Back on December 11th Al, Charon and Ron had the opportunity to visit Victoria Full Gospel Fellowship and share about CARTS. It was a great to share a bit about our journeys...and to give folks a glimpse of what a Sunday afternoon looks like on Victoria's inner city streets, with our precious friends...in the midst of this beautiful community we call " CARTS."

You can listen to our time with VFGF...HERE. Just scroll down to recent sermons, December 11th, CARTS Outreach Ministry. If you think your faith community might be interested in hearings about CARTS, and Victoria's inner city please contact us...we'd love to come and visit.

"If we want to develop meaningful connection with people we must be willing to go where they are.  This is something deeper than the practicality of good marketing.  While in our building during our programs we have authority and power to set the terms of engagement- in other words, the ‘rules’. It would not be honest to pretend otherwise.  Whether we acknowledge it or not we have power in that situation and that power shapes our relationship with the people who come. It is vital that we are willing to reciprocate- to make regular contact with our street community on their ‘turf’ or home, in the places where they have the power, authority and credibility.  We become the ‘guests’ in their care and acknowledge their elevated status in that context. Like the Jesus we seek to follow, we must be willing to recognize that whatever power we have been given is not ours to cling to. We must seek to find ways to give that power away."

"One way we seek to consciously practice this is to make regular time to be on the street, in the neighbourhood, connecting with our friends and deepening our relationships with them."

t's time for our CARTS Annual General Meeting. Because our year runs from August to July, our AGM happens in the Fall.

Our AGM will happen on Friday, November 25 at 7 PM at the St. Barnabas Church Hall. St Barnabas Anglican Church is located on the corner of Belmont Ave. and Begbie St., by Stadacona Park. It is easily accessible by bus: Take a 27 or 28 bus to the top of Begbie St., or a 2, 11 or 14 to Oak Bay Junction and walk a block north on Belmont Ave.

Our AGM will contain all of the fun stuff you look forward to at an AGM...and more. I'm sure if you've been a part of CARTS for awhile you know, and if you're new...you sense it, where the Psalmist says " where deep calls to deep. And that is " community." And the AGM is part of that , it's a time to celebrate the past year...and a time to envision the coming year. It's time for conversation, a time to bring your questions. it's a time to bring ideas...it's time to get to know one another.

SO PLEASE COME EACH AND EVERY ONE IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF CARTS...like a beautiful collage each person brings their beauty to what CARTS is. SEE YOU THERE.

There are lots of ministries like CARTS in lots of different cities around the world.  Some are huge, many are just a community of passionate people--passionate about being the love of God in a hurting world.

Love Wins is one of those kind of ministries.  They describe themselves in this way: 
Our mission is to demonstrate and promote God’s love for the marginalized through personal relationships, education and support. Love Wins Ministries shares unconditional love and friendship with the homeless and poor population of Raleigh, North Carolina. We focus on relationships, not outcomes – just like you do with your friendships.

I just read a post on their blog, and then the earlier post referred to part way through.  In so many ways it reflects the same kind of personal face-to-face interaction we strive for with CARTS. 

It also reflects the joy we have as we are able to help someone.  Not just a nameless statistic, but a someone.  Someone who is just as special as anyone else. 

Hugh Hollowell founded Love Wins Ministries.  Here is a video of Hugh talking about how he got involved in his 'ministry of presence'.

Start coming out with us on Sunday afternoons.  Get hooked!  Start connecting with people on your own.  Experience the joy of being the love of God.

" Being sent may be enough to guarantee my own presence, but it doesn't necessarily follow that I will be the presence of Jesus, too. For this, I need to learn how to truly be among the people to whom I am sent, as Jesus was among us. The character of my presence needs to be like his. I am sometimes struck by thoughts of the hundreds of lepers Jesus did not heal, the thousands of people who died of ridiculous little infections during his life time, the blind or lame beggars who missed his passing by a few hundred yards or a few minutes. He healed so few! And I, who can heal no one, am reminded being his presence does not nean fixing everything."

Being among people means being in their midst, not outside. It means being with them, not being over them. It means not looking away from their agony, or humiliation, but beholding it, and having the courage to be wounded by their pain.

( From " God in the Alley ...being and seeing Jesus in a broken world " written by Greg Paul )

With each passing day the mercury on the thermometer slowing drops, the rain becomes a bit more relentless and the furious winter winds cause it to blow sideways. Housing the homeless this time of year always becomes a challenge, trying to formulate a plan for the coldest nights so no one will be left on the back alleys, or in open doorways. But despite best efforts there are some who seem to defy all logic and decide to stay on the street. Now, I don't want to compare Saskatoon winter with Victoria's. But when you combine wet, wind and cold...it has the effect of velcro. Its a cold that anyone on the street will tell you, " it sticks to you and won't let go."

But some people in the inner city will go out of there way to avoid shelters. You would think with all the people in the shelter their might be a sense of community. Most folks will tell you, no. A lot of times it's an amplification of what's on the street. It's a more crowded sense of disconnect, isolation, brokenness, fear...in which the barometric pressure of emotion can feel like a brewing storm.

