Welcome to Our Table

     With thousands of non-profits in North Texas and fundraiser luncheons trending, one could begin to live off them if they needed. On Monday you could enjoy a meal at the Anatole, Tuesday the Hyatt and so on, leaving little need to pack your brown bag anymore.  Just this past week Mercy Street held their annual fall fundraiser luncheon.  But, I sensed it would be a bit different when the Mercy Street team kept saying it was being held, "at the black building next to the bridge."  

     The old abandoned bus warehouse at the foot of the pristine white Calatrava bridge proved to provide the perfect setting for what would be an hour sure to disorient anyone.  Often headlines and newscasts can paint West Dallas as a place to avoid or at least as a place you are sure to confirm you actually did lock your car and hide any belongings.  But, as we pulled up to this warehouse, teenagers (or "leaders" as Mercy Street likes to call them) from the community swarmed us with a warm respectful greeting that told me my stereotypes would have to stay in the car for the afternoon.  

     Our table setting was elegant, feeling like the Anatole, but apparently somehow handmade by the Mercy Street team.  To further disorient me and my luncheon expectations, Mercy Street had selected a keynote speaker few of the guests had ever heard of.  Melissa Hill, wife of Mercy Street's founder, has never written a book or won a championship, but what she would share would quickly help the guests see why she was selected as the keynote.  

     Melissa and her husband helped make sense of why Mercy Street's luncheon was such a set of contrasts.  11 years ago Mercy Street was conceived as a contrast when the Hill family chose to move from the side of town everyone wants to live to the side most people avoid.  Melissa spoke of how God had deeply impressed on them that West Dallas was a place of beauty.  In the abandoned warehouses and low-performing schools and fatherless homes there was beauty to be discovered and celebrated.  

     This substantial non-profit (now 24 staff, 350 volunteers and $2 million budget) finds its underpinnings in this belief, that God wants to spark community restoration as his people engage in mutually transforming relationships with its future leaders.  The way the Hills open their home to the neighborhood has clearly become beautifully ingrained into what today is a non-profit with a love affair for their neighbors.