Chapter 3

Sidewalk Celebration

My first hour on the streets was the scariest sixty minutes of my life. I was terrified. The atmosphere is more frightening than anything you’d witness in a scary movie.

Once I arrived at the heart of skid row, I stopped in an effort to absorb it all. The sound of gunshots echoes through the streets. Yelling and screaming are common—drug addicts trying to kick the habit, alcoholics brawling in the street, prostitutes demanding their money, pimps beating their prostitutes to take away that money—it really is a war zone. I had arrived possessing an image of skid row as a place where anorexic, destitute people wandered aimlessly, looking for food and shelter, too frail or self-absorbed or scared to bother others. Wrong! The streets may be the best example of Darwinism, where the strong prey on the weak, and almost everyone is weak at some stage during their skid row sentence. I discovered very quickly that this was not merely an intriguing case study for sociologists to analyze and discuss. On this side of town, simply living to see the next day is a victory.

As my journey into the heart of hell began, some of Lawrence’s warnings took on new meaning.

“Just be cool,” he had warned, worried about my harebrained idea. “When you get there, just keep walking. They gonna surround you, look you over, smell you. They’ll know you not from there. You can’t hide it from them. They got a sixth sense about that. All they’s worried about is if you some kinda threat to them—a cop or narc or bounty hunter. So you just keep walking, don’t get into it with them. Just stay focused. Do your thing. When you ready to lay down and sleep, you find a good place and just sleep. Let them walk around you and stare at you, just keep livin’ your life and don’t bother nobody. And make sure you carry your Bible so they can see it.”

“What?” I almost shouted, incredulous. “How am I supposed to fit in if I’m packing a Bible? I don’t want them knowing I’m a pastor just coming in for a night or two. I want to fit in, be invisible. I need to feel what it’s like to be homeless.”

Lawrence paused before he respectfully replied. “Pastor Matthew, this ain’t no game. It’s dangerous on the street. You carry that Bible. The streets is mean, but they still got a reverence for the Word of God. A lot of them people is hurtin’ out there, and deep down they know that God is their only hope. They don’t go to church or Sunday school, but many of them got faith. In their mind, anybody totin’ a Bible probably ain’t lookin’ for a fight, is probably not gonna be in their face. You don’t have to preach, but the Word will be your protection. You carry that Bible.”

And so it was that for the first hour, I kept my head down and just followed the trail of those in front of me, walking, walking, I didn’t know where to, just staying in motion. I clutched my cardboard “mattress” in one hand and put my Bible under my arm. And just as Lawrence had promised, the street people were checking me out. It reminded me of a pack of dogs sniffing me, tracking my scent.

What I hadn’t anticipated was the hum. As we all shuffled about, they looked me over and commented. “You don’t belong here,” one would say loudly, not quite a shout, but louder than normal—and then he’d move on, mumbling something unintelligible. The people who followed would be making some kind of noise under their breath, a hum, not melodic, but kind of chant-like, a bit chilling if you’re not used to it. And then a minute or two later another guy would loudly inform me that I wasn’t from there, I’d better get out, go back where I belong, and then he’d also continue his shuffling toward an undefined location, grumbling under his breath, adding to the street hum. I have to admit, I was praying for all I was worth during those first minutes.

Things got better when, almost by mistake, I put my Bible in my free hand. That immediately changed the game. It was remarkable. It was like a place of darkness in which a light was suddenly turned on. Even the pitch of the hum seemed to rise a note or two—maybe I imagined that, but it seemed to give the street a different tenor. Now that the Bible was visible, a few people stopped and asked questions about the Bible, my faith, or if I believed in God. It was a striking shift.

After the terror of that first hour wore off and I sensed that I could make it through the night, a strange peace settled over me. God was in this! I remained alert, still wary of what was happening around me, but my primary emotion shifted from fear to compassion. The Scripture came to mind that says perfect love casts out all fear.2 As my heart was broken a bit more with each passing moment, realizing that what I was observing was the normal and full life experience for these hundreds of people strewn up and down these filthy, unforgiving streets, my love for them grew stronger.

