The Bible Chat Podcast

Practicing the Ways of Jesus: Compassion, Consistency and Christlike Love For Denver's Houseless Youth

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In this heartfelt episode of the Bible Chat Podcast, I sit down with Robbie Goldman, Director of Spiritual and Emotional Formation at Dry Bones Denver, a ministry dedicated to supporting houseless youth and young adults in Denver, Colorado. Robbie shares the powerful story behind Dry Bones, the importance of embodying the ways of Jesus in modern ministry, and the transformational impact of compassion, consistency, and unconditional love. Listen in to discover how ancient scripture can guide us through today's challenges and learn about the initiatives that make Dry Bones a beacon of hope. This episode is a touching testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the transformative power of community and unconditional love.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 - Introduction to the Bible Chat Podcast
01:39 - Welcoming Robbie Goldman
04:23 - The Origin Story of Dry Bones
07:02 - Early Days and Challenges
10:11 - The Theology Behind Dry Bones
14:32 - Language and Ministry Approach
20:17 - Addressing Trauma and Attachment
30:25 - Embracing Interruptions with Love
31:50 - Building Trust with Vulnerable Youth
35:42 - The Pillars of Dry Bones Denver
43:54 - A Week in the Life at Dry Bones
49:22 - Addressing Despair and Suicidal Thoughts
53:27 - Future Plans and Sustainability
57:19 - Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Robbie: And sometimes you have to have everything around you kind of just knocked out from under you. Absolutely. So that you end in the place where you're meant to be in the spirit. 

Robbie: So I love the way the gospels tell this story. You could always interrupt Jesus. Mm-hmm. He could be preaching in a house, doing his thing, and can you imagine, all of a sudden, the roof tiles start moving and the dirt starts falling down, and all of a sudden there's a hole, and all of a sudden there's a man on a rope being lowered down on a makeshift gurney right in the middle of your sermon.Do that in your church this Sunday. Let's see what happens. 

Robbie: We also knew the story of Jesus. We did. We couldn't deny that. And if you read in some of our descriptions of ourselves, we say we practiced the ways of Jesus. And that became a centering point. That became a way to go, well, maybe Jesus met someone who had had trauma.Let's see. Mm-hmm. And, well, that's pretty quickly you find out that there was a very common thing that folks who experienced trauma were in the life of this man walking around, teaching, and loving, and doing his thing.

Alina: What if ancient scripture held the key to our most modern struggles? What if our pain was the starting point of God's greatest work in us? What if God's word wasn't just something we read, but something that reads us?

Welcome to the Bible Chat Podcast, where the ancient and sacred stories of scripture breathe life into modern tools, guiding us through the challenges of today. I am your host, Alina, and each week I sit down with theologians, therapists, and faith-driven change-makers to explore how the word of God speaks into real-life struggles.

Today I am joined by Robbie Goldman, Director of Spiritual and Emotional Formation at Dry Bones Denver, a ministry in the heart of the city that walks alongside houseless youth and young adults with compassion, consistency, and Christ-like love. I am so grateful for this conversation, and before we begin, I would like to offer a prayer.

To the mothers and fathers in my community and throughout the world, those raising your children with love, faith, and intention: If the tables were ever turned and your children found themselves alone on the streets, I pray they would encounter a ministry like Dry Bones, to see them with dignity, welcome them with humility, and walk alongside them lovingly through the hustle and bustle of a city that so often ignores its most vulnerable.

Let's begin.

Alina: Robbie, welcome to the Bible Chat Podcast. I've had the privilege to know you for 23 years, I believe, this fall. I met you in the fall of 2002 when I came to the States as an AmeriCorps/Urban Servant Corps to do outreach for Urban Peak. I was an outreach counselor, and at the time, we called you the competition, but you were the other wonderful ministry on the streets, Dry Bones. Before we go into what Dry Bones is and what you do, will you please tell us a little bit about yourself?

Robbie: Thank you, Alina. It is my privilege to be here and just to be able to share this story anytime we come. My name is Robbie Goldman, originally from the Texas area, and I’ve been in Colorado a little over 23 years, and I love it here. It's beautiful. My wife of 39 years is Karen. We have three grown children and their spouses and four grandchildren.

Alina: Beautiful!

