blind are seen

"Look at this bracelet. It says 'unknown.' I woke up in hospital on Monday with this bracelet on my wrist that says that I'm unknown. I'm unknown from unknown. And my heart stopped - they had to use adrenaline to bring me back to life. I died as John Doe."

When Tommy approached Jorien and me at Streets Kitchen in Camden on Friday, I thought that he was drunk. I assumed he was just another of the homeless men who drink their days away to keep from seeing their hopeless situations. But when he showed us his hospital bracelet and started telling us his story, I realised that I had judged him wrongly. He is a man with a heart for God and a past that haunts him.

Tommy served in the Royal Air Force in Iraq. His Land Rover was hit with friendly fire, and he sustained injuries. He killed seventeen men, and he is haunted by their faces every night. And every night, he begs God for forgiveness. Because he is Catholic, and because a Catholic charity that helps those with mental health problems on the streets helps him, Tommy is never assured of his forgiveness. He loves God, but he can never be sure that he is precious and loved. He spends his nights begging for forgiveness that was given him the first time he asked for it. He longs for love from a Father who gave everything because of how much He loves Tommy.

Tommy has been on the streets again for a week. He had a job in Islington, but he ended up back on the streets on Sunday, and he took a cigarette from a bloke that ended up being laced with a drug that landed him in hospital. Because he had no ID, his bracelet read "Unknown from unknown." And that rattled Tommy more than being on the streets.

You see, Tommy longs to be known.

And Tommy is known. He known to the very marrow of his bones. But how can we tell him of that? When I looked into his eyes and told him that God loves him, that God forgave him long ago, I knew that it was a truth that could transform Tommy's life. I knew that he never has to be afraid of being Unknown from unknown again. But Tommy has kept that bracelet on his wrist. He has kept that label on himself.

I still don't know what to say to these men and women who wear like armour the unjust labels that society has placed on them. We serve them food, and we speak truth and love, but more often than not, they still walk away. I think that maybe, putting new labels on them, the labels that their Father puts on them, is a start. We don't have to call their situation hopeless, because we know that hope has a name in Jesus. We don't have to call them alcoholics or destitute or crazy. We can call them loved.

I don't have anything more to say to them than that they are known by name and loved to the nucleus of every cell in their bodies. But I can say those things, and I think that it is enough for now. For now, we will be faithful with that. I think that speaking truth could be the first step in calling them home.

plenty of time to give

Whilst we were on outreach in the Netherlands, we had an opportunity to run arts workshops for the youth in the church where we were staying. Brennan, my photography intern (who is staying to be staff!), and I taught a photography workshop. We spent the time teaching the youth how to use their smartphones to take better photographs and the basic principles of photography, and as I watched them practise their new skills, my heart grew heavy. I remembered when I was in youth group and the way that I always compared myself to others. I remember how I watched the pastors’ sons and daughters and how they always won at Sword Drills, how they went to private Christian school and seemed to know so much about God. I thought that I would never get to that level. I knew that I needed to know God more, but I thought that they were the only ones who would ever know enough to be pastors and missionaries. I didn’t feel worthy of that life myself.

I wish that I could gather together all of the youth that I come across and tell them just that: that they are worth it. They are worthy of a relationship with Christ. It is a relationship, not just a knowledge, and the knowing comes to the heart more deeply than to the head. So many of the people that I grew up with aren’t Christian anymore. I don’t know what led them to abandon their faith (or actually, I could probably guess, since they are the same reasons I toyed with when I was eighteen and realised that it was time for me to decide what I believed in). It took me encountering Christ in a field in Canterbury and discovering that He wanted a relationship with me, a relationship meant for every single day, for the intimate corners of me that I didn’t show other people, for me to decide to give my life to Him. To actually give it, and not just to sit in a pew on Sundays because my mother made me promise to keep going to church.

There was one 14 year old boy in the workshop who took a particular shine to photography. Even after the workshop ended, he found me to show me his photographs. He let me help him position the camera and focus, and even with the language barrier and his inherent shyness, by the end of the evening, we were laughing and sharing stories. It was so easy to form a relationship with him. It just took time and intention.

