The beautiful Pascha card to the left was made by Leila Chocheli, mother of Niko Chocheli. When Niko gave me a laminated copy of it, he told me that his mother taught him an important lesson as a child. She would often say, “What you keep is lost. Only what you give away is yours.” He said he did not understand this until well into adulthood, but now it makes perfect sense.
What does a bird graphic with Anglo-Saxon runes have to do with ministry among the homeless?
Nothing and everything.
More to come. Keep watching this space.
The new newsletter is available for downloading and printing for inserting in church bulletins, here: http://www.thekingsjubilee.org/spring13.pdf
It includes hard copy of these blog entries:
You can print copies to share with your off-line friends.
About a year ago, we started to investigate a relationship with Mount Moriah Cemetery. About the same time, the nonsense with Mayor Nutter’s decrees banning serving the homeless outdoors distracted us. as we had to sue to continue ministry. Some of us managed to make it to one meeting, and some helped with one restoration event. This is a good work. It is something that can dovetail with our work among the homeless in a number of ways. We don’t need to or want to own or run it. We just want to be able to work the community to help give some of the men new job skills and reintegration into the community. Give me a call to see if we can get a team together. 267-497-0268 Come join us.
April 6, 2013
Civil War Trust / History Channel Park Day @ Mount Moriah
8:00 am - 1:00 pm
Join us in locating and clearing the gravesites of Civil War veterans interred in Mount Moriah Cemetery.
6201 Kingsessing Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19142
April 12, 2013
Horsham National Guard @ Mount Moriah
12:00 pm – 3:30 pm
April 27, 2013
Comcast Cares Day of Service
9:00 am - 2:00 pm
May 11, 2013
Mount Moriah Restoration Event
8:00 am – 1:00 pm
Yeadon side. We will be joined by the Friends of Cobbs Creek for Love Your Park Day.
June 8, 2013
Mount Moriah Restoration Event
8:00 am – 1:00 pm
Philadelphia side.
July 13, 2013
Mount Moriah Restoration Event
8:00 am – 1:00 pm
Yeadon side.
July 27, 2013
Friends of Mount Moriah General Meeting
10:00 am – 12:00 pm
2559 S. 70th Street (70th and Buist) Philadelphia, PA 19142
Find out what is happening at Mount Moriah
August 10, 2013
Mount Moriah Restoration Event
8:00 am – 1:00 pm
Philadelphia side.
September 14, 2013
Mount Moriah Restoration Event
8:00 am – 1:00 pm
Yeadon side.
October 12, 2013
Mount Moriah Fall Festival
8:00 am – 1:00 pm
Join us as we celebrate the accomplishments made in 2013.
October 26, 2013
Friends of Mount Moriah General Meeting
10:00 am – 12:00 pm
2559 S. 70th Street (70th and Buist) Philadelphia, Pa 19142
Find out what is happening at Mount Moriah
November 9, 2013
Drexel University Civic Engagement
9:00 am – 1:00 pm
Yeadon side.
February was a blur. First, I was sick with the flu and bronchitis so bad that I could hardly do anything for two weeks. Bethann got it, too, not as severely, but with the bronchitis. On the 17th, we were both going to make it to church for the first time in three weeks. She sat up on the edge of the bed and told me she thinks she is having a heart attack. I got her some aspirin and water. We got dressed and I rushed her to the ER. It turns out it was very bad atrial fibrillation. She was in the hospital until Friday. They installed a pacemaker on Thursday. We did make it to church on the 24th.
On Thursday, February 28, we made soup and I got supplies and went to Giant to get the iced tea. In fact, that is why I was a little late getting to the city. I was a little disoriented, not focused on the fact that it was Thursday, for the entire day. I know that sounds funny and it is, but our life has been that disrupted by various forces and events lately. Serge and Alex and Serge and Alex (that’s not a typo, two different families) dropped off sandwiches. Brian came and we headed down to the city. When we arrived, I realized that it was the last Thursday of the month and the people of Holy Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church made the soup and brought the iced tea and cups, etc. I said to Brian, “I’m an idiot. Leave the soup and iced tea in the car. Just grab the sandwiches. I forgot which week it was.” I let Fr. Chris know what I had done and told him that if he ran out of soup, we had plenty more!