They are my cause. They are the reason I get out of bed in the morning, the hope I have for making a difference in the world. I did not live there, but I belonged there. I was called to serve them.

Fear cannot own you when a great cause rules your heart. The fear I’d felt just minutes ago had transitioned into a conviction that this was, indeed, where God wanted me—where God needed me, for my sake—to be tonight. It sure wasn’t paradise. The stink of urine and body odor made me want to puke, the lighting was just dim enough to be irritating, cigarette smoke billowed around me, constant yelling and incoherent speech filled my ears, the chaos of bodies moving everywhere toward nowhere was confusing.

Yet in the midst of this mind-numbing, logic-defying reality, I felt as if I was being broken and reborn all over again. That must be what I was here for—to stoke the embers of my passion for these people whom God loves so much that He gave His only Son to die on their behalf, for their future.3 The title of Al Gore’s book An Inconvenient Truth flashed through my mind; this was surely an inconvenient life on display throughout the streets of Los Angeles. But God is good, indeed. In the midst of the squalor and danger, He was giving me the gift of inconvenience so that I could become an ever more capable conduit of His love for this tribe of broken people.

Eventually I caught wind that if you arrived at the mission too late, there’d be no places left to sleep inside, so I joined a pack of people heading to one of the larger missions on the row. We got there, only to find out that the prime spaces were already filled up; the indoor beds were all taken for the night. They had an overflow area, a gymnasium, filled with chairs you could sleep in, sitting upright, but those, too, were taken. The only space left was in a large patio near the front of the mission property. It was outdoors, but it was a mild September night and at least the area was well-lit and had security guards posted. I headed there.

As I circled the inside of the patio area, sizing up my options, one of the security guys saw me and did a double take. He recognized me from church, but I gave him a look, and he caught on really quick. He was cool about it: he didn’t give me away; he just gave me a faint grin and a little wink and kept up his rounds. I think he understood what I was doing, maybe even respected it. Anyway, he kept his eye on me while I was there. Another little blessing from God.

The concrete floor of the patio was jammed with bodies. There was a narrow pathway you could tread to snake your way through the courtyard, but otherwise it was body against body, all sorts of men and women trying to get some sleep in this sanctuary. It was late, and the emotional roller coaster of the evening was taking its toll on me; the energy I’d felt an hour ago had abandoned me, and now my feet were starting to ache and my energy was waning. I scanned the entire patio area, hoping to spy an undiscovered nook where I could sack out. All I saw was a little garden area a ways off, encircled by a cement bench. Nobody was on the far portion of the bench, so I lugged my cardboard over, set it down on the cement, and made myself as comfortable as possible. It felt good to get off my feet.

Within seconds, the guy to my right slid up against me and began talking nonstop. Nonstop and nonsense. I tried to follow his speech for a few minutes but found it too taxing. He was rambling about racism. His words reminded me how segregated skid row was—an alley might harbor a dozen people seeking sleep, but they’d all be of the same race or ethnicity. Blacks stuck with blacks, Hispanics with Hispanics, whites with whites. There weren’t many Asians—at least I didn’t encounter them. But the jumbled thoughts of my neighbor led me nowhere, and I tuned him out.

Unfortunately, his body was really hot, which made me uncomfortable, and his breath smelled of booze. I shifted a bit to create some space between us, only to bump up against the elderly fellow on my left. I took him to be a war veteran. His craggy face was covered with a gray beard, his thinning hair greasy under a ball cap. He was dozing off, but every few seconds he’d start shaking wildly, and groaning softly, as if he was having bad dreams about past war exploits.

I sat between these two, thinking again that these were people we could help. This whole room was filled with people who needed to be loved. And as I studied the faces and bodies strewn throughout the room, it felt like the Kingdom of God: people of all races, ages, and genders accounted for—a room full of broken people needing lots of practical love and genuine encouragement. Again I prayed that God would expand the boundaries of my love for His people and give me the strength to do what needed to be done. He brought to mind the thousands of people who have had their lives changed by the Dream Center. This could be our next wave of graduates. Their lives, too, would be changed someday by the love of God and His people. I sat back and smiled, oblivious to the ranting of the man on my right and the convulsions of the guy on my left. We’d be back to help them. I knew it.

