The parking lot church in Dallas has continued to grow as a ministry to homeless people seeking togetherness, redemption and daily necessities.
Nathan HunsingerOne hot, sunny Sunday in fall, as he has done so many times, Pastor Leon Birdd stood outdoors, wearing a microphone in the center of a circle of people. Many of the people around him. Birdd has a husky build and a short, white beard that wraps around his face. Surrounding him on that day were members of S.O.U.L. Church, a ministry and nonprofit based in Dallas. Some of them had simply lost their way in life.
Skid said he didn’t have to tell him what his worst sin was but that Jesus would forgive him for it. “Well, good for Jesus. I can’t forgive myself,” Birdd replied.“I ain’t saying that,” Birdd replied. Skid insisted that’s exactly what he was saying. As the sun beat down on everyone that hot fall Sunday, the circle of people began to disperse. Some went to the food line to fill their stomachs with BBQ chicken sandwiches and macaroni and cheese, while others hung back to pray.McKernan, 66, said she was living at The Bridge the first time she heard the music at S.O.U.L. Church. She wasn’t very happy about it. “I was furious,” she said.
Today, she feels like the whole situation was supernatural in a way. She had a hiding spot built in her car where she would usually keep her drugs. “Every time I got in, I put my drugs there and locked it up,” she said. That night though, she had drugs in her purse and in the passenger seat of her car, which was highly unusual for her.Ready to die, she had crack, heroin and meth in her car, but she was stopped by police because of a broken headlight.
“I’m looking at him like he’s a God of anger and is just mean. I believed he’d put a target on my kids’ back and that he was picking off my kids because of my lifestyle,” she said. “But that’s not what it is. I know that now. I didn’t then.” When Birdd first approached him, the man said, “Leave me alone, I’m not drunk,” Birdd recalled. He said the man talked kind of funny and he almost couldn’t understand what he was saying. “I don’t care if you’re drunk,” Birdd replied. “Do you want a ride?”
Shuemake insisted that Birdd come and pick him up that Saturday at 5 a.m. to feed the homeless. “I ain’t gonna do that,” Birdd thought. “I dropped him off and that was it.” Another man, Matt Sloan, was also staying at The Bridge when he first heard the music. He was using meth at the time. “I heard the music, went across the street, saw the church and prayed out loud to myself and said ‘Jesus, if I ever get out of this jam I’m in, I will come to this church,’” he recalled. “That’s what I’ve done and I’m four and a half years sober.” Now, he has a bus that he uses to pick people up and take them to S.O.U.L. He also feeds the homeless during the week.
Jennifer said she wears a lot of hats within the church and it can be hard to be faced with all the struggles of the people they serve. “I’ve found that there are a lot of hardships,” she said. “Then, you have people who, it hasn’t been a lifelong struggle — it’s something that just happened.”“The struggle for me is that there’s a lot of things I can’t do anything about.
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