With Ears to Hear
It was a few weeks after Christmas 2007, and 28-year-old Josh Coover sat in his 1995 Subaru outside the Navy Yard Metrorail stop in southeast Washington, D.C. The rain pounded against his windshield.
6:00 p.m.
They’re not going to remember, Josh told himself.
But at 6:05 two black teenage boys emerged from the metro escalator onto the wet sidewalk. Darren McIntyre’s long dreadlocks hung around his face.
And thus began their weekly trips to Five Guys: Burgers and Fries.
When the two met at a church Angel Tree® Christmas party several years earlier, Darren assumed the clean-cut Josh was a lot younger. “He looked like a college student that, like, really knew God or something.”
{quickaction box}Placid and professional, Josh fit the Capitol Hill stereotype, and he seemed an unusual match for the dreadlocked teen. But when Josh began leading Bible studies with Darren, he sensed that something was different about Darren, too.
In the mid-nineties, Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC) decided to provide Christmas gifts to the 20 largest families of prisoners in the church’s zip code, 20002. This translated into a yearly Christmas party for 100 to 150 kids. And then an Easter party. And a back-to-school party.
“[Angel Tree] has been a staple of our church’s attempts to reach out to some of the most vulnerable families around us,” said CHBC’s Pastor Mark Dever. “It has been a great avenue for the Gospel.”
Darren and his family were regulars at these parties. As best he can remember, Darren received a video game every year on behalf of his incarcerated stepfather.
At 15, after attending Angel Tree parties for five years, Darren made up his mind: It was time to get serious about God.
“I was going to church on holidays . . . every time I would listen to the priest. He would say something about the Bible . . . I just wanted to study it and know it more.”
“He was really, really searching spiritually,” said Darren’s mom, Jeanette. So Jeanette asked Charlotte Zilke if she knew someone who could help Darren study the Bible. Two years earlier, Zilke, a young D.C. professional, had assumed the role of “outreach partner” (CHBC assigns a member of the church to care for each Angel Tree family) to Darren’s family. Zilke suggested that Josh Coover might be willing to lead a Bible study with Darren.
At first, Josh was skeptical. He’d tried to invest in other Angel Tree families in the past, but sometimes they didn’t show up for meetings and it didn’t work out. “That was my expectation,” Josh admitted. But obedience to God trumped his apprehensions.
Lord, I will be faithful, he prayed. I will go.
Kingdom Recruiting
Through bites of greasy burgers and fries, the two young men talked about sin and salvation.
Josh could tell that Darren was different than other Angel Tree kids he’d known: “I think I saw early on, in Darren, ears that were willing to hear God’s Word.”
But Darren admits it took him several weeks to understand what Josh was telling him.
“On that first day, Josh said, ‘There’s no one righteous, not even one,’ ” Darren remembered. “I still thought that I wasn’t a sinner because I wasn’t doing that much bad stuff.”
Patiently and consistently, Josh kept pointing Darren to passages of Scripture that label all people as sinners.
“He used himself as an example that even though he goes to church and stuff like this and teaches the Bible, he’s a sinner, too,” Darren said. “So that made me turn around and think that, I gotta be a sinner, if he’s saying he’s a sinner!”
About a month after they started meeting, Darren realized that he, too, was a sinner and prayed to receive Christ as his Savior and Lord. At this point, “his questions transformed from understanding his specific sins and a concern for not ever sinning again to growing in an understanding of what it meant to live as a Christian,” Josh said.
For Darren this meant rejecting the traditional trajectory of his male family members. At four, Darren had lost his birth father to a prison sentence of 30 years to life. His stepdad (the one who signed him up for Angel Tree) also had abandoned him for the correctional system. And his older brother had already taken a few brief trips to jail himself.
But instead of racking up juvenile violations, Darren started recruiting for the Kingdom of God. He started taking his younger brother and cousin to church and youth group. And he discussed his faith with a Muslim friend at school.
Jeanette began to notice the change in her teenager; he was becoming less reserved, bolder. She also observed a real friendship developing between her son and Josh. And she could sense that Josh wasn’t just offering handouts: “I’ve watched Josh and Darren grow like a friendship, like spiritual brothers.”
By observing this unlikely duo and Darren’s growing commitment to a local church community, Jeanette decided to rearrange her work schedule so she could go back to church, too.
“It definitely makes me get up and want to be involved in the church completely,” she said.
His Saint
Recently, Josh started talking to Darren about getting baptized. At first, Darren didn’t see the point.
“I knew I was a Christian, but I was, like, ‘Why do I need to get baptized to show that I’m a Christian?’ ”
Patiently Josh explained to Darren that baptism was a picture to the church that (in Darren’s words), “I was ready to be [God’s] saint.”
On May 31, 2009—the day of his baptism—Darren donned a suit and took the podium at CHBC to tell his testimony of faith in front of the congregation. He thought he would be shy and nervous. But “when I got up there I knew the congregation was rooting for me,” and his jitters vanished.
Even before his baptism, he began viewing his friends at CHBC as family, despite the fact that he is black and CHBC is a predominantly white church. “I think it’s, like, cool that I can go to anybody in the church and ask them and they’ll be willing to sit down with me, and ask them a question.”
Bites of Life
People walk in and out of the Five Guys restaurant on this August evening. A homeless man lingers a few tables down. Darren rests his head in his hands, listening intently as Josh reads to him from the second chapter of Pilgrim’s Progress. His dreads are piled in a ponytail on top of his head, revealing his ears.
Since they began meeting almost two years ago, the two have logged many hours together—watching movies, cooking meals, touring the White House. Next week, Darren will go back to school for his junior year and dreams of going to college to study graphic design. But as long as he is willing and Josh is able, the two will continue to keep burgers and Bible study as sacred time in their schedules.
- Visit www.AngelTree.org to learn more about how you and your church can impact the lives of children like Darren.