We first visited the drop-in center in the fall of 1982. Late at night after a concert in Seattle, my friend Eric walked with me past a darkened storefront on Union Street. We peeked inside as Eric said, “I want you to check out this place. Too bad they’re not open. It’s run by New Horizons Ministries. They call this Saint Dismas Center.”
I later discovered tradition claims Dismas as patron saint of thieves. Some believe Dismas was the thief hanging on a cross next to Jesus who asked Jesus to remember him (
Eric knew I had spent the summer of 1980 working with chronic alcoholics and addicts at a San Francisco mission. I loved the city, and everyone knew it. As we hung outside the Saint Dismas Center, my friend continued to talk about New Horizons.
“They’re really cool Christians who come from a lot of different churches and serve all the street kids who hang out downtown. They’re really professional too; like, you have to be trained to volunteer with them. They really get to know the kids. They go to court with them, visit them at detention and just help them. It’s a great place. You would love it!”
As we looked into the window of the dilapidated building, I could see the silhouette of a pool table and some couches. Even in the dark, it was obvious the couches had seen better days. Gradually we moved on up the street, talking about the concert.
A Second Visit
In the spring of 1983, another friend, John, was doing a Bible school internship—with New Horizons Ministries! John suggested I think about volunteering, too. He offered to take me to the drop-in center to check out things.
I explained how Eric had introduced me to the place and then said, “It sounds like a great place, but I have plenty going on in my life.” I was working, playing in a band and loving my life.
John asked me to come down to the center for one night—”just one night”—to serve dinner. As he begged, I began to reconsider.
“OK, just one night,” I said. One night couldn’t hurt; and besides, Eric would laugh at the strange coincidence that introduced me to this place twice in one year.
On a chilly Saturday night, John and I traveled to Saint Dismas Center. About 6:30 in the evening, we met a few other 20-somethings who were volunteering.
They seemed normal but definitely not street-savvy. With my long hair, sleeveless T-shirt and a past, I knew I brought something new to the place; I thought I was cool. We began planning the evening. We would pray, then be on the streets until about 9 p.m., invite kids to a meal, come back, open the drop-in center and serve dinner until about 10 p.m. Amen! Enough praying! I was ready.
A Lesson from Brenda
We were not on the streets for more than 15 minutes when a young woman, about 17 years old, walked up to John and me. Frantic, she started her story mid-sentence.
Brenda, had just pulled a trick. Her boyfriend had taken all her money and had left her to get high. She called her mother, only to find out that Mom’s new boyfriend wanted Brenda out of the house. Brenda said she hated the shelters.
“Everyone steals, and they are all stupid kids—dumb, not street-wise.” Now she had no choice but to turn another trick for a place to stay.
I had heard enough. I told her that this might be the way it was, but definitely not the way it was supposed to be.
“God has—!”
She quickly interrupted me.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked.
I realized she must not have heard John introduce me. I thought he might jump in and let her know who I was and assure her that my experience warranted me getting involved in helping her. John didn’t reintroduce me.
He listened to Brenda and then quietly began to ask her a few questions.
Looking back, I don’t think Brenda was trying to discredit my street knowledge, even though she would have been justified in doing so—totally. I think she believed I lacked credibility. All she saw was some young outsider trying to tell her the problems she’d been wrestling with for the past however many years could be solved in a sentence or two.
My first lesson in crisis counseling was and continues to be that when people are in crisis and struggling with complex problems, the last thing they want or need is a quick answer.
Imagine the frustration a person in crisis would feel if a counselor said, “Oh, that problem you’ve been struggling with is so easy. What you have not been able to answer in a month I can answer in 35 seconds. Boy, are you stupid.”
John listened to Brenda, then asked her questions that highlighted her strengths and her resources. He asked Brenda if she had been in this spot before and what she had done then.
John taught me a lot. Brenda taught me more. If I am going to be with people and be of any help, I need to get to know them first. I need to know where they’ve come from, their problems and their strengths. I also must allow them to know me.