They served the line. Everyone got plenty. A little bit after we got there, Linda Notskas arrived with blankets and quilts and a few coats from St. John Chrysostom Albanian Orthodox Church. We helped her give those out. She had a car full, but she felt heart broken that she didn’t have more. She is such a sweetheart. God bless her.
Well, the crowd cleared. We packed up. We said our goodbyes to the folks from Holy Annunciation. They shared their well wishes and hugs for Bethann. We were just about to get into the TKJ-mobile, when Alex came over. (the 3rd Alex of the evening) I was so glad to see him. I had his cellphone, which he had arranged to have mailed to our house. I asked him if he wanted soup. He was surprised we had any left, so I told him the sorry tale of my forgetfulness. One thing led to another. We had several more stragglers. It turns out there had been a lecture at the Free Library about the persistence of poverty in America that a number of the guys attended. They missed our normal serving line. We ended up giving away well more than half of the soup and all of the iced tea. The guys were very appreciative. They had made a difficult choice to go to this lecture and discussion, but had chosen long term edification and hope for progress over a hot meal. God used my absentmindedness to be the ram in the bush to provide for them and bless them for their wisdom.
“But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.”
- 1 Corinthians 1:27
When I started this ministry, 24 years ago, I had been a Mennonite prison chaplain who was also ordained in the New Jerusalem Pentecostal Holiness Church. The King’s Jubilee actually started in State Correctional Institution at Graterford in the Saturday morning E Block Bible study. E Block was the quarantine unit at the time, where inmates first came into the state system to be sorted out to be shipped to the various institutions where they were to do their time.
Things had gotten funky with the Mennonites. One of the pastors who had founded the prison ministry I supervised threatened to kill me when I would not allow him to bring contraband, inflammatory literature into the Montgomery County Correctional Facility. We went through a conflict mediation process. Everyone there agreed that he was in the wrong, but he would not budge or admit any wrong. In the end, it was a case of if you ain’t Dutch you ain’t much, and I was fired the week before Christmas, even though I had given three months notice so they could have an orderly transition and not damage or lose ministries. They did not care. The ministry in Philadelphia with over 300 volunteers and the only tutoring for women was shut down. Chaplain Sid Barnes at Graterford let me keep the Wednesday Bible Study and the Quarantine Unit ministry, because I had been the most faithful in them. In the case of the latter, I had started it. It was in this Bible study that the vision for this ministry was formulated. It is the vision of Christ’s first message in the synagogue, which was taken from Isaiah 60, “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord!”
Yes, we serve meals to homeless people in center city Philadelphia, but that is not all we do; and that is not all we have done or all we hope to do! Serving the homeless in center city was the task the men in the E Block Bible Study particularly assigned me to do. You see, I told them that no one in this organization I was starting was going to just sit on a board and Monday morning quarterback. Everyone was going to be on the front lines. Furthermore, I wanted them to tell me where I should serve. Within five minutes, 150 convicted felons came to consensus, with no input from me, that they wanted me to serve the homeless in center city Philadelphia. If any of you know this demographic, you should recognize what kind of miracle this was. I took this as my “Macedonian Call”. I started to serve one night a week and have not found a good reason to quit. During Mayor Wilson Goode’s years, we dealt with the rowdy crack heads and the prostitutes. Fast Eddie Rendell had the police harass us all the time. We were investigated by his undercover units at least three times. Each time, I managed to tell them that we would go to jail rather than stop serving, because we needed to obey God rather than men. Mayor Street’s cops tried to tell us that the parks were private property. He was about to aggressively enforce the sidewalk ordinance, when “a routine sweep for bugs” turned up FBI bugs in his office and he had bigger fish to fry. Last year, Mayor Nutter decreed that we could not give away food to poor people in the parks. We had to sue him in federal court to retain our right to do so.