Robbie: And just multiple friends and loved ones throughout the Dry Bones community that we've developed over the last two decades. I attend a local church here and do some pastoral care work and love that, and love being able to integrate in different communities and bring, you know, the resources and the ideas and things I've learned about Denver and its area into other organizations. And that's always a privilege that feels all of it's part of a calling, it's all part of, you know, you're introducing yourself as the identity of who you are, what you do, just all merges together, and it is just being, it's that being in presence and loving people and trying to bring and do the next loving thing forward. And that I hope that describes me. I look for that every day. And so just trying to do that next loving thing, I hope would be a description of what I goal to do every day.

Alina: I love this, I love this. And it definitely describes you having known you for so long and being aware of your ministry. I know what Dry Bones does and how you show up in the world, and doing the next loving thing is definitely what describes you and Dry Bones... Take me back please to how Dry Bones started.

Robbie: Yeah, that journey and that story, you know, after you've said the story so many times, you're like, am I making it up or is it really happening?

Alina: No, it's real!

Robbie: Like this real feeling.

Alina: It's happening.

Robbie: Uh, yeah so over 23 years ago, I was working in Texas as a youth pastor, and one of my good friends, his name was Jeff Medders. We also interacted with several camps and different things for kids, of course, and one of those was in Salida, Colorado. And there, Matt and Nikki Wallace, who were not married then, worked there and so I interacted with them in Colorado.They were also from Texas. And then Jeff and his wife in Fort Worth, those worlds collided one year after Jeff and his wife had been to Colorado on a vacation and he came home and he said, Robbie, we were on vacation just trying to relax, but our heart kept seeing all these young kids on the streets. And we started interacting with them and he was like, we have to go back. We're called, we have to be there. I said, well, that's great, Jeff. That's amazing. And then later that summer, I'm with Matt and Nikki on the mountains climbing with my youth group, and they were like, we don't know what we're doing. We're graduating college. What's next? And I was like, I think I know what you need to do. Wow. I need to introduce you to my friend Jeff and his wife, and you guys need to come to Colorado. And I thought that would be the end of my involvement journey with Dry Bones, what became Dry Bones, but it wasn't, um, you know, the life of ministry that very summer I lost my job as youth pastor.

Alina: Wow.

Robbie: It felt like my world had collided with everything. Lots of circumstances but then less than a year later, my wife and my family, we moved here, and the three couples really dug in and started what is Dry Bones. And we couldn't do anything else, and so all those little twists and turns led to this idea that this is what was meant to be. And sometimes you have to have everything around you kind of just knocked out from under you. Absolutely. So that you end in the place where you're meant to be in the spirit. This spirit wasn't doing bad things, wasn't hurting us, but was really just saying keep looking! Look forward! And we found our heart in the midst of these young, young people on the streets of Denver.

Alina: That's beautiful. So, you saw a problem, you felt a calling in your heart to serve that way, and three couples recommitted their life, changed directions and committed their lives to what Dry Bones is today... What did ministry look like at the beginning with Dry Bones?

Robbie: So at the very beginning it really was just the three couples, and often it was Matt and Nikki, myself and Jeff The Medders, and ourselves. We had young children at that time, so there were, you know, it was the four of us often on the streets. And then after the first two years, the Medders moved on and it was Matt, Nikki, and myself on the streets of Denver. And it looked like, probably looked boring from the outside. It was a lot of just sitting and talking and showing up. Some of the things we really learned quickly is consistency. Being there, being in the space where these young people were and building that trust and relationship. We started noticing early that one of the biggest things these kids had been lied to very often.

Alina: How so?

Robbie: People saying, "Hey, I will get you this", "We will do this", "This what will be next"... never materialized. They felt betrayed early in life and said, often I think I can do better on my own. And they were making these statements at 13 and 14 years old. They were saying, I think I can guide my life in a better way. Maybe sometimes they did. But as adults and young adults ourselves at the time coming in saying, we're here, we're here. And it quickly turned into what, what would these kids like to do? And so we started shooting pool at a pool hall. We had some local churches say, hey, we can serve a meal after that pool. Great. We had no money when we moved here, we didn't have enough committed support to pay our rent.

Alina: Wow.

