Brian Coats:  

meone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not as simple as it seems. My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, or to be part of some impressive project is so strong that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups, and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets. It is difficult not to have plans, not to organize people around an urgent cause, and not to feel that you are working directly for social progress. But I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them, but truly love them. " Bell: My experience has been that there’s an interior journey into a grace and peace that’s right here, right now. There is bliss, a joy, a euphoria right here that God wants to give every single one of us in this space right now. And that so much effort is spent, “If I just build that, accomplish that, obtain that, purchase that, get that done, then there will be like an ‘Ahh!’” The one thing that I know for sure -- and I don’t know much -- is that at the heart of the gospel is, “You are blessed, right here, now. And in your lostness and strangeness and oddness and inability to get it right, Jesus comes to announce, ‘You’re loved.’”".