After a couple of hours I returned to the streets, too curious to stay inside the safe confines of the mission. This was my chance to soak up all the sounds, sights, smells, and experiences that God had in store for me. Walking from street to street, I studied the nightlife on the row. Bonfires burned brightly on streets and in alleys as people huddled for warmth or to heat up morsels of food they’d saved up or had scavenged from Dumpsters.

As time dragged on—and the nights are agonizingly long on skid row—the noise level increased, and the intensity of the yelps and shouts rose too. More than once I jumped when a particularly startling shriek or wail burst forth. It was eerie. I don’t think I have ever been so eager to see the sunrise.

Sometime between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. I was standing under one of the streetlights when a voice emerged from the shadows of the driveway behind me. I felt no fear—more a curiosity to see whom God was placing in my path now. It was a man’s voice. I could vaguely make out his silhouette against the brick wall of the building he was lying against. The only part of him that was in the light was his feet, caught under the edge of the light thrown by the streetlamp. He had sandals on his feet, and even in the imperfect light I could see how crusted and swollen his feet were. He did not sound drunk, just worn out. He had my attention, so he made his request.

“Hey, dude—man with the Bible. Come over here, man. Would you read a Scripture to me?”

I moved closer to him, and his other features came into view. I gazed up the rest of the driveway, which dead-ended about twenty feet farther up. The entire driveway was crammed with people sleeping this way and that, many on pieces of cardboard like mine, some huddled on the bare pavement.

I opened my Bible and smiled at the man. “What do you want to hear?” I asked, feeling a bit dizzy with the privilege of sharing this man’s territory and the Word of God with him. He asked for something uplifting. I read a couple of psalms to him and added some words of encouragement. He thanked me.

After the second passage, someone farther up the driveway called to me from the dark. “Can I still be saved?” So direct! Maybe when your life could end at any moment, you get right to the point, no beating around the bush, no qualifiers, just wanting the bottom line. I spoke softly but confidently about the love of God, the forgiveness that He offers to all of us, that Jesus came so that nobody would have to die without the assurance of His unconditional love, how Jesus was the only hope that anyone in Los Angeles had, whether they lived in Beverly Hills or on skid row. Someone else from the opposite side of the alley guffawed and coughed out a response I couldn’t make out. Undaunted, I reassured them that their lives were not hopeless, that God’s love could get them through even the longest, darkest nights.

One man started pouring out his life story to me—to all of us, really—describing in agonized detail how much he missed his children but couldn’t go home to see them because his former drug dealer would kill him if he ever returned home. He had failed to pay the dealer so he was forced to go into hiding. After a while he wound up on skid row. His family didn’t even know if he was still alive, but he knew that if he showed his face in his old neighborhood, he’d be a dead man. We talked back and forth about his options, his faith, his hope for the future. Others began chiming in, laying out the lurid details of their experiences, trying to find a connection with God, or truth, or hope, something that would make sense of it all. Their vulnerability—and their pain—touched me at a deep level.

Once the conversation died down, I laid my cardboard on the ground at the end of the driveway, at the edge of the light, and sought a nap. I needed a few minutes of rest. Homelessness is exhausting. Time seems to move more slowly than it does in the rest of the world. It was only a matter of seconds before I was asleep.

Sometime around 5:00 a.m. I was awakened by a tickling sensation. I scrunched up against the wall behind me and jerked my way into a sitting position, trying to figure out what was happening. Then it struck me—a cockroach was crawling up my left pant leg. I jumped up and shook myself, trying to free the little bugger from inside my clothing. It finally tumbled onto my sneaker, bounced onto the cement, then scurried away. That was gross!

