Sacramento Homeless blog

Three weeks ago, Union Gospel Mission’s star visiting preacher, Jimmy Roughton, said something -- an aside from the thrust of what he came to say -- that was very true, and relates to some discussions that have been going on lately. I wasn’t taking notes, but the gist of what he said to the congregation was this: I know you guys have a lot of preachers that come in here and lecture you or scold you about your rough life and rough ways and want you to feel bad about yourselves. But you guys know I love you, and I understand you, and I used to be out there myself, for ten years. During the lost 1980s, I was out there with you, so I know what it’s like. I’m here as an Encourager. I truly want the best for you. There are many reasons Roughton is a highly effective preacher to the mission’s constantly shifting congregation, but the connection he makes and maintains every night he speaks is the heart of his success and popularity, even for those of us who aren’t the addicts which are...

Most of the preachers at the Union Gospel Mission are talented and passionate and are empathetic (or, try to be) with the congregants.  A few, like Jimmy Roughton and Brett Ingalls, compose exquisite sermons, that have an arc leading to a point, and, in Roughton's case and in the case of those from Heart Talk ministry, love is expressed for guys they are speaking to, explicitly. But that leaves more than a few who clearly don't work very hard, if at all, at coming up with a sermon.  Often, what they have to say is blueplate fundamentalism, that wanders and can have no point, is mostly accusatory, and can focus quite a lot on the torment of hell.  For them, the finger wagging from an essay Mike Lux wrote is somewhat appropriate. This from Mike Lux's essay " How Do Christians Become Conservative? " in the Huffington Post [with emphases, mine]: Conservative Christians' primary argument regarding Jesus and politics is that all he cared about...

Jimmy Roughton speaking before the Union Gospel Mission congregation. [Photo kiped from the UGM website .] We were told beforehand by Brother Bill and, again, in the course of things, that Jimmy Roughton is nearing the 21st anniversary of the day in his life that he left drugging and the street for being a Christian, and a year thereafter, becoming a neophyte preacher at the beginnings of being a dedicated, reliable fixture on the UGM calendar. I don't want to overstate it, so I'll put it this way: There were a few of us ― modestly, at very least that many ― who were awed by Jimmy Roughton's presentation last night at the Union Gospel Mission and were robust in our applause (if not cheers) and voicing of superlatives. Roughton [pronounced such that the first syllable rhymes with "wow."] always delivers an interesting, thoughtful and entertaining sermon. I've written about him about seven times earlier in my other blog , Homeless Tom . In one blogpo...

It was "Jimmy night" Wednesday night at the mission , and, per usual, Jimmy Roughton came with something fresh to say that made rousing and interesting points. The best of it was well into his talk when Jimmy told us about how being a Christian positively affected his life, giving him happiness, hope and joy. Less persuasive were things he said early on in his sermon about the lives and thought processes of non-Christians, or non-ripe Christians who didn't (yet) have a close, personal relationship with Christ and weren't joyfully anticipating their afterlife in heaven. Pascal's wager As he does often, Jimmy evoked one of his variants of Pascal's Wager . Last night, he did so near the beginning of his talk, citing Pascal explicitly. Pascal's Wager is this: "Even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because so living one has everything to gain, and nothing to lose." ...