Jordon Cooper is " Residential Coordinator " at the Salvation Army Shelter in Saskatoon. Jordon has been in that position for a number of years and has his fingers on the pulse of poverty, homelessness and addiction in the inner city. Through his hands on experience he has gleaned a lot of wisdom. And in a recent StarPhoenix article" Homeless need not just Shelter " Jordon explains the difference between shelter and home. These following quotes from the article reveal how shelters really don't solve the homeless problem...it's more a band aide solution.

" For years when I talked and read about homelessness, I thought it was about shelter. It’s not.Homelessness is a lack of home, a place to go to be safe, find someone who loves you and you love back, and a place where you have connections to others. A shelter that doesn’t have any of that is just a place to crash and stay warm."

" The solution isn’t emergency shelters, but a place where they can find what they are looking for – whether that’s safety, friends or just a quiet place to call home.

Until we manage to build the affordable and social housing that can make this happen, we will have people freezing outside because to them, it’s not any worse than all their other options."

jordon@jordoncooper.com

It's time for our CARTS Annual General Meeting. Because our year runs from August to July, our AGM happens in the Fall.



Our AGM will happen on Friday, November 25 at 7 PM at the St. Barnabas Church Hall. St Barnabas Anglican Church is located on the corner of Belmont Ave. and Begbie St., by Stadacona Park. It is easily accessible by bus: Take a 27 or 28 bus to the top of Begbie St., or a 2, 11 or 14 to Oak Bay Junction and walk a block north on Belmont Ave.

                                                                        ( Here's directions )

Our AGM will contain all of the fun stuff you look forward to at an AGM...and more. I'm sure if you've been a part of CARTS for awhile you know, and if you're new...you sense it, where the Psalmist says " where deep calls to deep. And that is " community." And the AGM is part of that , it's a time to celebrate the past year...and a time to envision the coming year. It's time for conversation, a time to bring your questions. it's a time to bring ideas...it's time to get to know one another.

SO PLEASE COME EACH AND EVERY ONE IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF CARTS...like a beautiful collage each person brings their beauty to what CARTS is. SEE YOU THERE.

  I think I may have shared this a while back. I't worth sharing again because it does reflect a lot of what CARTS is. Anyone who has been involved in CARTS for awhile have heard our inner city friends call this " Their Church." Some people may not get it. but, Sunday on the streets is a profound worship experience. It may not be the worship of " Christ " before an altar, but it is the worship of " Christ " in the faces, in the touch of the poor, the hungry and the broken. There is also a sense of community that is deeply profound, and deeply tangible. There is offering, and servant hood. It is where sacred and secular merge into something profoundly divine. CARTS, in the deepest sense is church...something, radical, scandalous...something we incarnate, pull around the streets with a very tangible and visible Jesus in our midst.

                                                                              (montage: J Fowler)

Teresa of Avila said, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion looks out on the world.”

While those words sound beautiful, many of us struggle with how to care for broken people. Compassion comes easily for people who are like us, but what about people on the margins of society. How can we be the hands and feet of Christ to people who are struggling in the downward spiral of poverty and isolation?                                                           
                                                                         
                                             Can you see the face of Jesus in the faces of those in need? 
                                                                    
Yet Jesus was very clear in his teaching that living faith out, somehow we don’t have the option not to care for the down and out.

The Good Samaritan crossed the road and was moved by compassion for the mugged man. He got involved by bandaging his wounds and then took him to the nearest rehab center and paid for his rehabilitation.

What we do for the least of these, Jesus said, is what we do for him. The list included providing food and clothing, looking after people in prison, caring for the sick and taking in strangers.

Compassionate care for the poor is central to the teaching of Scripture. Ultimately the power to overcome poverty lies in learning to live the Jesus way, to follow him in how he interacted with the poor and the marginalized, and to be willing—like Jesus, to lay down our self-centered, materialistic lives to take up the cross of loving generosity, gentle kindness, and tenacious advocacy for the rights of the poor and the oppressed.

The needs of the poor are often complicated. Generations of social castaways are plagued with inadequate education, dilapidated housing and few employable skills.

                                            What can we do find and serve the least of these?

Navigating the inner city streets of victoria since 2003 CARTS has seen many men and women who have become homeless in the city , and as we have visited the marginalized community of the inner city, We have discovered good news of the gospel unfold before us...in profound mystery Jesus comes alive...in our midst. We actually can, in very practical ways, find sustainable, manageable ways to make a difference in the lives of the poor.

Caring for the poor is something we do together. As individuals, as a community, we each have a role to play. The spirit stirs the waters of compassion within us to move in faith, to move love into action feeding and clothing the homeless, providing shelter, caring for the sick and ministering to those suffering. Each of us can plant our humble seed of faith, into nurturing friendships. More than anything poverty needs friendships.