We all know Jeff Foxworthy as one of the funniest people in America, but you might not have known that he’s been a Christian since he was 7 years old, and for the past 10 years has been serving the homeless men at the Atlanta Mission. He sat down with Andy Stanley, pastor of North Point Community Church, to talk about his work and how it all started.
I Just Said ‘Yes’
“I was with my girls at the Carter Center watching a documentary thing and then they had to go to the bathroom- and whatever you girls do in the bathroom takes a lot longer than what us guys do in the bathroom- so I’m killing time, and this guy has a table up from the Atlanta Mission. I took one of their brochures and as I’m reading it I’m like ‘oh, I didn’t realize this is a faith-based thing.’ The guy’s name was Joshua Harrelson and he said ‘Hey, if you want to have lunch…’ and he wrote his number down. I got home and I put it on the kitchen counter and for months- like 2 or 3 months- my wife would ask ‘can I throw this away?’ and I said ‘no- don’t throw that away yet.’ But it just sat there. Things came and went and I finally called him and we set up lunch. In my mind I was thinking, He wants something out of me. He wants me to do a show and donate the money or he wants me to do their commercials… he wants something. I asked him ‘What do you want?’ He said ‘I just want to have lunch.’ So he invited me down. This was my feeling about people that were homeless: Oh, there’s somebody homeless. Find a few bucks and they’ll go away, and I can go deal with what I’m dealing with. The first guy I met- now we’re in the middle of downtown Atlanta- was this white 21 year old kid named Jason. I’m looking at him like ‘Get a job! You lazy- what the heck. You’re 21 years old, what are you doing?’ So we sit down and Joshua says ‘Hey, Jason. Tell him your story.’
Jason says ‘Well, it was me and my brother and my mom and dad. And when I was 11, my mom killed herself. Then the next year, my brother killed himself. Then it was just me and my dad, and my second year of college, my dad killed himself. I just got tired of hurting and I just started getting high.’ And I’m looking at this kid and I’m thinking, I woulda got high, too. Oh…because when you get high or when you get drunk, you’re not a good employee, you don’t work, nobody wants to hire you, so you don’t have money, so you start borrowing and taking from people around you and that’s how you end up on the street. Some kind of hurt that you’re numb to. That’s how you end up on the street. That’s how you end up homeless. Something bad happened to you and you couldn’t get past it. So all of a sudden instead of being nameless and faceless, this was a real guy with a real story that really stunk. I’m looking at him and realizing I could be homeless. I could be you, because I would have gotten high, too.”
After this experience, Jeff had lunch several more times with Joshua before he finally got an answer to the question, “What do you want from me?” The answer was surprising. Joshua asked him to lead a Bible study small group for some of the guys at The Mission.
Jeff’s response: “There’s 6 and a half million people in Atlanta, and you can’t find anybody more qualified than me? Really?”
That’s how it all began: Jeff with 12 guys he enticed to show up with Chick Fil A chicken biscuits. He explains how he realized it was bigger than him, so he asked other people to come help him and how the success of the group is not because of him. “All I did was say ‘yes.’”
Jeff on Luke 15
Whenever new people come to the group, Jeff starts with Luke 15 and the parable of the Prodigal Son. Here’s how he describes it.
“I think it’s the greatest piece of literature ever written. It’s the story of one son that says ‘Hey, I want my inheritance-’ which in that culture meant ‘I wish you were dead. You’re not dying fast enough.’ So, he says to his dad ‘I wish you were dead. I want my money’ and goes out and squanders it on all the things the world tells you are cool: women, booze, and whatever. He ends up feeding someone’s pigs and wishing he could eat what they were eating. ‘Alright, I’ll swallow my pride and go back home to Dad.’ The part of the story I love is it says while he was still a long ways away, his father saw him- so, that’s an active thing. That’s not a passive thing. He’s searching the hilltops, waiting on this kid that said ‘I wish you were dead.’ They reunite, he puts on the ring, the robe, the sandals, meaning ‘You’re not a servant. You’re family.’ The son that stayed and had done everything right gets mad because the father said ‘Let’s kill the fatted calf’ and had a celebration because ‘my son that was once dead is now alive!’
Joke Time!
Jeff: You know who hated to see the son come home the most?
Andy: I would guess the brother, but…
Jeff: No, the fatted calf.
???????
Jeff: You’re going to use that down the road, though, I guarantee it!
Andy: No, I’m just not going to answer that question next service…
Jeff: Come on!
Signup For Our Email List
Stay up-to-date on what’s happening at 93.7 The Light, and new teachings available online. We are here to help you live a faithful life.
"*" indicates required fields
Back to the Parable
“But I think it’s just such a great analogy, because it’s called The Prodigal Son, but it’s not really about the son that went away, it’s not even about the son that stays and gets mad because they’re having a party, it’s about the love of the Father. The whole story is about that and that’s who God is.