I am learning that with the Lazarus Project, as well. It is easy to build relationships with the people that we meet, as long as we take the time to do it and have intention. Sometimes it takes me nearly thirty minutes to complete the five minute walk from King’s Cross Station to my house, because I pass several of my mates along the way, and I stop to see how they are. It doesn’t matter that they sleep rough and that I sleep in a bed. We are still friends.

Taking the time to be intentional is something I am learning about quite a bit these days. Time is one of my most precious commodities. I have learnt over the past five years that God is faithful with my finances. I can trust Him to provide the money for my rent, for food and transport, and even for the visa that I need to renew in July. But I still worry a lot about time. And time is the most precious thing that I can give the people that we meet through Lazarus, or through Taboo Arts Internships, or in evangelism. Because through time I can build relationships, and through our relationship, they can meet their Saviour and take the first steps into new life.

And maybe I won’t get all of the photos edited and all of the facebooks updated that day. Maybe I won’t complete my to-do list. And maybe I don’t need to.

Lazarus, Come Out

Jesus called Lazarus back to life. When it seemed as if everything had been taken from Lazarus - including life itself - Jesus gave it all back.

It probably seems sacrilegious, but I wonder how Lazarus felt about it.

I've been wondering about that a lot more in the past two weeks, since the Lazarus Project (aka the mercy ministries aspect of our base, which is currently primarily three of my roommates and myself) started working with several different homeless aid charities in Camden and in King's Cross. The various councils for the boroughs of London have been cutting benefits for the homeless, which means that more and more of them are kicked out of council housing and are living on the streets. There are double the number of homeless people sleeping on the streets since 2010.

On Friday nights, we work with Streets Kitchen in Camden Town. The men in charge wheel the food in a trolley from a warehouse about twenty minutes away, and together, we set up tables of hot food, soup, tea, and coffee. Last week, the warehouse lease was terminated unexpectedly, which led to a late set up. The homeless in the area were frantic, because they rely on the food that they are served by Streets Kitchen volunteers. They thought that they would be both cold (it was around 0 degrees Celsius) and hungry. It is actually a dangerous condition to be in, with several of the homeless of Camden dying from exposure and being found on the bank steps the following morning.

While all of these facts are alarming, they are not what bothers me the most.

What weighs most heavily on my heart in all of this is the twenty-somethings who are sleeping rough (another term for being homeless). I  met a twenty year old lad called Luke whilst volunteering with Todos London, another charity that feeds and clothes the homeless at Kings Cross Station on Wednesdays. Luke is from Walthamstow, which is in North London, and his mum still lives there. He had a job working in a pub, but he quit because he wants to earn more than minimum wage. But now he's sleeping outside of King's Cross Station, because he's tired of living in a squat with loads of drug addicts (of which he is not). There is no reason that I can see for Luke to be homeless. He is young, healthy, and strong.

So why is he still homeless?

Then there's Scottish Tam, a girl around my age whom I found in a sleeping bag fort in front of a closed shop on the Camden High Street. She was just lying there with two other homeless men in 0 degree weather. When the other volunteer that I was with asked her why she was still there, she just shrugged.

Why are so many people in their twenties, who are healthy and able to work, homeless? It is something that I do not understand, and it is something for which there is no easy solution.

To be fair, there's not much of a solution to any other aspect of homelessness than feeding them. We cannot provide them with low-cost accommodation or jobs. And while there are different charities across London to help with different aspects of homelessness, we can't help force them to choose not to be homeless.

But the Dinner Club that we run with Notting Hill Community Church fortnightly on a Thursday has taught me that we can befriend them. We can get to know them, to see them through seasons, and speak truth into their lives.

It is a fine line to walk between supporting and being somebody to hang off of, from being a listening ear to allowing people to wallow and be a victim. It is a fine line to walk between telling them off and encouraging them. And it is a fine line to walk to care about them, especially when you see them on the streets throughout the week, and not to feel guilty for the warm bed and food awaiting you.

