Trevor Berg

Is This Sustainable?

This is hard! Working in the inner-city, I see a lot of things I never would have anywhere else. Every person I see tends to be in some sort of urgent situation that feels like it needs immediate attention. I find myself always attempting to give that attention, and that is tiring, that is a huge weight. How can one person help 5-10 people through their daily emergency each and every day. So-and-so is getting hit by her boyfriend, I think so-and-so might be getting molested, so-and-so will be homeless if they can’t get $200 together, so-and-so is so drunk they can’t find their way home, so-and-so hasn’t eaten in three days.

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO!? I love these people, they are my friends, and they are in crisis. I asked my friend Robb Massey that question one day over lunch, and his response caught me.

The people in Point Douglas, they need you, they need you to be there a long time. They need someone who is committed to them, and doesn’t just show up pretending to care and leaving when it get’s hard, so “…It’s more important that you are there 12 years, then that you respond to whatever current emergency there is.”

Woah, I knew he was right, I knew I was being very reactionary, and not thinking about how to be there for this community for the long term. I know I need to think like this more often.

It is more important that I be here for a long time, then that I respond to whatever current emergency there is.

“Courage” for Mission Trips

I have been on a few mission trips, and I have taken young people on a number of them as well. I understand that they can be intimidating and scary. You are headed to a new place, a new culture and you are being asked to connect with the people and try to make a difference in their lives, THAT’S PRESSURE!!

Well, I have a friend who loves to go on mission trips, he loves them so much he doesn’t wait for some organization to send him, he gathers up Bible’s and goes. Here is a guy who loves to talk about Jesus and share his passion for Jesus with the people around him. When I first met him, a couple months ago, he told me about a mission trip he had done, where he hopped in a canoe and paddled down the Red River, across Lake Winnipeg and to a Reserve to hand out Bibles, he stayed for a while, prayed with people and paddled back home.

One time I noticed I hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks, and the next time I saw him he declared, “I went on another mission trip!” He spoke emphatically with his whole body. “I got my Bible Dealer to give me 100 Bibles and I hitchhiked my way up to the Brokenhead Reserve. The Holy Spirit was so present with me through this whole thing, which is such a good thing because there was so much darkness up there. I was just surrounded by it! The drugs, the sex, the sniffing, you name it, it was happening, all around me, I had to get out of there.” “You wouldn’t believe it, I wound up staying with a believer, she took me in and fed me for the whole time I was there!” “Did they know you were coming?” I asked. “Oh no, I just went up there on my own, once I got all of the Bibles distributed, I needed to get out of there.”

A few weeks later I asked him if I could buy him lunch, when we met he told me that he was headed on another mission trip up to a Reserve that afternoon. He talked and talked about these discipleship programs that he had been to all over North America, that had given him all this training that lead to this moment. I asked him what kind of programs they were. He started telling me about 6 or 7 programs he had been to…they were all addictions programs. He said, “I am trying to get people to follow Jesus, because if they follow me, they will fall!”

I asked him how long he had been clean and sober, and the look on his face told me I had asked the wrong question, or at least made the wrong assumption. He mumbled something about being sober for a long time, “but I drink every now and then.” “The last two times I went on a mission trip, I had a real hard time trusting God to help me through it, so the night before I left, I GOT TOTALLY HAMMERED!”

I think that’s what they call, liquid courage.

I think it’s amazing though, here is this young man, who truly loves Jesus, and is an imperfect human being, but is being used to do amazing things! Sounds like pretty much every Christian I know.

What Progress Looks Like

I have a friend, let’s call him George. When I first met George, he was always moving, always doing something, and if you spoke with him…you didn’t actually speak, it was impossible. He would not stop talking, or leave any room for you to say anything back. The topics he spoke about were always intense, politics, the 1%, the environment, or music, but music at a level of intensity that is difficult to imagine.

George was also very paranoid, and constantly afraid that people were judging him, backstabbing him or just in general hating on him in an unjustified way.

Perhaps that was why he was uninterruptable, that way you didn’t have a chance to judge him, that way you couldn’t have hurt him. He would often come up, speak for 10-15 minutes and then leave.

One day, George came flying down the street on his bike straight towards me, he got off his bike about 3 feet from me while still riding at near full speed. He slammed his bike down, stormed up to me, and looked at me with intense anger, and yelled, “IS IT TRUE?! DO YOU HATE ME?!” and added quite a bit of other stuff, and words…I’ll let you filll in the blanks however you want…

When I got the chance, actually before I got the chance (since George is uninterruptable, you have to just barge in with your own words) “GEORGE, IT IS NOT TRUE! I LOVE YOU!” It’s a little weird to yell those words at someone, but that’s what I needed to do, so he would actually hear them above his own rambling anger. I said it a few more times, and put my hand on his shoulder gently to indicate it with touch. All of the sudden George softened. “YOU DO?” he yelled. “I do,” I said gently. “Well…thanks,” he said, “that’s so nice!” and he rode off.

A few weeks later George started coming to Grace Point’s services. He was still himself, very intense and uninterruptable, pacing in and out of the building, grabbing coffee, spilling coffee, yelling at people and always getting someone ticked. But he was there, and we tried our best to love him.

A few weeks after coming to Grace Point, George came up to me and said, “I’VE BEEN READING THE BIBLE, AND IT BELIEVES EVERYTHING I BELIEVE IN!” We spoke – or he spoke – some more and I left the monologue wondering, “is this what a conversion looks like for someone like this?”

About one year later, we were continuing to experience George, he got involved more, playing guitar, hurting people, and being part of our church family.

One day as a few of us on leadership were talking we wondered out loud, “are we really doing anything here?” One person said, “Look at George! of course we are!” We all kind of looked at each other a little skeptically, “George?!” “George is our shining light?!”