“You don’t know anything!” Brenda screamed. She was right; I didn’t…then. I do now, because the kids on the street have taught me and continue to do so.
Lessons Learned
As I think about all I have learned through the years from the kids on the streets and the incredible people I have served with, I am truly humbled. I have discovered God’s light shines most brightly in the darkest places. I also have discovered the young people who look like they need the most help have been my most significant teachers.
They taught me the most broken people in the world allow the greater community of faith to live out what was manifested in the life of Jesus and that God commands His people to be people who bear witness to His kindness, mercy, justice and humility.
I also have learned that my social location—that is, my place in this world as a privileged Anglo North American male, actually can hinder my ability to see and serve.
Power, privilege and resources can impede my service because they limit my ability to learn and listen.
Those of us born into privilege tend to think we have the answers because we have all the resources. We cannot minister effectively with this attitude. We must pour ourselves into service even as we pour out our preconceived notions of the people we serve.
Buried Treasure
In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “God himself taught us to meet one another as God has met us in Christ.”
Bonhoeffer wrote this book while Hitler reigned in Nazi Germany, trying to exterminate everyone different from himself. In the midst of an oppressive and persecuting climate, Bonhoeffer encouraged the church to see Jesus in all the people different from themselves. He taught that the Jesus in ourselves is minimized when we become exclusive in our social location. Our class, culture, ethnicity and gender all hinder us from seeing the complete Jesus. Bonhoeffer encouraged the church to listen with the ears of God before speaking the words of God.
Imagine a community of faith that listens and learns from each other. Imagine a missiology that revolves around listening and learning as much as teaching and
speaking. What would it mean if we listened and learned as we served the widow, orphan and stranger?
On that night so many years ago, John and I made our way back to Second and Union. The drop-in center was dimly lit; a few kids had lined up, waiting to be
invited in. They waited to warm themselves in a building that had no heat.
New Horizons Ministries’ drop-in center was a condemned storefront surrounded by abandoned buildings on each side. Above the drop-in center was an abandoned hotel that was home to an occasional transient and large city rats. I walked into this place that night, and it became my seminary. The kids and other people I met became my professors.
I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know who they were or where they came from. I didn’t even know who I was or where I came from, but I was about to learn. I walked into New Horizons for one night—and never left.
Years had passed since that first visit in 1983, when I sat in a coffee shop with a woman from Lagos, Nigeria. She was studying social work at the University of Washington. She wanted to learn more about street children in the United States, so she asked if I could meet her for coffee to discuss the work of New Horizons Ministries.
As I told her about the tragedy of America’s street kids—the abuse, neglect, violence, addiction, mental health issues and suicide, she looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“The richest place in Seattle is not the house of Bill Gates,” she said. “It’s the graves of your young people. In these graves are buried unrealized dreams and untapped potential. There is a treasure buried with your kids.”
My life has been an effort to find that treasure—not only treasure that is buried with the kids whose lives have been cut short on the street, but treasure lies in kids whose lives have been hidden behind the rough exterior necessary for street survival.
I hold strongly to the belief that kids on the street see God in amazing ways simply because God is close to those who suffer.
These resilient young people have been, in one way or another, pushed out of their homes. They have lived in garbage cans and abandoned buildings. They sell drugs and sell their young bodies to survive on the street. The families they create on the street display the same brokenness as the families they run from. The streets create a cycle of pain and discomfort, followed by temporary relief, followed by more pain and discomfort.
In the middle of all this, these amazing young people continue through their courage, resiliency and prayerfulness to reveal the story of God.
Ron Ruthruff works with homeless and street-involved youth and families, providing case management services, designing programs and educating the community about the psychosocial issues that impact this community. He speaks on urban missiology, high-risk youth, early intervention strategies and street and adolescent culture. Ron also serves as adjunct faculty at Bakke Graduate University. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two sons. This article was adapted from his book The Least of These, with permission of New Hope Publishers (NewHopePublishers.com).
