If you are new here (my rss statistics tell me a bunch of you are), let me show you around.

As you may have caught on, professionally I minister to the very poor and homeless here in Raleigh. What gets me in trouble is my belief that God is far more gracious and loving than I could ever be. I am fortunate to be supported in this by a wide ranging group of folks – church folk, hipsters, punks, gays, lawyers, writers, artists, school teachers, home makers, atheists.

Some of these folks help us in practical work, and others support us financially and still others retweet my stuff ridiculous numbers of times. We are incredibly grateful for all of that.

My wife and I live in downtown Raleigh (but not the part most folks want to live in) – sorta figuring that it is hard to tell poor people “I know how you feel” if the gunshots did not keep you awake last night, too. We have a very spoiled cat named Felix, who was born in squalor in a trailer park until we took him away from all of that. Because of his origins, my wife says she always pictures him sounding like Larry the Cable Guy if he could speak.

This is my personal blog, so I won’t talk a lot about the practical aspects of my day to day work here – if you want to know more about that, you might want to check out our Love Wins Ministries site and blog. Also, you might want to read my disclaimers, where I remind you that the words here are mine, and mine alone.

I think a lot about the intersection of faith and culture. I believe one can live a life of faith that leads you to try to change the world. I think most people choose faith because they want to be a better person – but sometimes it seems faith makes people kinda jerky. I wonder about that a lot.

Because I spend my life among the marginalized, I am anxious to create a safe space here for those the church and culture has left behind. That means if you are pretty conservative (in the real meaning of the word – you want things to remain the same), you might be a bit uncomfortable here sometimes. But you will be respected and allowed your voice. We just ask that you do the same to others. Some people call that the Golden Rule – you may have heard of it.

Anyway, thank you for visiting. I hope you will stick around and chime in.