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It started with one person in crisis, a prostitute. She came, got help, and brought someone else who needed help. Bruce Deel, founder of the City of Refuge in downtown Atlanta, shares how it all began with Spencer Burke, host of ThinkFWD.

He came to Atlanta to close a church and sell the property. While there, a woman in crisis—the prostitute—walked in and asked for help. And helping that women led to helping another person and another. “We were conned by God,” says Bruce, who eventually bought the property and moved there with his family. Rather than live in a place of safety and going from there to a place of life-change, they lived in that place of life-change. And, Bruce says, while helping others, the City of Refuge changed their lives too.

Bruce and Spencer talk while touring the City of Refuge. “If its benevolent care, we’re probably doing it,” laughs Bruce. They provide food, clothing, shelter, rehab, and medical services all on site. They have facilities for homeless moms and their children, and for homeless women without children. They support these women and families to restore their dignity and give them responsibility, moving them from “the margin to the middle” through life skills, day care centers, and tutoring programs for the children. City of Refuge is in the process of building independent living units for families that have “graduated” from the program but still need support services.

They feed 19,000 people a month, and solicit goods and products from all over, sharing what they receive with other nonprofits in the area through a distribution center. Volunteers come each day simply to sit and talk with the people who come for a meal—to share life and build relationships. And coming soon is a medical clinic, respite, care and orthodontic clinic.

One of their innovative programs is the 180° Kitchen. It’s a way to help young men and women in crisis turn their lives around. Students 18 – 25 years old learn culinary skills in the 12-week training program, and afterward, the City of Refuge helps them get jobs with chefs around Atlanta. The goal is for these young adults to learn not only culinary skills and perhaps gain a future career, but also to learn life skills in the process.

Bruce says that sometimes people come and are overwhelmed by it all. So he shares how the City of Refuge started with one person needing help. He encourages them to start by helping one person, and see what happens. Take Vanessa, for example, who was helped by the City and volunteers there now, making sandwiches. “This man saved my life,” she says about Bruce—and that’s a pretty great reward for both of them.

4 Responses to “Bruce Deel – 180 Degrees on Compassion”

1. Nate Says:
   March 18th, 2010 at 5:22 pm

   Spencer – I loved the video and the article, and always enjoy hearing about new things God is doing in places near and far. Unfortunately, I really have to take issue with the headline you posted via twitter and facebook to pull people in.

   “Why is Glenn Beck so afraid of people like Bruce Deel? See social justice in action this week on ThinkFwd:…”

   Either you’re using a completely false pretense to create a sensational headline and draw people in, or you haven’t been seen anything but the sensationalized headlines and soundbytes of others. Presently I choose to believe the latter is true, as you’ve always been a reputable source and a truthteller.

   Here’s a larger transcript of Glenn elaborating on the soundbyte pulled a few weeks ago (http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/37852/) but the premise of his argument is as follows:

   I won’t make this longer by going into all of the history of political systems co-opting words/phrases, but ‘Social Justice’ was cop-opted by Marx in the 1800s to mean statist control over socio-economic factors to redistribute wealth in order to destroy the class system and create a Communist structure.

   Social Justice has also prevailed in Christian circles to mean living out the Gospel through taking personal responsibility for helping the poor, orphan, widowed and marginalized.

   Obviously I am not talking about true human rights violations of life, liberty and property, just to be clear, rather social issues of a ‘welfare state’.

   Today there is rampant discussion of social justice to mean government taking over the role we as Christians should be playing in improving our society, and thus removing the concept of charity as a personal choice and responsibility, to charity by force (which ceases to be charity). Glenn’s warning was for those who are hearing the phrase ’social justice’ at their church, to ask questions about the meaning of that phrase. If it means government intervention, then yes, leave and find another church that embraces the counter-cultural teachings of Christ, who had nothing whatsoever to do with asking government to solve problems.

   But if it means, like Bruce Deel has done, to move into a community and be so transformed by the need around you, that you’re only recourse is to buckle in and help better the lives of others through your own hard work and ingenuity, then by all means, plug in and pour your life into the work of social justice.

   I apologize for the rather lengthy rant and extremely condensed outline of some immensely deep political concepts, but I truly admire the work you’re doing at theOOZE and was just a bit taken back by the headline this afternoon.

   Best wishes.

2. Jim Rupprecht Says:
   March 18th, 2010 at 5:50 pm

   Nice video Spencer, I really liked it.

3. Nathan Smith Says:
   March 19th, 2010 at 2:23 pm

   Wow – this was really cool to watch. Talk about being in the right place and the right time for the wrong reason. Was challenged by this one.

4. Jim Says:
   March 25th, 2010 at 2:54 pm

   Spencer: Great video! I’m stoked to know I had just a little hand in bringing you guys together. Your editor did a fabulous job splicing that together. Kudos!

   Jim Street

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