For the past two years I have had the privilege of being involved in the Don’t Walk By outreach. My role is training over 1,000 volunteers for outreach to the homeless on the street of NYC. Here is a photo of a typical night during this 5 night outreach.

It has been really amazing and I would like to invite you to participate. We are especially in need of outreach team leaders. We’re still seeking 50 more Team Leaders to sign up. Would you consider signing on as a Team Leader for one (or more than one!) of the Saturday outreach events? Do you know one or two of your friends you could invite to join you in this important service? If each of our Team Leaders brought on 2 friends to serve as aditional Team Leaders, we would be in great shape!

To provide practical and scriptural support to those who are already signed up or are considering the role, we’re holding a Team Leader training this Tues, Dec 7 (THIS Tuesday!) from 7-8:30pm at Calvary Baptist Church at 123 W 57th St. If you can join us, will you please reply to this email to let us know you’ll be there?

Included here is a link to the Don’t Walk By registration page which contains info about the Team Leader role and links to info about the overall effort http://dontwalkby.org/main/how-to-help/.

Below is an article I wrote recently that was published in The Love Express and the Tri-State Voice. It gives lots of details. If you haven’t seen the Don’t Walk video yet, you really should. It’s a short and excellent video that has been shown to thousands now. Here is the article:

Imagine your desperation if you found yourself suddenly out of work, unable to pay for housing and suddenly thrust into the world of homelessness. Maybe even in your state of depression, you turn to liquid comfort to warm your body and numb your heart. Now imagine that it happened in the dead of winter and you were forced to find refuge on the streets of New York City, shuffling from one feeding program to another, searching for a lifeline to get back on your feet again.

We must place ourselves in other’s shoes to understand what kind of devastation the homeless must feel after having lost all sense of security. Compassion demands that believers do something to bring hope and help, but how?

January 8, 2011 marks the 3rd Annual Don’t Walk By outreach to the homeless organized by the NYC Rescue Alliance. For the last two years over 1,000 volunteers from over 100 churches have over a five-week period walked every block on the island of Manhattan on a search and rescue mission for streetbound homeless people. This year the outreach runs each Saturday evening from January 3 through February 5.

Amazingly, each year over 1,000 homeless people have been engaged and impacted by the love of Christ through volunteers. The strategy is for volunteers to meet at 2pm a specified anchor church in the zone of Manhattan that is being targetet that week. At the church, these volunteers receive training in practical ways to engage the homeless during the outreach. After that, they are fed some warm soup, and sent out in teams to walk their portion of the city that night. Volunteers take out goodie bags of items that people on the streets need, along with information on resources to help them get off of the streets.