While this was going on, we started a clothing ministry in East Greenville, Clothesline, that continued at Peace Mennonite Church. We also held several music festivals for the poor and homeless in Philadelphia and Pottstown. We served for several years in Pottstown and Stowe, PA. We started a similar ministry at two sites in Columbia, SC, that a local Vineyard church took ownership of. The prison ministry at Graterford continued for several years, until Gov. Tom Ridge stopped all ministry in the prison in a knee jerk reaction to an incident in the mosque there, in 1996. We did Project: Lydia in Northampton County Prison for the women until they did not allow us to include notes or New Testaments. We had a Monday Evening Bible Institute for a couple of years. We started Operation: Clean Start. We have moved countless sets of furniture for people moving into apartments. There have been various other projects.
In 1999, we were chrismated into the Orthodox Church. Our family happened to come into an Antiochian Orthodox Church. The King’s Jubilee remains independently incorporated. I am sorry that I was so zealous, as converts often are, that almost all of our former supporters and volunteers dropped out of the ministry, as they saw this as an “Orthodox ministry.” I don’t know why this is such a problem, because my theology has not changed. When I first interviewed with Fr. Boniface, he kept asking me questions. With every answer, he just said, “You are so Orthodox!” Later, I found out that he was right. I had just read the Scriptures and the Fathers and had been Orthodox in my theology for many years and had just been longing for home. That being said, there is no reason my old friends can not join me. We have had Jews and atheists and Muslims and Methodists and Buddhists and Catholics serve with us and they have been happy as clams. We are not there to proselytize anyone. I still say what I have always said, “We do what we do in Jesus’ Name. If you don’t have a problem with that, I don’t have a problem with you joining us.” “In Jesus’ Name” does not mean that we preach at people. It means that we serve according to His will, with respect, love and dignity.
The occasion of this article is that I had a conversation this week with someone who told me that she wanted her church to support The King’s Jubilee, but wasn’t sure they would, because someone would say, “Well, they are Antiochian. Let the Antiochians do it.” I replied, “That’s stupid!”
We receive no budgeted or regular support from the Antiochian Church. My question to you is: Are you Christian?
This is ridiculous! No wonder the Orthodox Church is going nowhere as far as gospel witness is concerned. People say that it is growing fast in America, but that is only because the other churches are imploding under theological liberalism and gnosticism. There are fewer Mennonites in North America than there are Orthodox, yet they support 1,000 foreign missionaries, while we Orthodox barely support 20. We are going to punish the poor, because I was chrismated in an Antiochian church? Hey folks, I’m not Syrian. I’m not Greek. I’m not Russian. I’m not Serbian. I’m not Armenian. I’m not Ukrainian. I’m not Albanian. I’m not Georgian. I am American. Some of my ancestors have been here since 1628. I am trying to be Christian. I suggest that you try to be, too.
Jesus did not come to preserve ethnicities. He came to “build a new nation.” We have too much that needs to get done to worry about which bishop or which ethnicity or even which denomination or even which religion we belong to. Read Matthew 25. Everyone is surprised at the Judgment!
I’m going forward. I am sick of this Orthodox infighting and the jurisdictional nonsense. If this upsets you, I’m sorry. People are dying homeless on the streets. I think that is more important than whether or not we do things in the Antiochian or Greek or Russian way or not.
Lead. Follow. Or get out of the way.
We serve in Jesus’ Name.
Last Thursday night was the first in three weeks that I was well enough to serve in the city. The people were so glad to see me. Alex examined me and noted that I still did not sound altogether well. He was right. A week later, I am still coughing. This is one nasty flu. We had a skeleton crew. The McGraws were out sick. Fr. Chris was the lone representative from Holy Annunciation. It was just Deacon Herman and me in the TKJ-mobile. Anthony was not there, because he was cleaning up after a mercy meal after a funeral for a long time volunteer for the soup kitchen at his church. A couple of the guys pitched in. I was even pressed into manual labor. I served hard boiled eggs, oranges and peanuts. I am much better as a gadfly. I don’t keep the line moving. Linda Notskas and a fellow, whose name I fail to remember, brought lots of clothes and blankets and gave them away from her car.