Robbie: And we had three kids, Matt and Nikki were newly married, didn't have enough committed support to pay their rent. There was nothing. There was just no money. But then everything else was full. It was go to the mailbox and there would be cash, or there'd be a check from someone that loved you, go in a church would say, we'll help you with insurance. Okay. And we just kept going. We just kept showing up every day. The financial part, we had no idea. Nikki has a master's in business, and she's like, we can't do this without money. We're like, we can't not do this. And she said the same thing. Ministry was daily at home, as intense as it was on the streets. Wow. 'Cause we had families, the intensity came in the form of faith. It wasn't in the fame of grief or worry. Our faith grew in those early days. They grew to places that we had no idea. Today I think the word would be our faith was deconstructed. And back then that word wasn't being used, but our faith was being pulled apart because so often in ministry it feels abundant in a lot of ways when you're in a church and it's been there for a hundred years and just kind of rolls and all of a sudden there's nothing except this need on the street to love these kids, yes, with every, every ounce of your body. And that's what ministry felt like. And the unexpected thing? Is these kids loved us with every ounce of their body. And you know what? They didn't ask us for money. They never ask us for money.

Alina: Interesting.

Robbie: I don't remember being asked for anything other than, are you gonna be here tomorrow? Yes. And I was like, yeah, we'll be here tomorrow.

Alina: More than anything, they were longing for presence and the non-judgmental and loving presence. Mm-hmm. Most than anything. Thank you. That's amazing. I do know your story, but every time I hear it, it's very, very touching and inspiring. Thank you for sharing that.
Let's talk about the theology behind the name of the ministry Dry Bones.

Robbie: Right? Yeah. You know, when we started, I think some of the names bandied around were like City Cafe. I don't even know, we have, we don't know it. It was like we didn't have a name and I think that was guided. Mm-hmm. I was still in Texas and Jeff and Matt were sitting in a little home office looking, trying to find what, what could we call this? What feels right. They were looking through a Bible, early 18th-19th century Bible that was printed by Gustav Dore, and he printed it because it was for folks that couldn't read. Yes. So he, he did many different works, but he did the works of the Bible and he created these beautiful carvings that were printed, and I remember Jeff and Matt saying they're looking through and they saw this picture saying, what is that? And it depicted these, a valley full of skulls and bones, and there was this man standing above them. And they're like, what chapter is that? And it was the Valley of Dry Bones from Ezekiel 37. Mm-hmm. So then looking that up and reading the words that inspired the picture, there was a question at the very beginning, and one of the questions came, it was presented in the sense from God to the prophet.
The prophet had been working for, you know, we'll say 36 chapters. Mm-hmm. If you think of timing. They'd been doing this a while, and God was showing him this vision of these bones, and they were laying out there. And then he says the question, "Son of man, can these bones live?" And the reflection was of the valley of the 16th Street Mall in Denver, Colorado.
The kids that we'd all been talking about and what's next? How can they, what can we do? What can anyone do? Can these bones live? Ezekiel gave the answer. Scripture. He says, "Oh, sovereign Lord, you alone know that answer". And God didn't step back and go, you know, you're right. You're right, Ezekiel, and you just step back and watch me do something.
The next thing God offered him was an invitation. "Then go speak to the bones." I'll be with you in a sense, you go speak. Here's some words. And the way we heard that was, that's the question we need to ask. When we meet one of these young people, can they live? What would it look like? Well, as God progressed with Ezekiel in that beautiful chapter, Ezekiel does that. And I always love to point out that even before Ezekiel said all the words that God said, do all this and say this to the bones, he's heard a rattling sound. Things started happening as soon as Ezekiel stepped in and started responding to God's call. It didn't wait till he got all the words right. Wow. And everything set up, bones started rattling. Mm-hmm. And he kept going. And later it's like, Ezekiel went, what is happening? And, and stopped because God comes back and he says, "Son, man, prophesy of the winds, prophesy of the, to the four winds from north, south, east, and west". And Ezekiel did. And then he heard the big, the big inhale of what he describes as the mighty army of God. And that still to this day, pulls us. It pulls us. It has to pull us. It's not, we can't get out in front of it. It's pulled along when we fill this companioning, this cowork with God with Spirit moving us. Just a few years ago, we had to redo our website and the website creators interviewed all of the staff. They interviewed several of our friends and they came back to us and said, you guys have this tagline of these bones live and we're like, yeah, it drives us every day. And I never will forget that producer. He said, I wanna tell you something, these bones live.

