Walking Through Samaria

Meet Kitti Murray. Among other good things, she’s the founder and CEO of Refuge Coffee Co., which was created out of a dire need to make a way for peace, human connection and healing among multi-ethnic peoples a long way from home. In a country that too often ostracizes and assumes the worst about aliens and foreigners, Kitti swims against the stream, noting that “our country was founded by refugees. Jesus was a refugee.”

Her peacemaking and healing efforts revolve around a coffee shop in Clarkston, on the ragged edges of Atlanta, in a community CNN deemed the most diverse square mile in the world. She was determined to build a place where everybody can feel welcome, where people can sit down and lower their voices rather than raise them in acrimony and accusation.

“The thinking has shifted in our country, for some reason, from we allow people in and we help them based on their vulnerability to based on what they can do for us,” Kitti says. “And that shift is really troubling.”

So, she and her husband of 42 years, Bill — affectionately known to their nine grandkids as “Kiki” and “Chief” — try to counteract that shift by steering clear of agendas, be they political, cultural or otherwise. They show that being a Good Samaritan isn’t a mistake-free existence, but one that dares to get involved and meet needs where they arise.

Meet Sam Collier. He’s a pastor, speaker, writer, and host of the A Greater Story with Sam Collier TV show and radio podcast that currently airs in 100 million homes. He’s also the son who, along with his twin sister, Sara, was given up by a mother who couldn’t adequately care for twins by herself at age 21, after already having three kids. Though he was adopted into a great family in what Collier calls his “Moses story,” he never gave up finding his mother.

Thanks to Steve Harvey, the famous TV host, Collier and his sister were reunited with their mother, Elinor, on national television 25 years after the separation — and not just with her, but with three siblings they’d never met.

“God is still in the miracle business,” says Collier, who includes this in a book called A Greater Story. “He still can take a mess and turn it into a miracle. And in this season of Covid-19, civil unrest and all these things, we all need that. No matter if you’re Black, White, Asian or Hispanic, we all need to know that God can take our specific mess and create the miraculous out of it.”

Meet Jimmy Mellado. Born in El Salvador, he spent much of his youth becoming an elite decathlete — member of a national-championship team at Southern Methodist University in 1983, a participant for his native land in the 1987 Pan American Games and the 1988 Seoul Olympics.  

He still plays to win, but now it’s as the President and CEO of Compassion International, a Colorado-based, holistic-child development organization dedicated to the long-term development of children living in poverty around the world.  

His battle now centers around improving the lives of a staggering 385 million children across the globe who live on less than $1.90 a day, the World Bank definition of extreme poverty. Mellado says the key in being a Good Samaritan is to focus less on doing great works and more on being like Jesus Christ. 

“The most important contribution you’ll make to the kingdom of heaven isn’t what you, do but the person you’re becoming,” he, says. “And in becoming the person God wants you to become, you’ll of course will do those things, but they’ll be fruit of the person you’re becoming [rather] than human-driven.” 

Meet Dr. Tony Evans, the senior pastor of the Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, and

one of the country’s most respected leaders in evangelical circles. As a pastor, teacher, author and speaker, he serves the body of Christ through his unique ability to communicate complex theological truths through simple, yet profound, illustrations.

While addressing the practical issues of today, Dr. Evans is known as a relevant expositor — and at no time might his insights be more relevant than they are now, in a country wracked by division and disunity over political and racial problems.

“The theology of unity is critical right now. Unity is oneness of purpose, not uniformity of persons,” Dr. Evans says, adding that God “will not allow His Unified Person to be comfortable in a disunified environment. … God’s glory will only be manifested in biblical unity. When Satan is able to keep us illegitimately disunified, we keep God’s glory at bay.”

Dr. Evans says the church has been a “co-conspirator” in slavery and Jim Crow discrimination, by “giving it theological and religious sanction, either by actively endorsing or passively not speaking against it.” But now, he says, the church must lead racial reconciliation, effecting change by serving others. “When we can get into a serving mentality rather than a seminar mentality,” he says, “then we can see the fruits of racial reconciliation.”

Meet Dr. Ray Norman, Global Sector Lead, WASH of World Vision International. The son of medical missionaries, Dr. Norman is married to Hélène, a French national, and they have two adult children, Nathaniel and Hannah. He has spent more than 20 years leading and managing water, agriculture and poverty-reduction programs in developing regions. 

An American raised in rural west Africa, Dr. Norman has spent his life committed to poor and vulnerable communities — and at no time was this more evident than in the aftermath of 9/11. He was living in Mauritania, a Muslim country with a foreboding climate and topography — spiritually and geographically — at the western end of the Sahara Desert. He and Hannah, then 10 years old, were shot at point-blank range by a Muslim extremist. While his pastor and friends advised him to flee and shut down operations, Dr. Norman thrust his Christian witness into overdrive.

