Happy 10th Birthday, Éleos!

Back in 2013, Joy and I had been living in Nicholtown for a few short months when we stumbled upon our new Sunday evening ritual: pick-up basketball at Cleveland Park. We played nearly every Sunday evening for the first several years of our marriage. It took some time, but we learned the local rules and lingo. People would line the courts calling "rise" (next); after each game, the next person up would pick their team and the game would begin. They would pick the best players available. Sometimes if you got there late, there would be 10 people who had "next" in front of you. If you could hoop, you wouldn’t ever leave the court. If you weren’t great, then you might get to play one game—otherwise, you were out of luck. We both played basketball in high school, and in our early twenties, we could hang with most people on the court. We made tons of friends from our neighborhood through these Sunday night pick-up games. Basketball was our foot in the door for building relationships with young adults aged 20 to 40 in the neighborhood.

Going to neighborhood association meetings and volunteering in the community garden was how we met the elders of Nicholtown. These vital members of our community gave us history lessons and words of wisdom as we planted and harvested next to one another in the sun. Mr. Byrd taught us how to garden. Ms. Juanita, Mr. Jimmy, and Mr. Mims welcomed us in and helped us understand the rich history of the community we now inhabit. We met community leaders who had been about God’s work in Nicholtown since long before I was born. I’ll never forget seeing Mr. Alan Mitchell climb onto the roof of my neighbor’s home to put a tarp up before the impending rain came. I was learning what it meant to be a good neighbor as I hurried embarrassingly across the road to help a man who was twice my age, and twice as willing to take care of an elderly woman in need.

I haven’t forgotten bumping into Ms. Sylvia Palmer and Ms. Delores Durham at the funeral of a boy in our neighborhood whose tragic death left him misunderstood by the wider community in Greenville. They taught me about grace and grief, and how to care for those left in the wake of tragedy. Ms. Yvonne Reeder taught us so much about our neighborhood’s history with a deep sense of pride. I’ve forgotten some of the details, but she never seems to; her memory is far better than mine. I hope I never lose the memories of Dr. Grady Butler sitting in my living room, telling us stories about the Civil Rights Movement in Greenville and Atlanta. (One time he organized a sit-in which Dr. King attended. They were arrested and spent the night in jail together. Legends.)

Several years later, we bought our first home on another street in the neighborhood. In the shuffle of the move, I let the yard go a few days (alright… weeks) without being cut. My new neighbor lovingly and sternly helped me understand the importance of taking pride in our community and keeping our grass cut. I haven’t quite become the dad who obsesses over his lawn, but I’ve done my best to keep it trimmed and maintained. My kids have gone on to refer to her as their Grandma Mingo. She has earned that title through intentional, faithful love—and snacks. Lots of snacks, specifically MoonPies. She carries that title, Grandma Mingo, with pride.

These giants in the faith helped Joy and me see that God had been at work in Nicholtown long before we ever considered moving there.

Just a few weeks ago, Éleos Ministry hosted a graduation celebration for 13 students in our beautiful 16,000-square-foot program facility. 100% of our seniors graduated from high school with next-step plans for college, the military, trades, or the wider workforce in Greenville. It’s hard to put into words how significant this is. Many of these students will be the first in their families to attend college. Many will be the first to pursue a career.

Ten years ago, I couldn’t have imagined this. Sincerely, I couldn’t have.

As tempted as I am to point to the brilliance of our team and the innovative, outside-the-box thinking that led us to this place, none of that would be true. Ten years ago, we decided to put one brick on top of a firm foundation laid by the relentless efforts of our gray-haired neighbors. We planted seeds in the soil they spent decades faithfully tilling. The saying "they walked so we could run" doesn’t quite capture it. They were spit on and shot at. They boycotted buses, they registered people to vote, and they were chased by dogs. Despite the cloud of injustice, they stood tall as witnesses to the work of God in their midst. We stand on their shoulders.

The first brick we laid was all we had to offer: basketball. We started an Open Gym program in partnership with a local community center in our neighborhood. We talked about Jesus. We listened to the concerns of the students who showed up. We ate dinner together. We broke up fights. We cried. We drove home in silence. We were discouraged. We prayed. We kept showing up. Some volunteers moved on; others stayed. New volunteers came. We kept going. Students kept showing up.

The second brick was as humble as the first. It wasn’t much, but it was what we had—a dining table. We invited students over. They came. We ate, and they asked good questions. Grandma Mingo taught us all how to cook and budget our money. We ate spicy peppers from the garden. A student threw up. We read the Bible together. Sometimes students didn’t show up; other times they did. They watched as Joy and I became first-time parents. One time, a neighborhood church dropped off their entire youth group at our house, unannounced. I built a fire and ran to the grocery store to buy hot dogs. The inconvenience of that night turned into a photograph that hasn’t left our fridge in eight years.

The third brick we laid wasn’t even laid on purpose. We were introduced to a building owner who offered to lease us cheap warehouse space—a nightclub shut down after a tragic murder, turned into a vacant rental unit for storage… or a tutoring center? We raised money when we didn’t know how to raise money. God provided $30,000, and we met with volunteers after work for six months swinging hammers, framing walls, painting them, and grinding the concrete floors. We discovered all the things you have to do to obtain an occupancy permit while remaining ignorant of all the things we should have had permitted.

After we opened the center, we suffered disappointment because students didn't want to show up and work on their homework. Surprise, surprise. We learned the value of listening to students before serving them. They helped us understand what they needed and wanted. Our tutoring center became an after-school center.

Things grew. More students showed up. Some seemed to thrive; others didn’t. We attended graduation ceremonies, and we attended funerals. We embarrassed students at their jobs, and we prayed with students in the hospital. We knew what we knew, and we didn’t know just how much we didn’t know. We didn’t have a grand whiteboard plan. (If we did, we certainly don’t remember it.) We just put one brick on top of the next. We discovered a need, observed an opportunity to address that need, and said yes to Jesus as He invited us into His slow, frustrating, ordinary, and redemptive movement in our small corner of the earth. The story of Éleos has been a story of stumbling forward.

As we have stumbled our way forward, we’ve seen others get caught up in the mess of this ministry along with us. We’ve had the privilege of linking arms with hundreds of people from our community and beyond. Perhaps a more accurate way to describe our story is to say we have not just been stumbling forward… we’ve fallen head over heels, and God has created a snowball of grace through the tangled-up mess of His people trying to listen, learn, and say yes. Hundreds of us.

I can’t tell you how it happened, but today I look back on a ministry marked by God’s grace. I’ve seen lives changed for all of eternity. I’ve seen millions of dollars sown into my neighborhood, providing opportunities students might never have had. I’ve seen young people move from poverty into abundance. I’ve seen students grow up. I’ve seen some come back on staff to serve the next generation. I’ve seen more Christians than I could have ever dreamed choose to mentor, to volunteer, to provide meals, to donate, and to regularly get on their knees and pray for students they had grown to know and love.

No whiteboard magic. Tons of grace. And an awareness of a foundation laid by the generation that came before us. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate 10 years of ministry than to give God glory for His tireless work in the world around us, and for the undeserved kindness of receiving an invitation to join Him in His generations-old mission to make all things new. God has been at work for millennia using ordinary people to accomplish His eternal purposes in the world. What a gift to join Him in that work.

We would be honored if you would join us as we stumble forward… head over heels in this tangled-up mess we call mercy.