Downtown Outreach

Three weeks ago the kids from our junior high youth group and I filled a bunch of bags full of easter candy in preparation for today. Six of us headed to the "D" (Detroit) into the hood to pass out clothes, food, toys and candy as part of a gig our church participates in every month. The kids (and their parents) were a little apprehensive about going Downtown, but they went. We headed over to the Cass Corrdior, to one of the parks where a big group of people live during the summer. We setup a bunch of tables and after getting in a giant circle and doing a brief message and prayer, we passed out food, drinks, toys for the kids and clothes. After about an hour at the first stop, we packed up and headed a couple miles over to Albert and Brush street to do the same thing, but with more kids.

The kids really had fun with it. The most common feedback I heard from them was "the people we're helping are really polite and seem to appreciate it." The kids helped pass out the food and helped people find clothes that fit them. They also got to pass out the bags of candy to the kids, who appreciated it.



After the final stop, I took the kids on a tour of Downtown, showing them all of the sights. No trip to Detroit is complete without a stop at White Castle for a dozen slyders, which is what we did (and I'm still tasting them at 7 hours later). We ate them as we drove down the express way with the windows wide open, but my car still smells like a giant armpit from the burgers.

The cool part of this for me is how far I've come. One of my goals this year with the kids was to help the kids reach outside of the church to the poor and hurting in the world around them. The problem was, the poor and hurting weren't that important to me. Tough to say, but it's true. I started going downtown to help, reading stuff, and trying to do stuff with my time and money toward helping others more.

After helping people find clothes, the kids saw that people really wanted t-shirts. They came up with the idea of trying to do a t-shirt drive in our community. We're going to take plastic bags and staple a note to them asking people to fill it with t-shirts they don't wear any more and put it on their porch the following week . We'll distribute them around the neighborhoods in town and then go pick them up and bring them down to the "D" in May. I love the fact that the kids started with stuffing bags of candy, took the next step and went downtown, and now came up with a way to help even further.

Tags: White Castle, Slyders, Cass Corridor