In the Message version of Romans 8:12, it says, "if you work with the disadvantaged, don't let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them." That is something that it is crucial for us to learn in this time, especially as the Lazarus Project grows and we encounter many different people in disadvantaged situations. It is also something that I am finding it difficult to learn. I just want to be able to help. But what if I can't do anything, or if the people that I would love to help don't want help? Which brings me back to Lazarus: I wonder how he felt about being raised to life again? Would he have rather stayed in Heaven? Or was he happy to have another chance at life, to go in with the new perspective of somebody who had everything taken away, then given back to him again?

Working with Streets Kitchen in Camden

Amanda and I working with Todos London in King's Cross

A reminder I found on Baker Street today

Digging in the Dirt

When I was a little girl, I loved to dig my hands into the dirt and the sand. I loved to feel it in between my fingers, to feel that I really had a grasp of it, to know how warm or cool it was, how sticky or how crumbly. It was messy, yes, and I didn't like to clean the remnants from under my fingernails, but I still had to know the feel of it.

That is what I feel these past weeks have been. A month ago, the DTS ended, and the students and most of the staff returned to their homes for Christmas. I stayed in London, and my parents came to visit me. Together, we celebrated Christmas at my local church and with my teammates who were still in London. It was the first time that I had everybody together, which was so much more than I expected. On Boxing Day, my parents and I headed up to the Scottish highlands for a few days. It has long been a dream of my father and me to visit, and it was just as beautiful as we hoped.

Since everybody has come back to London again, we have had a few weeks to work on our various ministries and to spend time together. We feel that it is a year of intimacy and getting to know God better, so we have had teachings, times of prayer and intercession for the coming season, and several meals and evenings spent just being together. We live a busy life that feels that we are constantly running at top speed. I think that we needed these weeks of slowing down and seeking God for what is coming.

This year, we are starting a ministry called the Lazarus Project, which essentially encompasses mercy ministries. Mercy ministries are ministries that show mercy to the people in London who are in need of love, care, or justice, such as the homeless, prostitutes, sex trafficked, mentally ill, refugees, and people living in poverty. We have been working in the area of mercy ministries for years, especially with the dinner club that we host fortnightly in Notting Hill for the homeless and needy in the area, but now we are launching a more official ministry for it. In England, these steps must be taken for government grants, etc. We need prayer for Lazarus, especially that we will have the focus and take steps in the order that God leads. There are thousands of people in need of mercy in London - where do we start?

We also started several connect groups around the city. Johanna and I host one in Notting Hill on Tuesday nights, and we have a range of generations and nations represented amongst our ladies. I love spending Tuesday nights with them. Two of the women are 70 and from Colombia, and the stories they share are both humourous and eye-opening, because they face life so differently than I have. At the same time, they love being 70 and getting the chance to experience all of the different things that London has to offer, from free transport for people 60+ to art classes for pensioners.

Tonight, our January 2017 Internship begins. We have seven girls from different nations coming to join us for music, social media, photography, dance, fashion, and theatre. We will continue with our ministries as we have interns - God has increased our staff and our ministries so that we get to reach out to different areas of society and the city at once. We have been digging our hands into the soil of London, and I am so thankful for these past weeks. We have had the time to tell the texture, the temperature, the feel of the soil, and as we see what God has done and is doing, it makes us so thankful.

My dad took this of me in Scotland

Scottish highlands

My parents in Scotland

Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle

the Lazarus Project flyer

walking with history makers

I love the International Arts Gathering. From emailing participants ahead of time and getting to know about them to meeting them at the Gathering to learning about their hearts as they share the triumphs and struggles of being a Christian artist in the sphere and place God has put them, it is always a week that changes me. It gives me a more global viewpoint - I take my eyes off of my belly button of art here in London, and I see what it is like to be an arts pastor in Vienna, like one of our friends this year, or to start a new arts base in northern Italy, which is what another of our friends is doing.

