Let go, let God and just be,” John said. That’s John’s version of the gospel.
John is homeless. At present, he lives with his partner, Mary, in Jackson Square in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter. By day, John and Mary sleep under the trees in the Square, in the shadow of St. Louis Cathedral. By night, Mary sells portraits to tourists in the French Quarter. She often makes enough for them to buy some food at one of the all-night cafes. Today, though, John has a single dime in his coat pocket.
When I asked John whether he was a Christian, he quickly said he was. In fact, John said he is an ordained Baptist minister. He was ordained through the mail as part of a correspondence course. However, John’s gospel is far different from the true gospel.
John, like many other homeless people our group from Samford University encountered while on a missions trip to New Orleans, believes there are many roads to God. Others who come from a strong Catholic background emphasize working one’s way to heaven. This “Jesus + Works = Salvation” mentality is devastating to many of the homeless who feel hopelessly trapped in the sins of prostitution, alcoholism and drug abuse. In both cases, they must be told that only Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6).
For the first five days of Spring Break, 43 Samford students and one professor participated in the annual missions trip. We served in a wide range of ministries in New Orleans. We worked with children at a housing development. We painted and cleaned with an organization called Rebuilding Together. We sang for and played bingo with senior adults at the Sojourner Truth Community Center. Most of our work, though, was with the homeless.
Three times during the week, some of our group served meals and led worship at the Brantley Baptist Center, a North American Mission Board ministry that serves food to homeless men, women and children under the age of 7. The Brantley Center can house up to 240 people at a time and has been serving New Orleans since 1927.
Other times, we distributed food packs to the homeless in the French Quarter. We offered them food, but we also told them about the forgiveness we have through Jesus. God is moving greatly in New Orleans, a place known around the world as “Sin City.”
On any given night, there are an estimated 6,400 homeless people in central New Orleans, according to Unity for the Homeless.
We met just a few of the faces behind that statistic. It would be easy to say that our group worked with homeless people over Spring Break. However, they are not simply “homeless” to us anymore. When we talk about our ministry in New Orleans, we talk about John, Mary, James, Coolio, Kevin, Mary Ann, Shea, Joshua and many others.
When we met these people, when we gave them food, when we smelled their uncleanliness, when we shared our clothes with them, the urgency with which we must share the gospel became indescribably more real to us.
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