This is Part II of an article about Patrick.

To read Part I, click here.

 ———

As Patrick’s story continued to unfold, my heart ached with pain, though it was not my own.

How can someone go through so much agony and suffering, yet still be able to smile, regardless of the time that’s passed?! Hell is not otherworldly. It’s endured by countless lives every day. Patrick has lived it, and he’s come through the fire far stronger as a result.

“I think it was St. Augustine who said, ‘God will allow evil in so much as it can be turned into good,’” Patrick told me recently.

I struggle with that quote. I struggle with the abhorrent realities people are forced to bear. But one thing I do know, the grace that God extends to them is beyond measure, even if they’re unaware.

When Jesus is hanging on the cross, some of his last words provided forgiveness and grace to the oblivious. Marinate on that one.

But Patrick…Patrick has experienced it. He’s far from oblivious.

Words do no justice to the grace found here!

“I’m the opposite of Job. I went through hell to gain my faith, and there’s nothing that can take it away.”

From the Streets to the Hallways

Following his harrowing encounter in the warehouse, Patrick spent nearly six more years on the streets, hustling and surviving. But by the age of 18, he’d had enough and decided to go live with his mom, who was now separated from his father and living sober.

Soon after, he enrolled in high school as a freshman and graduated at 25.

About this time, he felt compelled to start educating others about life for the marginalized, but he also knew if he wanted to have a greater impact, he’d have to play the game of life.

“I went in to apply at the university, and they asked me, ‘Why do you want to study here?’ So I was honest with them. I said, ‘Cuz I need this stupid piece of paper to get a real job doing what I’m already doing.’”

He was accepted, and after a few years, he earned his degree in the community worker program. He went back to his advocacy work with diploma in hand.

God was with him and using him, but that Truth wasn’t yet real to Patrick.

The AIDS Memorial, located in a downtown park, is a stop on Patrick’s “street walks” where he underscores the plight of those affected and those who’ve died from the illness.

Revelations

“I was raised in a Catholic family, but my grandma used to take me to a Baptist church,” he recalled.

“When I used to work on the streets, I’d sing Amazing Grace to myself as I waited on customers,” he remembers, tearing up with the bittersweet memory. “And when I got stabbed, I remember standing outside the hospital, holding my guts in and praying, ‘God, what do you want with me?! Why don’t you just take me now?’

“It took me years to get my answer,” and Sanctuary played a pivotal role.

“I always thought leaders in ministry are holy and didn’t do anything wrong. But Greg [Paul, Sanctuary’s pastor] was the first person ever to tell me that it’s okay to be broken and still know God.”

Patrick’s heart was beginning to soften. And in 1999, at a Christmas Arts Extravaganza at Sanctuary, his ears were finally opened to the divine Whisper that had been calling him for years.

“I left Sanctuary, went to my sacred spot in Boys Town, and I cried for eight hours. And after the last tear fell, I heard God say, ‘Now you’re mine!’

“And that was it!”

My spine is tingling after writing those words. And I’m trying to see the computer screen through misty eyes. Oh, the power of grace and love!

Always Present

For nearly 25 years now, Patrick’s been working with the marginalized of society, and nowadays, he’s running his own organization, Bridges for Youth 2, a “social justice education” program. He guides ‘street walks’ not only to teenagers but also to church groups, teachers and even police trainees.

Sanctuary played a crucial role in Patrick’s spiritual journey.

Since his conversion in ‘99, he’s been incorporating God into those walks, but he can also look back and see God in his own life story as well.

“I was born two-and-a-half months premature and should have died. When I got older [and started taking pills], I’d have doctors and nurses tell me, ‘Stop, you’re going to die.’ When I was on the streets, I’d have police and judges tell me, ‘Stop, you’re going to die.’

“But even after all I’ve been through, you know what? I didn’t die. I look back and see all the things God has brought me through and I see all these steps and little signs, and I can point to them and say,

“That’s God, that’s God, that’s God…”

I love those moments of life, however infrequent they may be. Those hindsight confirmations of God’s presence are sustenance to my soul. And I move forward with a strengthened faith.

Patrick Sullivan – shining God’s grace and love into lives dismissed by most.

Messy Love

Patrick is my favorite kind of person. He’s honest, witty, open and wise. But he’s broken too, and his journey isn’t over. He’s the first to admit the struggle continues. But what a refreshing change that is!

There’s no need to pretend with him. There’s no need to sugarcoat and cover up, doing all I can to put my best foot forward. I can be me…good, bad and ugly. Anything I tell him will be met with grace (and occasional admonishment). But I know he’ll love me anyway, regardless of my own failings.

