Little Mary was a prostitute—not the street-walker type—well maybe sometimes, but not the leopard skin, mini-skirt and high heels type. For Mary, sex was a currency, as is the case for so many women living in poverty.
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Joe's Addiction
While I hear Churchians talking about how “the poor are poor because they make poor choices,” I daily watch single mothers working at the drudgery of minimum wage jobs that just cannot pay the bills, and daily facing the temptation to dance (and more) in the strip clubs on our street
The policeman stepped out of his car, and the young man who had called breathlessly rattled his complaint. “These guys are gonna beat me! They threatened to hit me! I didn’t do nothing to them, but they’re gonna kill me! Some of them are Juggalos and some of them are Crips. They’re gonna kill me!”
In my mind, I started yelling at God, “You can’t send me people like this, and then not give me some way to help them! What do I do?!”
The morning of the Thanksgiving Dinner, David met me at the door of my car, a big grin on his face. He said, “Come and see our flower planter! It’s finished and I think it’s beautiful!”
I looked up from wiping the counter to see a man standing on the front sidewalk, arms outstretched with a thermos jug gripped tightly in his hands. He was shaking from head to toe. Several of us ran to the front door to meet him. He just stood there mumbling incoherently and trembling, holding out his thermos. It was empty.
“If you want to go to church, you should go over to Joe’s Addiction. They accept prostitutes, junkies, tattoos and piercings. They’ll take anyone.”
One of the more frustrating elements of ministry at Joe’s is the complexity of the roots of problems. We daily encounter these plus the worldview and value system that is inherent to generational poverty. Add to these the ingredients of drug addiction and mental illness, and otherwise simple needs become recipes for extreme frustration.
“This is the original revolution: the creation of a distinct community with its own deviant set of values.” John Howard Yodel
Being “born again” means starting over and coming into the world as something new, something different. It’s a total overhaul, an extreme makeover that gives us a complet
ely new outlook on life. It means a revolution of values
Jimmy’s mouth dropped open. Then he said, “Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?! Don’t mess with me!” I assured him that I wasn’t and asked if he would be willing to assist the chef at the country club. For a moment, Jimmy stood there silent. Then a gigantic smile swallowed the lines of Jimmy’s haggard face. He grabbed me around the shoulders, picked me up and began to sob, “God is giving me back my dream! He’s giving me back my dream!”
I looked at David, an alcoholic, vietnam vet who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, and who spends part of every day at Joe’s, and his mouth was hanging open. He said, “That’s like ‘deja vu’ or something . . .”
Matthew is a murderer, but “Carl is a sex offender.” The sex offenders are the bottom of the barrel, even in prison.
Without a beat of hesitation, he responded, “God told me that we are going to have a lot of people!” My heart dropped. Oh no, I thought. What if God didn’t really say that to him? What would it do to Carl’s faith if people didn’t show up? I threw up a quick prayer, “God, you know… please show up! For Carl’s sake!”
Joey’s stared at me, his eyes widening and filling with tears. He said, “I am in darkness. I’ve been in darkness my whole life. That can’t be what God is saying.”
Her next thought was, “How will I pay for the supplies? Will the church pay for that?” Linda lives in a trailer park down the street from Joe’s. She receives a small check from the military each month that covers her modest needs, but rarely leaves any money leftover.
when I walked in here about an hour ago Jessi, one of the women here, grabbed me and took me next door. It was full of food for the guys, as well as gloves for them!
The point of this piece is to convey a feeling of the ambiance and sense of community the owners, employees, and regulars of his establishment are creating in a geographic area which could very easily find itself caught in a web of depression and hopelessness. The strip clubs that litter the landscape of this street may provide a few moments of arousal for their patrons, but these feelings are fleeting and are, in the end, detrimental to the overall health of the voyeur. What Joe’s Addiction provides is warmth and hope without judgment. They also provide one heck of a good cup of coffee.
“I’ve been living 50 years of my life entirely for myself. That’s a long time. I know how to do that. I am starting to live a different way now, not for myself, but for others. It’s new to me. It’s a way that I want to go. I think I’m going a new way. But I don’t want to start calling myself something, until I’m really sure that I am actually able to go this new direction.”
Finally, I’m seeing and experiencing the love of Jesus the Bridegroom. Until recently, this was the side of Him that I most adamantly denied.