Then we started to reflect on it:

One person said, “yeah, he is being helpful around the building like crazy!”

another, “I went for lunch with him the other day, and I shared with him! He didn’t even interrupt me!”

another, “he sits longer, and he’s really listening to the messages during the service!”

another, “he is friendly, and sometimes serves others coffee when he’s up wandering around during the service!”

another, “sometimes he doesn’t dominate the conversation at Bible Study!”

Wow! This is what progress looks like! I love George!

When to Pay a Friends Rent?

A friend of mine came to Grace Point a while back, he always comes by. He’s a good friend, and fun to be around. I know he struggles with some addictions, but he rarely asks for money or anything…instead he panhandles at the corner of Higgins and Main.

One day, he said he was in big trouble. His rent money was stolen, and he didn’t have anything for rent. He was living in a bit of a strange situation, and he knew he would be kicked out if he didn’t have anything. I wrestled with this for a long time, and eventually called some friends. Together, could we come up with the $300 to pay his rent? Yes, that wouldn’t be that hard, but is it the right decision? I mean, he gets about $800 a month to live on, so it’s not like he’s rolling in cash anyway. When’s the last time I lived on $800 a month? Probably in High School when I worked at a Domo gas bar…

In the end I collected the money, and we paid his rent. He was extremely grateful, and couldn’t stop saying thank you…and…he could keep living where he was.

Throughout the next month, I could just tell that he was not doing well. Things were not good with his roommate, and he was clearly struggling hard with his addiction.

At the end of the next month he came to me again with another story about how his rent money had disappeared, and asking if we would be able to help him out again.

This time I didn’t wrestle with it as hard, but it still was kind of unimaginable to feel like I was putting someone out on the streets! However, I decided not to pay his rent.

The next week was horrible. He greeted me at the door of the church every morning first thing, and stayed all day. He had all his stuff with him, and he told me he was sleeping in the park across from the street. This was obviously not a good situation! He told me that Main Street Project wasn’t good because they were packed in there, and you had to sleep with your head on your backpack, so that no one would steal it in the night.

That week seemed like an eternity, as I carried the weight of his homelessness.

Turns out it was a good decision, and maybe that paying his rent in the first place was a bad decision to begin with.

One day he said to me, “I can’t keep living like this, can you take me to detox?” I couldn’t hold my excitement in, and jumped at the opportunity to help him sort himself out. It took a couple of days to get in (I should get in to the process of getting into treatment at another time!), but eventually he was there. I got to go see it with him, and tour the small facility and see where he would be for the next ten days.

Relief came over me, when I was able to drop him off and he said he was ready to make some big changes in his life.

He would eventually leave detox and move on to a treatment facility, it seems like his life is headed in a good direction!

This all left me with the question, “was it right to pay his rent in the first place?”

I am not sure about the answer to that question, I guess I believe it is always good to respond with compassion, but sometimes our compassionate giving doesn’t have it’s intended result.

Grace

I preached on grace one Sunday, later that week, the guys got together and discussed the idea of grace. The leader of the discussion said that he talked long, hard and earnestly about how we are imperfect and need so much grace, and how others are the same and need our grace.

So at the end of it all, once he figured he had gotten his point across, he decided to ask the following question:

“So, when you stand at the gates of heaven, what will you tell Jesus?”

The first guy, a man who has faced much criticism and hurt, people who don’t believe in him and people who call him down, he said, “I would say, Jesus, you are perfect, but I am almost perfect.”

Next was, a tough, muscular young man, a former drug dealer, “I would tell him, ‘Jesus, I don’t want to go into heaven, I want to stay on earth and fight evil!'”

When John told me this I couldn’t help but laugh. Here we are, banging our heads against the wall explaining grace…and…one thinks he doesn’t need grace…the other wants to punish sinners…WOW, we are good teachers!

Fires and Shoes

I was sitting down at the Youth in the Kitchen event and was chatting with my table about life and such and it came up that I had a fire at my house about 1 year earlier. “Jennifer”, who had not been really engaged in the conversation all of the sudden perked up. “You had a fire at your house?” she asked. I explained how I had, and told a bit of the story…perhaps trying to gain a little sympathy, or at least a bit of camaraderie as in, “I understand what it’s like to not have much.” When I finally stopped talking, she said something that stopped me in my tracks.

“I had a fire at my place too.”

“Really?! When?”

“A couple months ago.”

She said this with very little emotion. I asked some questions about it, and eventually I said, “did you have any insurance?”

“No.”

“Did any friends or family come around you to help you out?”

“No.”

My heart hurt for this young girl, and her family. She had just gone through what I had barely made it through…except I had a very supportive family, a church that cared deeply about us, friends who made it their priority to help us out, and INSURANCE that replaced everything we owned!

I didn’t know what to say, I’m sure I mumbled something like, “I’m sorry,” but I had no clue what to do or say after that.

That evening I was driving one of the leaders home after the evening. He said he knew this young guy who got in trouble with the law and the police had taken his shoes. So now he was wondering around in the winter with no shoes, “he has flip flops,” he said.

I couldn’t believe it! How could he not have shoes in this kind of weather. He asked me if I knew anyone that could help him out with some shoes. I told him that maybe I could. I explained how we had insurance on a lot of shoes (we had a whole bunch in a box that we were about to take to Value Village to give away – but insurance replaces those too) that we could replace, but didn’t really need. I said I would see if I could pick him up some shoes that would fit him.

I went to the store to find some shoes picked them up and brought them to this worker. I asked him about the boy who would receive them.

“Actually, he is Jennifer’s sister.”

My heart stopped for a minute. Here it was, a family who lost everything in a fire, and didn’t have insurance to replace it, and was in need at the moment, in that moment, God orchestrated it so that my insurance would replace some of their shoes.