Read back through that previous paragraph. After typing it, I just read it again and was struck by the description, for it mirrors my relationship with Christ…

I’ve been out walking around Toronto with Patrick a few times now, and it seems like everywhere we go, we’re getting stopped by “friends from the street.” They gravitate to him, and seek his attention. They clearly love him, and he’s not opposed.

“There’s something special about being embraced and loved by a whole bunch of messy people.”

And he loves them too, giving them a taste of Christ’s grace, whether they know it or not.

DISCLAIMER: This article includes some disturbing and graphic elements. It is intended for mature audiences only.

Faggot… Whore… Junkie… Deadbeat bum…

“It pisses me off to hear you say those things,” Patrick replied. “You’re talking about friends of mine. These are people that I love. And these are people that God loves.”

The high school kids I was sitting with stared back at him blankly, not sure how to respond to his candid reply.

He had, in fact, asked them to list off the derogatory expressions as part of an exercise he was conducting, but he’s still troubled every time he hears the words said aloud. Not only have his friends been branded with those offensive terms, but he has as well.

I first encountered Patrick as a factual character in a book written by Sanctuary’s pastor, Greg Paul. In God in the Alley, Greg describes Patrick’s story in vivid detail, but he was still in abstract form. The stories told were certainly gut-wrenching, but a book still keeps it at arms’ length. You can always close it up when the story gets to be too much.

Patrick has been giving “social justice education” to youth and adults for years.

But now I’m here. I’m at Sanctuary, and I’m looking at Patrick. I’m hearing his voice. I’m watching his mannerisms. He is no longer words on a page. He’s very real, and I can’t “close the book” as his story unfolds.

Patrick invited me to join him on a chilly, autumn morning as he took a group of high school seniors on a “street walk” around downtown Toronto. Every year, the Catholic high school, located about an hour outside of city, sends seniors to Patrick as part of their social justice curriculum. He is their guide, educating them on the issues that plague the marginalized and taking them on a journey of hearts and souls.

“What you see today may make you feel very uncomfortable,” he explains to us. “And I don’t apologize for that.”

Our perspectives are clearly going to be expanded and our knees buckled. Patrick’s own story plays a pivotal role in the street walk, and hearing him tell it nearly cripples me.

He’s now in his late 40’s, but his story starts way back when he was three.

“One of my first memories was of my dad putting me to bed at night,” he recalled. “And he’d put me in bed with my mother, resting my head on her chest.

Patrick, at the top of the circle, explains his story to the group of high school seniors.

“‘Let me know if you hear Mommy stop breathing or if you hear her heart stop beating,’ my dad would tell me as he went back to the living room. ‘If you do, come and wake Daddy up.’”

Patrick’s mom was addicted to prescription painkillers, taking them each night before she went to bed, and his dad was an alcoholic. But this was only the beginning.

By the age of four, he started getting sexually abused by a sibling and his friends. Soon, Patrick began to seek relief from the same drugs as his mother.

“I saw what it did to her, so I thought, ‘Hey, if I’m asleep, they can’t hurt me anymore.’”

Patrick asked the students to “find a place to sleep for the night in this park.” This is the result.

Around this time, he also joined the local men and boys choir at his church, where he struck up a friendship with one of the other choir members, an older gentleman who took Patrick under his wing. The man took him to movies, to ball games and meals. As time went on, he truly became a father-figure to Patrick.

One day while they were riding in the car, the man told Patrick he had to stop by his mother’s house to get her mail and water her plants, since she was out of town. Patrick gladly obliged and went into the house with the man. Soon after they walked through the door, the man forced himself on Patrick and raped him.

Patrick was devastated, and his world came crashing down. He was defiled by one of the few people in his life he had counted on for genuine friendship…someone who had provided safe haven, stability and a sense of normalcy amid the turmoil he was experiencing at home. Patrick felt violated to his core.

He went home, found every pill he could, and he took them all.

A couple of students inspect one of the plaques at the AIDS Memorial in Toronto

Two months later, Patrick awoke in the hospital. The overdose had induced a coma and caused irreparable brain damage, forcing him to learn how to walk again and talk again.

It also forced Child Protective Services to intervene on his behalf. And before he knew it, he was being shuffled between foster homes and children’s housing facilities. It didn’t take long for Patrick to grow tired of the shuffle, so he scrounged together some money and bought a bus ticket to Toronto.

He was 11 at the time and soon became one of the thousands of street kids living in the city. And like many of them, he quickly turned to prostitution for survival.

“This may sound strange, but I actually felt empowered,” he said. “For the first time, I had control over the things that were done. I actually had a choice.”

On one occasion, however, things got terrifying.

Not long after he started prostituting, an enraged, disgruntled customer sliced an eight-inch gash straight up Patrick’s abdomen. He was dropped off in front of a hospital and left for dead. But by the grace of God, no vital organs were affected.

