Pastor Paul's Remarks at Transgender Day of Remembrance
Pastor Paul's remarks at the Transgender Day of Remembrance observance at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta on November 20, 2009.
A Day in the Life of a Street Pastor
I get asked a lot what my day is like -- as in, "Pastor, just what is it that you do all day?" And honestly, most of my days are spent living out the words of Matthew 25:31-40. I know for some this might sound hokey, but it is truly what I spend most of my time doing.
So, I want to share with you the story of Kurt [not his real name], a young man who came to my attention after he found himself in a local jail after an accidental brush with the law.
By the time I got to the jail, I had been told that Kurt had just been casually informed by a jail employee that the “mandatory intake blood work” revealed Kurt to be HIV-positive. Then they had tossed him into his cell to be alone with this new knowledge. So he was alone in his cell with the agony of knowing his life now had a terrible and awful stigma attached to it.
When I met with Kurt I could tell that in his eyes, his world was crumbling. He believed that when he left the jail he'd have nowhere to live, no job, and a new medical condition that he didn't know the first thing about. When I walked into the visitation area, I could also see in Kurt's eyes that he thought I had come to preach to him.