A self described “dangerous, badass n__ger” came up to me and started to talk about the sad state of affairs. He was a CPA, a graduate of the Wharton School of Business and he was 72. He was also very drunk. He was upset at the sight of so many homeless men, at the national debt, at the Wall St. banksters, at the persistence of racism, etc. I kept talking to him and tried to understand what he was saying, because I could sense his pain and I respect the path that he had taken in his life. He was not homeless. I grew up talking to my dad when he was very drunk, but my dad was a high functioning drunk. He could be coherent and rational. This man wasn’t. He stood in front of me carrying on irrational rants, while people had to step around him on uneven ground. Finally I had to ask him to move to allow a lady who was unsteady on her feet to come through. He just went away angry. I was disappointed that I could not comfort him or ease his pain.
I was hoping to dig into work on Friday after more than two weeks off being sick. I found that I was able to do some, but I was still pretty tired from the full day on Thursday. I started working on an article for this blog for TKJ’s 24th anniversary, which I finished on Saturday. We found out that The King’s Jubilee was chosen for the second week of the Lenten Almsgiving Cash Flash Mob and started promoting that. We are hoping for good participation in that tomorrow and blessings all around!
On Sunday, we were planning on getting up and going to church. I had missed two weeks and Bethann had missed one, because of this nasty flu that gave us each bronchitis. I woke up to Bethann sitting on the end of the bed telling me that she thought she was having a heart attack. I went downstairs and got aspirin and water and gave it to her. We got dressed quickly and drove to the ER. They put her on the monitor and her heart rate was wildly erratic. She has atrial fibrillation. They kept her and tried to get to the bottom of it. As I am writing this, she is in surgery having a pacemaker installed.
I finally have felt strong enough to start catching up on orders, then this happens. Thank God for Uncle John Haggerty. He and Ha Nguyen are making the icons while I am visiting Bethann at the hospital. Our daughter, April Smith, stepped in to make the soup for tonight. Serge Metelow and his daughter are making the vegetarian alternative and helping serve tonight. Brian Simpson is driving the TKJ-mobile. I am once again reminded of what the old preacher told me years ago, “Don’t think too highly of yourself. No one is indispensible in the Lord’s service.”
Tomorrow is the Almsgiving Cash Flash Mob for The King’s Jubilee. I haven’t even publicized an event on Saturday, February 23. There is a recital at Tabor United Methodist Church at 1pm put on by Kevin Paige and some of his music students, to benefit The King’s Jubilee. I hope to be there to present the work and the vision of TKJ. Please come if you want to learn more.
Many of you are old enough to remember that great comedy, news, spoof TV show TW3: “That Was The Week That Was.” This was one of those weeks that makes you evaluate and reevaluate everything. I don’t want to be that angry, old man who fought the system and still saw it all end in futility and confusion. I think, if we work together, even if we are weak alone, if our cause is righteous and we put our hope in God, we just may see progress. Pray for peace that the Gospel may go forward.
Well, folks, TW3.
Take a minute to wrap your head around this concept.
By now, we have all seen those YouTube videos of people breaking into song or dance in public spaces. They appear, seemingly out of nowhere, and bring some beauty and life into an otherwise monotonous commute in a train station or some such place. It has been done with orchestras, and boys’ choirs, and choirs, and ballet, and madrigals, etc.
Well, our friend, Charli Riggle, got the idea to put together almsgiving cash flash mobs. She and her husband Alex, like many of us these days, don’t have much to give. And many of us don’t necessarily have the talent to join in one of these beautiful flash mobs. And we have made friends in far flung places, so a physical flash mob is not feasible at any rate. So she came up with the idea and put a Facebook group together for almsgiving flash mobs. Together we can make a larger impact and really move some ministries along. Instead of just one drop, it’s many drops that fill a bucket.