A short time later, he had another harrowing episode.

“I was 12 years old at the time, and I was picked up by a customer that wanted to see me cry.”

Patrick stops near “Boys Town,” to tell more of his story. He also showed the eight-inch scar in his stomach.

The man drove him to an old warehouse and forced a shotgun into Patrick’s mouth, hoping to incite tears. When that didn’t work, he pulled it out and blasted a shot into the concrete next to Patrick’s head, leaving cement shards in his scalp and hearing loss in his left ear.

“But I’m proud of myself, ‘cuz I still didn’t cry.”

As Patrick continued to tell his story, a few of the students dabbed their eyes. But most of us listened with deadpan expressions, trying to mask our struggle to comprehend this incomprehensible tale.

By all accounts, Patrick should be dead, or at the very least, plagued with bitterness and resentment at God and the world. But the fact he’s sitting here, back in Sanctuary, telling his story means that there’s a happy ending, but it still took some time.

Click here to read Part II of Patrick’s incredible story of redemption.

I’ve been going to Grace Community Church in Noblesville, Indiana since I was in third grade.  19 years ago, when the church first opened its doors, I was there, and I’ve been part of that church community ever since.

But I can tell you without a hint of hyperbole that I’ve never loved my church more than I do right now.  Let me try to explain why…

The Weekend of Service

My passion for Grace Community Church starts with a single event.

One of GCC’s many volunteers during last year’s Weekend of Service.

Once a year, Grace has a “Weekend of Service.”  Instead of gathering together for a worship service, the church closes its doors, turns off the lights in the auditorium and goes out en masse to serve in 100 different locations across the city.

This year, some people will be painting a mural at a public school downtown while others will be serving pizza to the homeless.  One group will be packing food bound for Haiti while another will be doing maintenance work at a foster care home.

And then there is the food collection.  Teams will disperse across 49 “zones” in our church’s community to collect donations of food for struggling families in our city.  Last year we collected 257,000 pounds of food.  This year the goal is a half of a million pounds. 

It’s a highlight of the year for our church community, and each year the anticipation builds even more than the last.  Check out this awesome promo video written and designed by World Next Door’s very own, Curtis Honeycutt…

So What?

Ok, so why do I mention this here on World Next Door?  What’s the point in reading about this if you live in, say, Memphis or LA?

Well, there are two reasons.

Thousands gather in the GCC parking lot for a short commissioning service before being sent out to serve.

The first is simply that World Next Door is once again hosting a project for Weekend of Service.  Volunteers from Grace can “embed” with various other projects and write about them for our online magazine.   If you attend GCC and want to use your writing skills to help us out, head over to gracecc.org/weekend to sign up!

Ok, but again, that doesn’t matter if you live in Memphis or LA.  However, the second reason does.

I’m writing about Grace Community Church simply to show that it’s possible.  It’s possible for a suburban church to actually matter in the world.  It’s possible for a community of Christ-followers to become so compelled with the kingdom of God that they will spend their time serving and caring for the poor and marginalized in the world.

More Than a Weekend

Now I know what some of you are thinking.  “Um, I wouldn’t say that a church serving one weekend a year is all that special…”

But don’t worry. GCC does way more than just one weekend of service a year.  Our church partners with 23 organizations beyond our walls that focus on a whole range of social justice issues, and one of the requirements of even being a “Frontline Ministry” of GCC is that they get our people involved.

Our church gives hundreds of thousands of dollars away every year to serve the “least of these” around our city and around the world.  We raised $240,000 for Haiti in two weeks.  Our people are involved in so many social justice organizations and local humanitarian efforts that our church has begun to develop a reputation around town as “the church that does stuff.” 

I love that service is becoming a way of life at my church.

In fact, after Haiti’s earthquake in January, word reached our church that 300 Haitian orphans were being flown into Indianapolis.  Within 24 hours, 300 families in our church had stepped up, ready to adopt at that very moment.  And although the rumor later turned out to be untrue, the whole event spoke volumes about how far we had come as a community.

The Sleeping Giant

I love my church.  Week after week I’m reminded that fulfilling the mission of World Next Door is possible.  That getting suburban Americans involved in social justice is more than just a pipe dream.

The best part of it all is that Grace Church is not alone.  As World Next Door has grown, I’ve heard story after story of churches around the country that are also stepping up to the call of the kingdom in some big ways.

Suburban Americans are waking up to the needs of this world, stepping out in faith and wholeheartedly pursuing global justice.

The giant of suburbia has been asleep for a long time.  But he’s stirring…

The other day, my 3 and a half year old niece Isabella was talking with her mommy about the earthquake in Haiti.  All of a sudden she started counting the chairs around her dinner table.  When her mother asked why she was counting, Isabella said, “to see how many people we can feed at our table!”

