Ask Big Dog: October Edition
Marlon "Big Dog" Brown experienced a twenty year run of homelessness, drug addiction, and jail time before Jesus changed his life. By God's grace, he has come to know Jesus and through Jesus he has been sober for 11 years. Marlon began working at SOS in 2004 as an Assistant Construction Director. Big Dog spends his free time serving those who are living the life he used to live. He desires to see individuals find Jesus and leave their destructive lifestyles.
This blog series will be featured the first Wednesday of each month. You can follow along with his ministry on his personal Facebook page or his Street Ministry Facebook page.
Question:
I don’t know or interact with any poor people, but I would like to. What are some ways I could get involved?
Response from Big Dog:
1. Partner with the people who are involved, whether it be individuals, churches, or ministries. That would be the easiest, safest way to start.
2. Find out where poor people are, you and a friend or you and a group of friends approach poor people. This is a more risky approach.
3. This is the most risky approach: just walk up to someone on the street and ask them how you can help them.
These suggestions may or may not be applicable to you in your situation. Size, race, life experience, comfort with salvation, these are all things that I consider valuable to my ability to minister to folks on the street. These are all factors to think about when considering ministry. There is an assumed risk with almost anything we do, and ministry is no different. Just like Jesus talked about there being the necessity of considering the cost associated with being his disciple, there are risks, or “costs” with doing ministry to the poor. You must consider the time, energy, and money that it can take. The Parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates the cost of all these things: time, energy, money.
We must be willing to make sacrifices for the betterment of others.
We must be willing to make sacrifices to exhibit truly loving our neighbors as Christ said we should.
***If you have a question you would like to ask Big Dog, please email it to askbigdog@sosmemphis.org or through social media using the hashtag #AskBigDog.