This year, we held the Gathering in Rome. It was a challenge to find a place to meet together in Rome, because the city is largely Catholic. But the place that God provided for us, an evangelical church in one of the most beautiful neighbourhoods of the city, was even better than anything for which we hoped. The pastor told us that tradition says it is a place where Paul wrote one of his letters.

Even more precious than the location, though, was the opportunity to spend four days with other Christian artists who are fighting and planting and nurturing projects around Europe. We had participants from Norway, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Israel, England, and France, and those are just the nations where they are serving. There were several more nationalities represented. Several are pioneering new ministries or centres of artistic ministry, while others are going through hard circumstances in the places where they have been serving faithfully.

The worship transformed hearts, and not only our hearts. We opened the doors of the church and took the drummers and dancers outside, and we drummed with drumsticks on fire the dancers used fire pois to draw a crowd. Crowds gathered before we even began, and Christian preached to them with Sara, our Italian teammate, translating. I am used to crowds in London, who flee when Jesus is mentioned, and while we did have that reaction from visiting Brits, the Italians were keen to know more. We left the doors of the church open, and they followed us in and joined us for worship.

I believe that Rome is hungry for God, that centuries and millennia of religiosity have left them starved. The people are warm and open to talking, and they don't shy away from religious conversations. Or at least, the ones to whom I spoke did not.

We take the Gathering to a different city every year, and for this very reason. We often get so caught up in what God is doing in and through us that we have no idea how God is moving elsewhere. But for the Gathering in Rome, and afterward when we got to participate in a combined meeting of all the evangelical churches in Rome to celebrate the 499th anniversary of the Reformation, I saw how God is moving in Italy. I know how to pray specifically for the city and nation, and when I go again, I will have a better idea of how to talk to people and of what we are fighting against. Rome is often considered the birthplace of Christianity, and I think that it is a time when Christianity is being birthed there again.

Chris giving a teaching at the Gathering.

The Tiber with the Vatican in the background

Jonny sharing about the ministry in Norway

Juliette dancing with fire pois

the Colosseum at night

a typical street in Trastevere, where we stayed

Chris playing the drums with drumsticks on fire

Melody doing fire pois

The creative writers writing during evangelism (and taking a break to watch the performance)

learning seasons

Several years ago, we began receiving words from people about multiplication. There were only a few of us in the ministry at the time, and for a while, we sat around the kitchen table and dreamt about what it would be like to have more people join us, to have more ministries and houses and locations.

Years later, we are in the season where we are learning to live out that promise that God gave us. And let me tell you, it certainly looks different from what we expected.

On 19 September, the team received our third house, which is in Kings Cross, the centre of the city. A few of the girls went to training with an organisation that works with women stuck in prostitution and sex trafficking, so we are going to start working with that in Kings Cross, as well.

Homelessness is also a big problem in the Kings Cross area, and indeed, around all of London. Last week, all of us had training with an organisation that works with the homeless to help us with our dinner club that we run at Notting Hill. The government is cutting benefits and help for the homeless, which means that more people are ending up on the streets. As winter approaches, it is dangerous for them to stay there. In London, there are a lot of hoops to jump through in order to get a spot in the winter shelters or to get other types of housing. It is something that weighs heavily on all of our hearts, and we wish that we could help them more than with just one meal a fortnight. But God is opening more doors for us to be involved with others working with homeless around the city.

In three days, we leave for Rome, where we are hosting this year's International Arts Gathering. We began working on the Gathering a year ago, but it took until last week for us to find a place to stay and to host the event. We must have talked to all of the evangelical church pastors in Rome by now! We had so many closed doors that we realised that God was going to have to do a miracle, and He has. It was certainly not in our preferred timing, but it was in the right timing.

Now we are running around to finish the final details before we go, from preparing videos and decor for the church to coordinating details with the participants. The participants are Christian artists from all over Europe, and meeting with them and hearing how they are influencing their countries for God is one of my favourite things that we do as a team. The more I travel around, the more I understand that proximity is not what is important in friendships. Having the same heart and desire, which we have with these artists, is much more important. Also, Europe is so small that we end up seeing each other throughout the year in different locations. On the one hand, I hate how small the Christian artistic community is in Europe, but on the other, I enjoy running into my friends in random nations, as well.