Now, Isabella is not even four yet.  She barely understands what is going on in Haiti.  But she does know this… People need help.  People need food.  And her house has a nice big dinner table with room to spare.

When Amy, one of our readers, found out about the chance to take in one of the Haitian orphans expected to be flying into Indianapolis this past week, her family began talking seriously about the possibility.  And even though it turned out that the orphans may not be coming after all, her three sons, Tucker, Charlie and Isaac have thrown themselves into the preparations.

Isaac (8) talks about “his Haiti friend” all the time.  He wants to get  him or her a card for his church’s children’s ministry so that he/she can come as soon as he/she gets here.  Tucker (12)  is conscientious and tender-hearted, watching and talking about the news with his father, while his brother Charlie (11) insists on getting  their potential new brother or sister signed up for soccer…

My point in telling you about these kids is this… I think that children have a much higher capacity to understand the basic issues of social justice than we give them credit for.

Hard-wired into us is the understanding that everyone deserves to eat, to drink and to have a home.  Children understand concepts of equality and freedom and health, if only at their most basic levels.

Sheltered

And yet, our suburban culture has taught us to shield them from the world, hasn’t it?  We try our hardest to shelter them from the harsh realities of a broken humanity, and our children grow up oblivious to the truths of injustices that are out there.

Will kids in our culture ever know or care about the poor?

The other day I had the chance to speak to the 2nd-5th graders at my church.  I talked a bit about what I do, a bit about the people I meet on my travels and a bit about the Haiti earthquake.  But there was one moment that stood out as both hilarious and a bit sad.

To explain how my job works, I brought my suitcase with a few pieces of “gear” that I take with me when I travel.  I held up each item and explained why I needed it.  I take my water filter because many people in the world don’t have clean water, I take cans of tuna because many people in the world don’t have enough food to eat, etc.

At one point I took out my headlamp to explain how a lot of people in the world don’t have electricity.  I asked the kids to imagine what it would be like without electricity in their own homes.  “At night, there would be no lights on.  No TV.  No Xbox or Wii…”

At that, the children audibly gasped.  Immediately they all began to chatter with wide eyes.  No Xboxes?  No Wiis?

Even though I had talked about kids who don’t have food, water, clothing or shelter, it was the lack of gaming consoles that really hit home.

Many of these kids have been completely sheltered from the world, and they have no idea how much they have.  It got me thinking… Is it really for the best to keep children oblivious to the real world until they’re “old enough?”  Or is there some value in teaching them the truth from an early age?

Will your kids know about what's happening in Haiti?

Setting an Example

Now, obviously there are many details that children just can’t handle.  I’ve talked to some parents who don’t go into detail about the devastation in Haiti simply because they know it will give their kids nightmares.  But they still attempt to get their children engaged at a level they can deal with.  As one father told me, “they can get their mind around people needing to be healed.”

These parents know that their children can and should be aware of the fact that many people in the world don’t have food, water, shelter, clothing or medicine.  They know that their kids will grow up as more compassionate people because of what they are taught at an early age.

But I think there is one aspect of getting children involved that shouldn’t be overlooked.  When parents teach their children about the injustices in the world, they can teach them how to respond.  In a culture characterized by indifference and ignorance as ours so often is, parents here have the unique opportunity to show their kids what it means to care for the poor and marginalized.

I know that my own parents have always been generous with their time and money when it comes to the less fortunate, and they taught my sister and I from an early age to always treat people with respect and equality.  What probably seemed like a natural way of life for my parents has had deep repercussions in my life and has undoubtedly led, in part, to what I am doing today.

Your Thoughts

How do you teach your children?

But all that said, the fact is that I’m not a parent.  I don’t have any kids to teach and raise.  So I need your input on this one…

Do you agree that children should be taught about social injustice from an early age?  Or should they be protected until they are more mature?  How has your family treated this issue?

For those of you who do have kids, do you have any advice for new or expecting parents?  How do they even begin to raise their children in a world so dark and broken?

Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.  I would love to hear your perspective!

Hope for the Future

As we continue to watch the situation in Haiti unfold, I am in awe of the way my friends and acquaintances are responding.  Whole families are stepping up to help.  Our church is going absolutely crazy with volunteers and donations.

And at the center of all of this are the kids.  Because of things like the internet and globalization, they are growing up in a small, flat world.  For just a couple of thousand dollars, they’ll be able to some day fly anywhere and see the world for themselves.

Now is the time to set them on a path of compassion.  Now is the time to teach them what the Kingdom of God looks like in the real world.  And now is the time to show our children what it means to care for the “least of these…”