“My question after I was shot and people were telling us to shut down was, ‘What kind of witness is this when, all of a sudden, we become vulnerable?’” Dr. Norman says. “Do we shut down our end of the deal? Do we pack our bags and go home, especially in a Muslim country?”

They went home, but just long enough to heal. Not only did they return to Mauritania, they forgave their gun-wielding assailant and advocated to get him freed from prison. Back in the United States now, Dr. Norman and his wife are members of Living Water Community Church in Harrisburg, PA, an inner city; multi-ethnic church that works to bring justice and hope to the urban communities it serves.

Meet Jay Stewart and Derrick Hawkins, an unlikely pairing of pastors from North Carolina. Stewart, a fiftysomething White man, and Hawkins, a thirtysomething Black man, knew that something needed to be done to speak to the racial rift among Christians. The spotlight found them when a 43-year-old Black man was shot to death by a Charlotte policeman in September 2016, just after their improbable joining of forces. But the two held fast, believing that God had united their congregations preemptively to bring about healing.

“I want to be voice for racial reconciliation,” Hawkins says, “but I also want to be a voice for racial equity.” His decision did not come without cost. “I took a lot of flak and controversy for the decision and the stand I made … but I believe it is imperative for us to have these conversations.”

Said Stewart: “We have to be willing to cross the road, the whole premise for this podcast. A lot of people don’t understand the incredible amount of racial tension that existed between Jews and Samaritans. … It’s been costly for Pastor Derrick to make the decision he made. It’s been costly for me. I’ve had people quit our church because I’ve used the #Black Lives Matter.”

Meet Katie Kenny Phillips, author of the “God, You Make Me Feel … “ children’s book series and foster care advocate. She is mother to five human beings and a pencil-eating Australian Labradoodle that they named Norm, after the “Cheers” character from the show where everybody knows your name. Don’t ask why, but, unlike the character who heads straight for the bar, he doesn’t answer, “Beer.”

She calls being a foster parent “a broken and beautiful road” she follows as a means of “pouring Jesus into kids.” People love to read when she blogs about the subject, but getting them to do more than simply read about it is a whole other matter. “Not everyone is meant to foster,” she says. “Everyone can help but not everyone is called to bring kids into your home.”

Meet Philip Langford, the president of IJM United States, a part of the global International Justice Mission organization dedicated to combatting modern-day slavery, sex trafficking and abuses of state power. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry that exists because oppressors can freely abuse vulnerable people without fear of punishment.

With his legal skills, Langford has been on the front lines of the battle in places like India and has helped IJM fight injustice in places like Kenya, Uganda and the Philippines. “It has always been the people of God who have had a prophetic voice to rulers about how they use their power,” Langford says, adding that Christians everywhere need to join the chorus. “We have to find our prophetic voice as a church to rulers.”

Langford currently lives in northern Virginia with his wife, Lacy, and their five children.

Meet Pat and Sue Bradley, who began what is now Crisis Aid International by providing 2-pound bags of rice to people in South Sudan. That blossomed into a ministry that has served people in crisis from 11 countries. With partners, they have provided nearly 15 million pounds of food and serve more than 2.4 million adults and malnourished children. They have rescued more than 1,050 girls from sex trafficking, girls who ranged in age from 4 to 30 years.  

They had to get their own house in order before they could do that, however. “It got to the point where my drinking destroyed our marriage,” Pat said. “She, for lack of better terms, kicked me out of the house and she divorced me, which really got my attention.” But when Pat got saved and committed himself to sobriety, God restored them over time and they got remarried to each other. 

In today’s episode, the Bradleys talk about what that reunion has produced, how God helped them venture into destitute red-light districts in East Africa and snatch hopeless girls out of prostitution. They even bought a brothel and turned it into a retraining center, so that once free, the girls could become women who remained free indeed. 

Meet Beth Guckenberger, a Co-Executive Director of Back2Back Ministries, an international Christian non-profit organization dedicated to providing holistic orphan care to orphans and vulnerable children. She is the recipient of the 2013 International Network of Children’s Ministry Legacy Award and the Cincinnati Christian University Salute to Leaders Award for her and Back2Back’s impact on children.

Global statistics say there are 163 million orphans and that half the world’s 2 billion children have experienced trauma. Beth and her co-executive director husband, Todd, believe they and Good Samaritan-minded Christians can do something about it. “Whatever hand we’ve been dealt, whatever circumstance we find ourselves in, that’s not the end of the story,” she says. “It really takes the intervention of one safe adult in the life of a child to turn it around.”

The Guckenbergers have walked that walk: Between biological, foster and adopted children, they have raised 11 children, while living in Monterey, Mexico, and Cincinnati. She has found the time to write nine books, while traveling and speaking regularly at conferences, youth gatherings and church services.