This is such a rushed update in the midst of everything else, but I wanted to let everybody know what we are doing so that you know what for what you can pray. Please pray for the Gathering, which is from 26-29 October in Rome. Pray for Melody and I, who are coordinating, along with the team that is going ahead of time to prepare the venue, and for our whole Discipleship Training School, who are attending this year. Please also pray for us as our base grows. God is opening more doors with us, and we are learning how to move in new ways. Walter, a friend from YWAM Argentina, spoke to us about having new wineskins for the new wine we are being given, and we want to learn to be flexible as God shows us what His will is in London.

Cancelo chatting with some of our homeless neighbours in the square outside our house.

Everybody's shoes in the front hall of the house on Friday, the day everybody comes to us.

St Pancras, the massive train station just down the street from the house

shining brighter

When I heard that we were going on outreach to Brighton directly after Bones and the June internship graduation, I had mixed feelings. The first was one of exhaustion – I just wanted to go home to a bed. But then I remembered that I didn’t have a home yet (We received our third house, a house in King’s Cross, on 19 September, and that is the home that I am currently living in), and I also remembered that I love Brighton. Brighton is a seaside city just an hour south of London. It is full of artists and cafes and people who are keen to stop for a chat. Juliette and I led an outreach there in 2014, and it was the time when the team became a cohesive unit rather than a group of 12 individuals.

The week that we spent in Brighton this year ended up being warm and sunny. We stayed in a small church in Fishersgate, a town just to the west of Brighton and Hove (the technical name for the two cities who run into each other on the seaside) and worked with a church from Hove that was having an evangelistic outreach week. The church has spent a lot of time in prayer and doing evangelism in the area, and the difference in the city now, as compared to two years ago, is noticeable. They have been so faithful to do what God told them to do!

One of the most surprising parts of our time in Hove was the openness of the people to hear about Jesus. Whilst we were lingering after a time of evangelism, two people approached some of us to ask us about Jesus. We thought that evangelism was over, but they had questions about Jesus that they wanted answered. Several people were also saved during the evangelism times that we did with the church, and others were healed or committed to returning to church.

There is revival happening in some parts of the UK. People are returning to church in large numbers. While we have not seen this yet in London, it was so encouraging to get out of London and to see what God is doing across this nation. We have been praying for the hearts of the British people for so long, praying against the apathy that our generation has towards God and religion in general, and God is answering that prayer.

London often feels very self-important. There are so many different nationalities and religions here, and it is the centre of the UK (and, in some ways, of the world) for finance, business, fashion, politics, arts, etc. But a move towards Christ in the UK doesn’t have to start in London. In fact, it seems as if it isn’t. While we see growing numbers of Muslims moving to London daily, a church in Reading has seen over a thousand people join it since late spring. While we hit the streets of Camden weekly to invite people to church and celebrate when one of them shows up, churches around the UK are seeing dozens come home.

God is so faithful to us. In Brighton, He reminded me that He is the God of my seasons. He knows me. He knows what revives my soul. He knows that I pray for the hearts of English people to be transformed, to be radically changed by an encounter with Him. And He knew that, as much as I wanted to sleep in a bed, what would really restore me would be to watch people come to know Him. At one point during evangelism, I watched as the pastor of the Hove church led two women to Christ. I turned to the side and saw Carrie praying for a man, then turned further and saw Anna, one of our DTS students, praying for another man. Behind me, several of the other staff and students were playing worship and improvising dance. The presence of God on that shopping street in Hove was so great that all I had to do was turn in a circle to see Him moving. 

Anna talking to a woman in evangelism.

The pastor, Mario, praying with a guy who met Jesus.

The traditional beach huts of Hove

Carrie and Juliette leading us home from a DTS teaching we had by the sea.

Me with one of the girls I mentor, Brennan.