So each Friday during the extended Lenten period, covering both western and eastern traditions, a different charity is chosen and each person in the group is encouraged to make a small donation to that charity. A different ministry in each region every week. The King’s Jubilee has been chosen for next Friday’s event. We will have a graphic that will get colored in and grow as more people participate. It is an exciting idea. We are honored to have been chosen. God bless you all.
Here is the link to the event: FRIDAY FLASH CASH II: The King’s Jubilee
Feel free to join in!
Please pray for Karen Kaufmann, Vincent’s mom. She was in a car accident this morning. She was rear-ended while stopped at a light on 663. She was hit by a man in an SUV, who was fussing with his dog, going almost 50 mph. Her car is totaled. She is pretty banged up and sore. The ER did scans, released her, and told her to get a neck brace.
The man who hit her is very sorry and wants to do everything to make this right. Thank God, he has good insurance.
Both Karen and Vincent are volunteers and supporters of this ministry.
TKJ-mobile
My 2004 Scion xB has been referred to as a clown car on more than one occasion, and for more than one reason. It is rather colorfully decorated with decals. For those of you who are not tech savvy, those checkered patterned splats on the four fenders and on the tailgate are called QR codes. They allow passengers (or drivers) in other cars to simply point their smart phones at the code and click and it takes them to this website. I added these to the TKJ-mobile after I observed someone typing the website into their smartphone as they were trying to match my speed, while reading the side of my car, going down Route 309. This is much safer.
The first time Fr. John Oliver rode in it, he called it the Tardis, because it is so much bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. On more than one occasion, five adult men have travelled, more or less comfortably in it, along with a considerable amount of gear. Sometimes when we arrive to serve, I get out of the car. People keep getting out of the car. Then we unload the gear, and I get the clown car crack. Hey, it’s paid for and it has lasted eight and half years so far.
The decals have attracted some interest. We have had conversations with people in neighboring lanes, who say they want to donate or get involved as we are driving up North Broad St. in Phila. This week we received seven large bags of winter coats that the folks at Selas Fluid Processing Corp. gathered. An employee apparently saw the TKJ-mobile and shot the QR code. One thing led to another. Thanks! May God bless you. Now, thanks, in part, to the clown car, a whole bunch of men, women and children will be warmer this winter.
The week before Christmas, I pulled into a parking space at the bank. My cellphone was ringing. I had a conversation with an icon customer. While I was still on the phone, a woman stood outside of my window, waiting to talk to me. I ended my phone call and rolled down my window and asked if I could help her. She said, “Do you take in homeless children?” I said, “No. Why? What is the story? Maybe we can find someone to help.” She told me she was about to kick her 26 year old son out of the house. I told her that he wasn’t a child. We began to discuss alternatives. She felt this was God’s appointment. Since then, we have been working with this troubled young man, who is struggling with a heroin addiction, and his family. It has been intense at times. He has helped us serve on the street the last three weeks and made the beans and rice last week. The guys really liked it. He is a skilled chef. Please pray for Jonathan and Jacqueline and Bob. They have a long and rough road ahead of them. We see this part of the ministry as homelessness prevention.
The TKJ-mobile is used as sort of a community car. Various people have used it when they do not have a car or theirs is in the shop, or it is the appropriate vehicle for the task. It has been to Canada without me to help some poor, Vietnamese neighbors bless a baby. It has been to numerous court dates and to the county assistance office, with or without me. It has met countless buses and trains and a few planes. Yes, it’s funny looking. I put Mercedes stars on it, because the people we carry are worthy of high class treatment. Thank you all for helping me keeping it on the road with gas in the tank.
Oh, I forgot to mention the “Ah-OO-gah” horn that heralds our arrival at 1801 Vine at 8 pm each Thursday night where we serve between 150 and 200 tasty, nutritious, hot meals to homeless folks in Jesus’ Name.