Now awake—I mean full-on alert, after that little exercise—I figured I might as well move on. It was still pitch black, the urine smell was still overpowering—do you ever get used to it?—strange cries and unintelligible yelling were still puncturing the night air, bonfires still flickered here and there. And people were still moving up and down the streets, perhaps traveling a bit more slowly than earlier in the night, as fatigue caught up with those still on their feet. I retrieved my precious piece of cardboard, all soiled with grease and oil absorbed from the various pieces of ground I’d called home thus far that night, and resumed my own walk to oblivion.

Within a minute or so, a woman lurched toward me and quietly asked, “Hey, man, are you straight?” From conversations with guys in the rehab program at the Dream Center I knew that was a sexual come-on. Five in the morning on skid row, and the pastor gets propositioned for sex! I sighed, feeling so distraught for her; imagine what it takes to walk up to random men and ask if they’d like to buy her for a brief sexual interlude—and then having to make good on her end of the deal. My heart broke yet again.

As gently as I could, I told her no, I wasn’t interested, I was a pastor, and showed her my Bible. All at once her demeanor changed—from the tough, in-control exterior to a look of sheer embarrassment. She backed up slowly, apologizing and asking me to forgive her. I advanced cautiously and tried to quell her fears, assuring her I was not offended, that I understood her predicament and wanted to help her. She looked at me and a tear came down her face and she sobbed through her story, explaining that she was just selling herself to get money for the drugs she needed, that her life was a mess, and she was going through a really hard time. I told her that if she was serious about getting her life together, I could help. I could call our team at the church and have someone there at 7:00 a.m. to pick her up and bring her back to the Dream Center, where she could get help to kick her habit and get her life back on track. I waited for her permission to make the call.

She looked at her watch, then scrunched up her face, looking at me like I was crazy. It took me a moment to figure out that she thought I was scamming her. No church was open at 5:00 a.m., ready to have someone on-site at 7:00 a.m. just to help her. I smiled, realizing how unusual our ministry is, but explained that we’re a 24-7 church because people’s needs don’t respect the clock. We talked for a few minutes, and she wept through her admission of how badly she wanted to kick her habit. Without much prodding, she agreed to enter our drug rehab program, so I called our team and arranged for a bus to be there for her at 7:00. We exchanged cell numbers, and I passed her number on to the ministry team.

I’d been praying all night that the Lord would give me somebody to help, and then He delivered Annette to me. We parted ways, but I called her a couple of times before 7:00 a.m. to encourage her to be there, to be sure she’d show up at the pick-up spot. She kept promising to be there. A lot of times people chicken out—they want the help and know how badly they need it, but they just can’t take that first step, so I kept calling her so she wouldn’t lose her nerve.

Sure enough, at 7:00 a.m., she came striding down the street, a determined look on her face. I hugged her, thanked her for her courage and integrity, and introduced her to our team members on the bus. She boarded it as I promised to check in on her later in the week.

Meanwhile, the streets continued to pulsate with action and danger.

Finally, daylight made its appearance, and the swarm of activity that filled the streets on the row vanished. The fires flickered out. The yelling ceased, or maybe it was just less noticeable once the noise of the cars and city buses took over. Many of the people who’d shared alley space with me seemed to have a daily routine they fell into—going from mission to mission, getting their daily needs met by the organizations that dispense compassion to the down-and-out who are captives of the inner city. I talked to a few street people, gathering intelligence about options, and put together a schedule to follow for the day.

After getting breakfast at one of the missions and then engaging several homeless folks in conversations about their lives, I prepared to try my luck at panhandling. This was the part of the exercise I dreaded the most—begging for money—but I was committed to giving it a shot, to discover what this task was like.

During my endless night I’d thought about how to do this. I figured there were two keys to success. One was staking out a good location. I’d heard real estate brokers say that it’s all about where you are—location, location, location. To receive money, I’d have to go where the money was—and that certainly meant leaving skid row for a while. Stationing myself in the central business district seemed to make the most sense. It was an area that would allow me to hit up the impeccably dressed, purposeful executives who frequented those blocks. So after wolfing down another free meal, a pretty reasonable lunch from one of our church’s teams—I knew the schedule and where they’d be, so I took advantage of the opportunity to see our people in action and test the quality of our food—I walked out of the poverty zone and into the heart of corporate America, not sure what to expect.

