Email: Joshua Peck

Happy New Year!

I hope that you and yours had a wonderful holiday season and that you’ve enjoyed the first few weeks of 2009. After a nice but full week back in the ‘burgh I’m back down to Atlanta, busy as ever. January has been an extraordinarily busy month in the Outreach Center. Not only are more people than ever in need of assistance, but we are struggling, as all non-profits and churches are, to make do with fewer resources.

In addition to participating in the day-to-day life of the OAC, I also get to take on special projects every now and again. This month I’ve been helping out with Central’s Winter Studies Program. Let me tell you, these people are serious about their Sunday school. Over the holidays, they take a break from classes with titles like “Martin Heidegger: Stepping Back Behind the Onto-Theo-Logical Traditional Into Radical Post-Modernism” and “Who (or What) Comes After the God of Metaphysics” and mix it up with their own version of a J-term. The focus this year is on encountering homelessness face to face. Over the past four weeks different guest speakers and teachers have conducted a series of lectures and facilitated discussion about, the “least of these” in our midst and how we as Christians are called to respond. For my part, I organized a series of Sunday luncheons following worship where we invited members to join us to share a meal and get to know a few of our long-term guests that we staff members connect with on a regular basis.

“Centralites,” as Central members refer to themselves, are a rather involved group of folks. When I first arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to see how willingly and enthusiastically the Central family commits its time, talent, and treasure to helping the least of those among us. It is a congregation actively involved in the hard and dirty work of tilling the soil so that the kingdom of God might grow. That said, between our increasingly busy lives and the many, many things always going on here, it’s easy for many members to go along without ever making the time to see first hand what this community is doing. The lunches have provided the opportunity for our guests and members to sit down together and share their stories over a meal. It can be disconcerting when you realize how many stereotypes about the homeless you’ve unknowingly bought into when you take the time to make a connection. People find themselves surprised to be talking with someone not all that different from themselves. I think it’s safe to say that everyone came away from the table a little better for it.

Thanks again for all of your prayers and support. This year is proving to be an amazing experience, one that I will surely carry with me throughout my life in the church.

Here’s hoping for a Steelers victory—wish I could be back there for it. But I’m happy to report that I’ll be meeting up with a few other exiles from the Steeler Nation, and we’re preparing to make a scene with our terrible towels!

Peace,