On The Street Blog

An area that I am continuing to be challenged in all through my walk of faith is how honest I am with myself and with others. When I struggle, just as every person does, ignoring them does no good. Trying to act as if we do not experience struggles only ends up in ignorance. We simply repress the thoughts we want to root out of our mind and they are bound to return. Honesty with ourselves and others…

Walking the streets of red light districts in pursuit of accomplishing God's work of bringing broken men to restoration is no easy task. I have been learning that no ministry night is the same and you face new difficulties every time. One feels intimidated by the very real risk of rejection as you faithfully stand on a street corner and consistently put out opportunities for men to join you in conversation.…

"End Demand" is a tagline I have seen on social media, heard it shared at many conferences and written about in various blogs. And while the tagline in and of itself isn't misplaced, I have often seen that true transformation in the lives and hearts of men who visit red-light districts requires an understanding of 3 key areas.

Change Our Perspective
I believe that the…

"Some of these men were not who I thought they were."

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear (ESV)
1 John 4:18

Quite a few of my worldviews needed to be challenged when I came to Thailand. First, you can't bring assumptions into a ministry where you seek to be a witness to men who participate in the prostitution industry. Assumptions…

We walked down to our usual spot where we stand to talk to men in the red-light district. After several men declined to talk to us, we met an excited middle aged man who jumped out of a taxi behind us. He proceeded to tell us about all his crazy adventures and history. I've never really met someone like him in real life, someone who had lived a wild and crazy life and did lots of crazy things, and…

There are many sights and sounds that we encounter during nights of ministry in red-light districts that simply do not faze us. But every now and then something happens that we don't quite expect. We had one such night not too long ago. You see it was just a typical night where we were looking to engage men in conversation. The problem was that where we were standing there weren't too many men strolling…

A while ago we went out to do ministry and on this particular night I was feeling a little nervous because it had been quite some time since I had been out. But that nervousness soon subsided as we began to talk to a few different men. After a conversation or two that didn't seem to really go anywhere, one man stopped and seemed interested in what we were doing. As we began to get to know each other…

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to have dinner with a man we met in one of Bangkok’s red-light districts a few years ago. We have been able to build a very good friendship with this man and this particular meeting was another night where we could enjoy good food and relevant conversation. As we sat down at our favorite restaurant we began to catch up on the last few weeks since we had last…

The other day as we were standing on another sidewalk we were trying to engage men as they were wandering about. You would think that perhaps men would ignore us as we were not nearly as interesting as the calls for beer, shows, or signs promising to fulfill any fantasy that one may have. But one night last week we encountered a man who was drawn not to a distraction but to an encounter that only…

This past week as MST Project staff we went out on a prayer walk, which also happened to be my first prayer walk. I was surprised by how each district had it own “theme” to entertain a certain cliental. Each one unique in it’s own kind of way to attract a certain interest. For example, Nana Plaza is set up to bring out curiosity in a person and then keep you. There is one way in and one way out,…