Finding San Franciscos lost
North American Mission Board missionary Eric Bergquist is a detective who finds missing persons in San Francisco, California. Hes not your run-of-the-mill detective. Lets just say hes on special assignment from God. Eric serves as the director of Page Street Baptist Center in San Francisco.

Eric Bergquist stands in front of the Page Street Baptist Center in San Francisco. photo by michael macor

Page Street is a community center for homeless people, runaways, unwed mothers, street kids, drug addicts and anyone else who happens to need a place where they can feel loved and needed. So, where does detective work fit into the picture? Eric believes that everyone has a place to serve. Thats where the detective work begins. Eric gets to know the people who come to Page Street and discovers their unique talents and skills. Then he finds jobs they can do at the center. Page Street doesnt just offer these people food, but also an opportunity to give back to their community. They engage as many people as possible at the level at which they can contribute. 

This re-defines people as contributors, not dependents, says Eric. When a young woman came to Page Street for a meal, Eric gave her the assignment to make salad dressing. The woman didnt know how to cook, so Eric got his wife, Linda, on the phone and she talked the young woman through the process. When the meal was served, everyone complimented the woman on the salad dressing. She felt a sense of accomplishment. Suddenly she was a contributor instead of a dependent.

We must make a choice to get to know people, says Eric. Sometimes in evangelism we try to cast people into our image. Its not about making them fit a mold. Its about getting them in touch with God and helping them contribute to the full work of God. Not only does Eric introduce people to Christ, he shows them how they can serve God and each other.

Eric also has a program called Common Grace. He gathers an improbable mix of about 12 people together for a meal at the center. Beforehand, he invites some local Christians to join him and sets the date and time. On the day of the meal, Eric goes out to the streets about 30 minutes before the meal and gathers people to join them. The mixture of people is intentionalthey might be gay and straight, black and white, homeless and homeowners or young and old. The purpose is for people who normally would not spend time together to take a step toward knowing people who are different from them.

Everyone helps with the preparation and clean up afterwardinvesting time in one anothers lives.

Open doors plant churches
Truck drivers who stop near Milford, New Hampshire, have come to expect an unusual Sunday with Joe Grenier. The mathematics and physics teacher, foster parent and North American Mission Board church-planting missionary intern has seen a break in the rough and tumble stereotypes of his congregants; hes seen tears in the eyes of truck drivers.

Joe Grenier invites truck drivers to leave their cabs and join him for worship. photo by rich beauchesne

But it has nothing to do with sleep deprivation from long days on the road and everything to do with the love of Christ meeting the culture of the road, a culture where prostitutes and other temptations lurk even in well-lit corners.

Ive had men leave and unite with fathers, travelers admit infidelity to their wives and hardened hearts soften toward Christ, says Joe.

Theyre stuck in these places, he adds, speaking of seemingly more than geography. Theyre waiting for a new load and cant go anywhere. So they come to the service. This is Joes mission, to meet people who cant go anywhere else but to Christ. My job is to find someone whos open to hearing more about the gospel, he says.

To take the gospel to the surrounding area during the summer weeks, Joe, his two foster children and often a group of volunteers from seminaries and churches go door-to-door with a survey or set up a car wash in heavily traveled areas.

Joes at a point in his career as a church planter intern where hes making contacts and carrying the gospel to surrounding neighborhoods, and one quality he tries to instill in volunteers who work with him is showing genuine interest in peoplemeeting them where they are as a person instead of only as a possible convert. Planting the seed firmly is more important to him, he says, and without a relationship its impossible to break the sometimes-hard soil of New England.

The most important thing is to leave the door open for future contact, he says. And it works. Many people in this area just want someone to care about them, and we do.

While Joe says he hasnt been as successful planting churches in the last year as hed hoped, he holds fast to his plan to have five to 10 churches in the next five to 10 years with congregations reaching no more than 200 members.

He says he wants the churches to feel more like small communities and less like vast operations. He wants the churches he helps plant to be based on the home Bible studies that form the root structure. After these churches exceed 200 congregants, the vision is to start another church.

Joe works with the New Hampshire Baptist Association and other church planters to make this dream come true. And though he hasnt been able to attract a large number of consistent attenders, Joe continues to weather New England in hopes that one day the Holy Spirit will warm some hearts.

In the winter, people arent too apt to open their door, especially to talk, Joe says. But I can see the doors opening more and more and the conversations growing longer and longer, and thats why Im here.

Here I am, Lord, send someone else
The song came on again, If you need somebody, Lord, Ill go. Here I am. Send me. And once again she turned it off. Dana Huffman thought that by turning off the words to that song she could stop the Lord from working them out in her life.

I didn't realize that the prisoners of a detention center in my area were crying out, Where are the churches? I didn't realize that in an answer to that cry the Lord was going to send me, she says. Now Dana leads a Bible study every other Saturday night at the Breckenridge County Detention Center in Kentucky.

Dana Huffman enjoys her visits with the women who reside at the Breckinridge County Detention Center. photo by Jonathan Roberts

She was driving home from running errands one day when the Lord urged her to go to the detention center. I knew it was God speaking to me because He said something I would never say, says Dana. What about those women at the prison?

Dana's first reaction was to run, trying to ignore Gods call. But He continued reminding her about the needs of those women. He made it clear to Dana that He wanted her to do more than just write letters or send care packages—things she was comfortable doing. He wanted her to step outside her comfort zone and take the gospel to them face-to-face.

She finally submitted to God and within the month she was in a class watching training videos that showed how prisoners might try to con her into relaying messages to people outside. Before she knew it, she was driving down the road to the detention center.

As I turned in my keys at the control room, butterflies were flapping wildly in my stomach. I had worn a plaid shirt and my work boots so I wouldn't look like such a sissy, says Dana. I was buzzed through a set of steel doors, and I entered a cold little meeting room. There before me sat eight women in bright orange uniforms.

Much to Danas surprise and relief, the women weren't as scary as shed anticipated. Their uniforms were bright, but their expressions were dull. Their faces weren't unkind; they simply mirrored how they felt. Hurt. Rejected. Angry. Disappointed. When I looked at those women I saw pieces of myself. Those women needed Jesus.

Because she responded to His call, Dana is able to show these women that God cares about them. She finds ways to tell them how much God loves them and how Christ died for them. I'm not a very good evangelist, but a month ago in one of our meetings I shared the gospel using The Two Hands of God explanation from an article in On Mission [September-October 2002]. That night a lady named Nancy prayed to receive Christ. Dana continues to see how God is working in the lives of these women and in her own life as He stretches her in this ministry.

Today, I rejoice that God chose me—a sissy, city slicker and a scaredy-cat—to minister to rural Kentucky prisoners. Next time the song "Send Me" comes on, I guess Ill just go ahead and sing along.