The second key to success, in my mind, was my story. What would I tell people? I didn’t want to lie, but I wasn’t exactly a hard-luck case, either. So I crafted a carefully worded tale about how times were tough and I just needed a little bit to help get me going. I didn’t have any money, I wanted something to eat, and I’d be grateful for any change you could spare. All of that was true. Armed with that story, I felt I could approach people with conviction.

Now, I don’t want to brag, but I was doing really well at this. I made $7 in my first half hour. I mean, that’s just about better than what I make per hour at the church! Well, not really, but it feels that way sometimes.

Anyway, this was truly an eye-opening—and gut-wrenching—experience. The mere memory of it makes me queasy. Listen, I’ve been criticized by the best of them—called out for my preaching, my leadership, my theology, my age, my education, you name it—and I’ve learned the hard way that getting blasted by one’s peers is just part of the game, a reflection of professional jealousy or doctrinal disagreement or whatever. But none of the criticism I’ve received as a pastor wounded me as deeply as what I experienced on the streets that afternoon while asking for money.

The most amazing part of my panhandling effort was the total rejection and scorn I experienced from so many people. Having been on the receiving end of countless pitches for funds by street people, I knew that a beggar’s request was an uncomfortable intrusion into people’s lives. But the hatred and disgust with which many people responded was both unexpected and debilitating. There were moments during this brief phase of my skid row adventure when I felt it was time to quit and go home to my nice house and loving family. This cut too deeply.

“You want my money? Why don’t you get a job and earn it? That’s how I got it.”

“Hey, get away from me. And leave me alone.”

Every human being has the right to basic dignity, but the disdain heaped on me by people from whom I was simply seeking help or understanding chipped away at it. It was hard enough to muster the courage to approach total strangers and throw myself on their mercy, realizing that if I did not have a better situation to return to, this would be part of my daily fate, a crucial component of my survival. To receive looks that left no doubt I was a vile, even evil person pierced my already-broken heart and battered my self-image.

“Bug off, you bum. And get out of this area—people who work for a living have things to do here. Go rot on your side of town.”

“Don’t touch me, dirtbag. Make better choices if you want a different life.”

In all fairness, there were some kind and gracious people who showed some degree of care toward me and either forked over some change or had an uplifting word for me. You cannot imagine the hope such behavior ignited within me—the hope that maybe I wasn’t the pond scum some had suggested, that perhaps I could make it through the tough times—and even deserved to. Believe me, after even a half hour of asking strangers for help, you question your self-worth and reason for living.

My short-lived panhandling experience may well have been so emotionally disturbing because of my own ambivalence about panhandlers—wanting to help them but not wanting to give superficial assistance that merely perpetuates their resistance to real help. From firsthand experience I know that every single person living on those streets can be restored to health and their own dream can be pursued, realistically and purposefully. That’s what the Dream Center is all about—and we have several thousand case studies to prove it can be done, whether the person is a multimillionaire with an empty heart or a frail, alcoholic prostitute with an empty stomach. But that afternoon I was being schooled in why it is so hard for some people to take that first step toward acknowledging and embracing their dream and risking what little self-respect they have left in order to pursue it. I could not remember ever feeling more depressed—or stripped of dignity.

If things seemed bad at the time, they were about to get worse. As I moved from one location to another in an effort to hit up as many different kinds of people as possible, a uniformed security guard rushed out of one of the marble-faced buildings I was in front of. He angrily and loudly told me to get away from their building. I meekly explained that I was just trying to get some money for food. He launched into a tirade about how my intrusion on their property was an act of terrorism—terrorism, for goodness’ sake!—and that the public has laws protecting them from people like me, and so forth. It was quite a performance. His spiel attracted more than a few gawkers, making me feel even worse. Then he threatened to have me arrested.

No matter how much I wanted to learn about living on the streets and to feel the reality of that lifestyle, going to jail wasn’t on my to-do list for the day. I could envision the headline in tomorrow’s Los Angeles Times: “Disheveled Megachurch Pastor Arrested for Harassing Businesspeople While Soliciting Funds.” I didn’t even want to imagine the stories that would run in Christian periodicals. I moved on without any further struggle.

