s still on our website. That was a statistic from 2007. The statistic from today is there are 5,000 students in the Jefferson County schools that are considered homeless. 5,000! From 175 to 5,000!

At the beginning of 2008, Douglas County had 62 homeless children in their system. Today, in Douglas County schools, 472 students are homeless. If you look at the statistics, that’s 100%, 200% every year.

What homelessness looks like in our community is not necessarily people under a bridge. You’ll see some but you won’t see 5,000 students under a bridge. What you will see, if you look in our communities, is four generations living in one home. You’ll see students whose families had a home here but it was foreclosed upon. They wanted to stay in the schools so they found someone else to live with. They might be couch surfers. They might be living in someone’s basement. Volunteers like you have moved people from their homes to temporary housing. So it has changed drastically.

Steve: For me, this speaks to the challenge right here. It is for us to figure out how to respond. That’s why I found the passage from Galatians to be so profound where God says you are free to choose how you are going to live. He says you basically have two ways that you can choose to live. You can choose to live out of a selfish self-interest or you can choose to live in such a way where out of your love for God, you work with other people. You model the face of God to other people. Paul says it is this other way that is the best way to live that is taking our gifts and working together.

It’s what I saw in Tacoma. We were working in a very sketchy part of the neighbor-hood where Vietnam refugees came after the Vietnam War. Over the years, the neighbor-hood, about a 15-block area, was taken over by many different gangs: Vietnamese gangs, Japanese gangs, Korean gangs, the Crips, the Bloods. It was a violent place and these Vietnamese refugees pulled inside their homes and it became a drug-ridden neighborhood and a lot of homeless people moved in. It was a very chaotic place until a few people said we’re not going to tolerate this any more and they intentionally decided to partner together, to work together to push out the violence.

They started community gardens. This is where our kids worked in Tacoma as a way of bringing the Vietnamese refugees out of their homes to work together. They established a homeless shelter and rehab centers. So finally, after decades of work, the neighborhood is relatively safe because people came together.

When I was out in Tacoma, I thought to myself this is Love, Inc. At Columbine we say we are Christ-centered, theologically open, an ecumenical congregation where faith and life meet. Well, this is ecumenical at its best. Love, Inc. is filled with churches from all different denominations, even non-denominational. We are coming together in the name of Christ to serve.

So Doug, what are our next steps?

Doug: Today, you have a yellow sheet and you have an opportunity to fill that out and express your needs. If, for some reason, that doesn’t work for you, I’m going to be back at Columbine, possibly July 6^th and then on July 18^th. I’ll be back to discuss it further with you.

Having a Love, Inc. Sunday is a big part of this. To take up part of your service to do this is huge. Steve, the next step for the church is to get involved, to make referrals to Love, Inc. When people come to your doors, have them call us and work with us. It will be you working with them in those specific ways.

A third element is to provide financial support. As a church you will decide what gift you want to make. There are no dues for Love, Inc. Each church decides what they want to do and they contribute to be part of the Love, Inc. network.

Fourthly, we invite you to pray for Love, Inc. and our clients. We send out a prayer list every other week with the clients’ initials and their needs and we invite you to be in prayer for them.

A fifth part is to do a gap ministry. As we discover gaps in services, we ask churches to look at their gifts and their abilities and their talents and to pick up a ministry that they want to do. Some examples of that in the past year: One of our smallest churches, the Orthodox Church, has started Diaps and Wipes and we actually picked up a long-time ministry called Haven’s Hope. Both of those provide diapers. The reality is that when you are on food stamps, you can’t purchase products like diapers. We discovered there are no agencies that provide enough diapers to get you through the week, let along through the month.

You might ask why diapers? Why don’t they use cloth diapers? A wet baby is probably a crying baby and a crying baby is probably a child that is in for abuse. When there’s no other solution, what do you do? We work at having diaper drives and having churches fulfill that need.

That’s just one of the gap ministries we have right now. As we discover others, we’ll be calling on you to help us with that.

Steve: So take a few moments and think about how we can participate in this ministry.

Doug: Last October, when we started this conversation, Steve told me that he knew a person that was homeless. We had him call Love, Inc. and they really didn’t really have a solution except to send him to a shelter in Denver. That conversation, along with a couple of things that hit me at that time, made me realize that we don’t have a solution for people that are homeless in this community. Yes, we do have the Interfaith Hospitality Network for families but what if you are single or what if you are a couple? What do we do there? That started a conversation and beginning in January, Love, Inc. started a new gap ministry. The gap right now is to discover what the need is in this community and to find a solution.

Russ Daniel from your congregation has been joining us on a regular basis and that group is pretty close to coming up with some kind of a plan. Just this past Thursday, we had an open forum and Jefferson County, Douglas County and Arapahoe County Human Services came and made a presentation to share what it is that they are doing and then we had other groups there like the Interfaith Hospitality Network there.

Our request was this: That the whole Southwest quadrant of the community has a unified response and that we come up with some kind of a plan to help people. I want to share that was prompted by a conversation that happened with us last October.

So this really is a growing effort to meet needs where there really are gaps. So thank you, Steve. I wanted to share that with everybody.