You can’t be bad enough to make Him quit loving you and you can’t be good enough to make Him love you more.
I think sometimes, especially within the organized church, we become that son that stayed. We’re like ‘I’m going to do everything right, and You’ll love me more.’ And He’s like ‘No, that’s not possible. I don’t love you any more than I love that guy that’s smoking crack under the bridge. I love y’all the same.’ That’s what makes Him so cool, man. We don’t love that way. He loves that way.
Once you understand ‘oh, I AM loved…’ that’s what we all have in common. As a comedian, all I’m thinking about is ‘what do we all have in common?’ That’s what I look for comedy in. One thing we all have in common is everyone wants to be significant. Everybody wants to be worth something- and at the cross, God said “You’re not worth ‘something’, you’re worth everything. You’re worth everything to me. I’m going to give up my perfect Son FOR YOU. If you were the only person on the planet, I’m going to do this for you. I love you this much.”
In addiction, if you can ever get that hurt to heal, you can get restored. It doesn’t happen in every case, but it happens over and over and over again down there. Guys that were the hopeless heroin addicts that are out there making a difference. Got their own place, got marriages. We’re all damaged…every one of us is jacked up in some way and I think the thing that just thrills God’s heart is to see broken things restored.
Being Generous
How many people have been wrong about something? It’s funny when I look back at my life. Most of the things I argued vehemently for or against 30 years ago, I’ve totally changed my mind. So, The Mission has a wonderful thing- it’s called ‘being in the program’, and if you agree to get clean, if you’ll get sober, they’ll put you up for a year. They’ll feed you everyday, they’ll put you up for a year, but we’re going to go through emotional healing, spiritual healing, job attainment, all kinds of things. We want to restore you, we don’t want to keep just taking care of you because you’re homeless, we want you NOT to be homeless. After about a year of doing the program, Jim Reece, who quit his job as the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, to run the Atlanta Mission, just an amazing story. I said to Jim, ‘They need to bless somebody. We’re providing every meal, we’re providing the beds, we’re providing the towels and the soap. They need to bless somebody. I want to give them all $100 at Christmas.’ And Jim’s like ‘oh, no, I don’t want people on the street buying crack! Don’t give them $100!’ I kept praying over this and I said ‘I’m telling ya, it’s gonna be ok. I just feel like God’s telling me it’s gonna be ok.’ So we ended up giving them $50, and by this time the 12 had grown into 250 guys on Tuesday morning. I went to the bank and got crisp $50 bills, and at the end of the thing, we gave every guy in the program a $50 bill. Guys are jumping up going ‘I can get a bus ticket, I can go home for Christmas!’ ‘I can buy my kids presents!’ They were high-fiving and so excited, and I said to them ‘That’s your money, and you can do with it whatever you want to, but 3 blocks away, there’s a school that caught on fire last month and it burnt all their stuff, so they’re really struggling without notebooks and paper and pencils and things like that; I was just down at Children’s Healthcare last week and they told me that over the Christmas holidays there will be 300 kids there on Christmas Day; and it’s the coldest winter in 100 years in Atlanta and there’s people sleeping under cardboard. So, whatever you guys collectively want to donate into this basket in the middle of the room, we as group leaders have pledged to match you dollar for dollar- the 15 group leaders will match the 250 guys dollar for dollar- and we’ll go buy notebook paper, hats and gloves, and we’ll go buy toys for the kids. 250 homeless addicts got up and put their $50 bill in the bucket, every man in the room. And then they started digging through their pockets, pulling out $5 bills and $10 bills, and then they went back to their rooms and got their change and started dumping it in there. At that point, I got up and walked around the corner and sat against the wall and sobbed like I have not sobbed as an adult in my life. I feel good about myself when I write a check for someone, but I never gave every dime I had to somebody else. Being wrong about somebody- when you look at someone out on the street and you think ‘oh, they’re just a bum, or they’re just a drug addict. No, they’re a person, and they’ve got a heart- maybe bigger than yours- in that they’re willing to give everything they’ve got in order to help someone else.
Once You’ve Tasted Purpose…
If you wait until you have the free time to go love on somebody else, you’re never going to do it. Just say ‘yes.’ Just say ‘yes, I commit to go do this.’ I was wrong about what the world sells you as being a full life. I find my life is the best when I’m not the most important thing in it. Everybody here has somebody in their life- an aunt, a grandfather, a grandmother, that you look at like ‘man, that’s the kind of life I want to lead…’ I guarantee you whoever you’re thinking about when I say that was not a self-focused person. I’ve never known someone who was self-focused who was happy.
If you write a check, you’re going to have a positive influence on somebody’s life, and that’s great, but if you serve, you’re not only going to have a positive influence on somebody’s life, you’re probably going to have a real positive influence on your own life. It just makes it richer and fuller…and once you’ve tasted purpose, you can’t be happy with just existing anymore.