While retreating from that area with the hostile glares of passersby and the combative words of the security guard deposited into my memory bank, I noticed the video cameras attached to the building that were doubtless following the scene. In a moment of illumination I realized that if you are exposed to enough of this kind of demeaning treatment, day after day, it probably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: you begin to believe that all these important, successful people must be right; you are a worthless piece of human trash, void of hope, living for nothing.

A couple of blocks from that scene, I stopped and leaned against a brick column in front of one of the mega-story buildings. Dozens of people rushed by me as if I were invisible—or maybe they just wanted me to be. I felt lower than ever—and knew that God was responding to my request to break my heart anew for the poor and defenseless, to give me a bigger capacity to love and heal them through His power and authority. At that moment, though, all I felt was despair and crushing defeat. As that building held me up, I closed my eyes and thanked God for this experience and asked for the strength and zeal to address people’s needs more adeptly.

If I’d ever had any doubt about the magnitude of the need, my brief stint panhandling erased it. And if there was ever any thought that the impact of the Dream Center was attributable to me, this episode destroyed that delusion. The depth of these issues could only be overcome by God-sized love delivered by Him alone. My colleagues and I were simply privileged to be instruments He used in the process.

The night before, prior to leaving the van and touching down on the streets, I had decided I would stay until I felt spiritually full, whether that took a few hours, a day, or maybe until just before having to return to my church to preach on Sunday morning.

I reached that sense of completion right around sundown. I’d only been there twenty-two hours, but it seemed to have lasted for an eternity. Now I was anxious to get back to the Dream Center and share all that I had learned. It was time to inject a new level of enthusiasm and energy into our efforts to restore the dreams and hope of the broken, discarded lives in Los Angeles. God had accomplished what He wanted and what I’d prayed for: a renewed sense of vision that hopefully would propel us into another fifteen years of vigorous and compassionate service to the forgotten souls of society, providing a reflection of His love with warmth, grace, and wisdom.

I called the team back at the office and asked them to send the van to come get me. While waiting for my ride, I somberly reviewed the ironies of the past day. Initially I’d felt afraid of the very people I was called to love. I was being broken alongside the broken people I wanted to heal. I had sought insight and understanding from those I hoped to educate and train for a better life experience. I had been driven to the streets by the excitement of the possibilities before completely comprehending the personal risk associated with the experience.

It dawned on me that over the course of time, as we pursue the cause that God has placed within us, we unknowingly reshape that dream to satisfy our personal comfort level. The more time and energy we devote to the cause within us, the more likely we are to lose touch with the heartbeat of the original cause, redefining it according to our current desires, circumstances, needs, plans, and goals.

One of the greatest benefits from my day on the streets was that it restored the original contours of God’s dream for me—contours that had been slowly, imperceptibly replaced by my version of the dream. Hanging out on skid row had been dangerous and scary, yes, but embracing that risk was necessary to be personally broken and freed to do what God had called me to do.

One night earlier I had gone to skid row hoping that God would give me new insights into how to change people. Instead, God changed me—and impressed upon me again the reality that I cannot change people, only He can, but if my heart is right He may be willing to use me in the process.

I went to skid row with a secret thought that what I was doing was somehow heroic. I left there knowing that I was not a hero but a servant.

The night before, I had hit the streets feeling I was entering a danger zone. Returning to the Dream Center, I realized the real danger was living a routine life not fully aligned with God’s cause for me.

Do you know the cause God has instilled in your heart, the opportunity that represents the very reason for your life? He has such a cause—call it a vision, a dream, a purpose, whatever term you like—for every one of us. And I want to tell you some stories about the people I’ve gotten to know who have discovered, as I have, that until you live for that cause, your life has not and cannot reach its potential. Let’s figure out how to bring that God-given cause to the forefront of your life so you can experience the joy and fulfillment of changing the world by living the life you were meant to live.