tion and denial. Things got worse and no one wanted to hire him. He shuffl ed from crack house to crack house and shelter to shelter. Through decades of rough living and bad choices, Vaughn knew God wanted something better for him. He carried a worn Bible, which he read during his darkest moments.
“I always wanted to be something useful in God’s Kingdom,” Vaughn says. “But I had too many other gods distracting me.”
Vaughn kept reading his Bible, and God wouldn’t let go of him. “I read so much of the Bible that it was fi lling me and creating in me something that eventu- ally allowed me to pull up out of the sewer. The power of God’s word can’t be pushed out of a crack house.” Slowly, Vaughn began his crawl out of the sewer and into God’s will for his life. That’s when he found FLIP. “It started with the sandwich and the individual giv- ing it to me—like they wanted me to have it,” Vaughn recalls. “I didn’t have to beg, explain myself or apolo- gize for being in line.”
That day Vaughn got more than a sandwich to soothe his growling stomach. The volunteers invited him to a Bible study across the street. He took the bologna sandwich and sat through the Bible study. “It reignited that belief in Christ I was trying to stuff down with the failures and the behaviors and the drugs and all the excuses,” Vaughn recalls. He started attending church at Graffi ti. Week after week, he listened to the sermons and things started to click. “When Taylor asked me if I wanted to take the next step and be baptized, I said yes, let’s do it.” That was 10 years ago. “Christ is working in me,” Vaughn says. “And He is putting distance between be-
ing real messed up and not being messed up.” Today Vaughn is sober, saved and baptized. And ev- ery Saturday he heads up the church’s feeding ministry. “This ministry allows me to work with others and to work with the church,” Vaughn says. “God has used my past experience and chiseled me into someone who can work certain parts of this ministry.
“It beats lying on that bench in the park saying, ‘My
life is fi nished. I have no purpose. I’ve messed my life up so bad that nothing can be done.’” In addition to heading up the lunch program, Vaughn runs the clothes closet, oversees the care of the building, leads a Bible study and serves as a deacon at the church.
“Vaughn is one of the most anointed teachers I’ve ever seen,” Taylor says. “He prepares well and has a sense of what God is doing in his life and other people’s lives.
“When I see what God has done with Vaughn’s life and I see how Vaughn has drawn other people to the Lord, I can say from experience there is no one who is too far gone.”
And it all started with a free lunch. OM Carol Pipes is editor of On Mission.
ACTION ITEM:
Watch a video about FLIP at
onmission.com. To fi nd out more about Graffi ti, visit
www.graffi
tichurch.org. To give to the World Hunger Fund, visit
www.namb. net/hunger.
12 Fall 2010 •
onmission.com
PHOTOS BY PETER FIELD PECK
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