Okra Abbey, Miramon Center, and More

Last Sunday (July 29, 2018), I was asked to talk about 5 minutes on some of the mission work I do with 
an emphasis on why I do it and what it means to me. It was part of a worship service where the sermon 
was made up of several of us giving similar 5 minute talks. Here's mine:

I’ve been asked to talk about Miramon Center and Okra Abbey. I promise I’ll get there…

For a long time I thought that  the best ways to spread the Good News was to argue with people, or to 
advertise to them. And that the way to measure my discipleship was by the number of people and 
pledge dollars I brought into church on Sunday.

But that’s wrong.

The way to spread the Good News to people is to show them hard, solid, difficult love.

For me, part of doing love is telling people the truth that I wish I heard when I was younger, and sometimes
the truth I wish I heard more often now.

So I sit down with the preschoolers here once a month or so and listen to them, letting them know that 
what they say and who they are is important, that their words are worth hearing. I tell them stories meant 
to help them to understand that, no matter how things might seem, they are glorious, loved by God. And I 
tell the teachers “thank you.”

So I help out with the Pearl River Feeding Ministry, and, when I get to lead a prayer with these people who
live with a desperation and need that I fear with deep trembling, I always start by thanking God for them, 
and praising God for bringing them to us so that we might help them.

So I sit down to dinner on a couple of Thursdays a month and try to tell the more-or-less homeless men at 
the Miramon Center that they are not stupid or failures, but that they are loved by God to a depth that neither 
of us can ever fathom. That they have value.

These days, and maybe always, people spend their lives being judged. When I listen to the struggling 
people at the Miramon Center, the Pearl River Feeding Ministry, or Family Promise, I hear one clear 
request: “Please don’t judge me. I’m trying the best I can.”

They don’t usually say it like that. They’re afraid what I’d think.

So, I try to give them encouragement, let them know how valuable they are, not just as workers or parents 
or students, but because they are INHERENTLY valuable. Valuable is how God made us all, and valuable 
is how God keeps us all.

And that brings me to one of the most amazing things I’ve ever been privileged to be a part of, and I’m not 
really a part of it: Okra Abbey. (That’s it behind me.) I have found myself serving on Presbytery committees 
which seek to spread God’s mercy and love into corners no one else thinks to look.

Through that work, I got to meet Vinnie and Layne and Crawford. (To be honest, I’d already met Layne 
and Crawford.) They are amazing people who are working on something incredible God is growing less 
than an hour from our door.

What they are making is important to me in large part because Layne and Vinnie and Crawford are 
important to me, and Okra Abbey is important to them.

You might not be able to tell from the pictures, but Okra Abbey sits in a part of New Orleans few of us 
have ever been to, filled with people that most everyone ignores. It is one of three New Worshiping 
Community in our presbytery. It’s a church, but not the kind of church you’re used to seeing.

Okra Abbey sits on land they do not own, a once depressing-looking playground of James Weldon Johnson 
Elementary School. It is a garden. It is a place to meet. It is a place to worship weekly. It is a place for the 
hungry to find food, for the worthless to find value, for the desperate to find beauty. They are God’s voice to 
God’s children in desperate need, and they do it without much fanfare.

People are hungry, in many ways, and they are being fed. That’s all that’s happening.

And that’s a lot.

Unlike the Miramon Center, Family Promise, the Pearl River Feeding Ministry, and the Northminster
Preschool, circumstances keep me from putting my hands to work for them: helping them pull weeds, 
hand out food, hand out food, or (God help us all) paint. Yet, they are dear to my heart. Layne and 
Crawford and Vinnie and the others are responding to God’s love by changing lives, by giving love and 
time and good news to people who know so much loss and emptiness and judgment.

All I can do is give them whatever financial support I can manage, tell them how much I love and support 
them and their work, and try to let you and other people know how God is doing amazing work so close.

I’m planning to take next Wednesday off from work so that I can worship with them at lunch time. I invite 
you to join me.

I hope that Okra Abbey might become important to you if only because it is so important to me.