Alina: Wow.

Robbie: He said, you guys have been doing this for two decades.
They live and they recommended that we say "Dry Bones, Denver - These Bones Live". And we're like, but we're not. He said, no. He said, even look at your, look at your story. How did it end? Yes. They were standing. They were standing. They were alive. And so now if you look us up, the tagline is Dry Bones Denver - These Bones Live. And that theology again pulls us. And that question still inspires us. Can they live? And then a humble moment of saying, so, sovereign Lord, you alone know, but we're here. Let's do this together.

Alina: Yes, we are showing up! I've been in the nonprofit world for 30 years, and I've worked with street children in Romania with street children here in Denver, low-income families here in Denver. Then I worked in churches. And of all the ministries I've been involved in, you are using very special words, I would say for this field, and I made some notes here. You use words like friends instead of clients, companions instead of cases, and you say houseless youth instead of homeless youth. Can you tell us more about why these words matter and how they reflect the kind of ministry and presence you bring on the streets of Denver?

Robbie: Yeah, we did learn mostly by mistakes to say, "Don't say that" and these kids are beautiful. I'm not that, not homeless.

Alina: Oh, so they would teach you, they would correct you?

Robbie: Absolutely. Wow. They would give us these indications. They're like, our friendship is beyond this client thing.

Alina: Social worker to client or...

Robbie: There's a lot of mistrust about a lot of people with systems, and we had no idea. They weren't seeing us as a system, but we didn't know how to even view ourselves. Didn't know what we were? So, as we realized, we're like, hey, vocabulary matters. It matters how we not only present ourselves as physical presence, but in words. Mm-hmm. How we move. And so we just kind of started using words like, you're my friend. And there wasn't a made-up word. These guys are our friends. The word friend, when we reflected on it, is so much more than a one-way street. I don't go in the streets to friend you. That doesn't make sense. Yes. To just, I'm the friend and you're the what? No, we are friends. And so it does give us the expectation of like, friends can really make each other upset. They can make each other really happy. They can create something between them and a relationship. And a friend has, it's almost like reciprocal. It moves back and forth and so it feels give and take, right? Yes, yes, yes. We are blessed. We don't have to do case notes. Mm-hmm. We don't have to create logs and journals and things.
And I'm glad that folks do. And I'm not saying we never take notes. Of course. Absolutely. But as we move through this life, we're like, what would it be? And it's been not too long that we've like these friendships are great. Mm-hmm. But we're also companioning somewhere. There's strengths that I have, I like to say I am right now, I'm blessed with a pretty sober brain. And I don't just mean from drugs and alcohol and things, I mean from survival. And so my friends on this journey that I'm companioning them with are often in survival mode every day. Well, that means their brain needs to be able to function as if I don't know what I'm going to eat today. Mm-hmm. It needs to be there.

Alina: Absolutely.

Robbie: But they also benefit from having a friend that doesn't have to think of that. Mm-hmm. And so we journey in life together and that journey is a companioning, that survival mode of their heightened senses also helps me because I may miss some things. Mm-hmm. And they're like, you didn't even see that, did you? I'm like, no.

Alina: Interesting.

Robbie: So as we move through, those words became very, very important: friends and companions and, and how we show up. You know, we're just present. Mm-hmm. And so that's present. Mm-hmm. That's another type of word. Yeah, the language is crafted but not manipulative. I love, that's, that's been our hope is it doesn't feel like it's systematic or manipulative in any way.

Alina: That's beautiful. I truly, I've been speaking English for 25 years or so and I have never heard this word companioning in ministry or anywhere else.

Robbie: We may have made it up.

Alina: No, I love it. I love it. And I think, I think, uh, I think that's what parents do for their children. I think that's what friends do for each other. And I remember a story, I won't disclose the name just in case. She's not, she's not made this public, I'm not sure. But one of your staff members went through a miscarriage and, in my understanding, the street kids comforted her immensely. Yeah. Around that time.

Robbie: Yeah. Yeah. There was phone calls and just the questions and concern and love was, this community has done it for all of us. We weren't physically in Denver four months when my mother passed away.

Alina: Mm.

Robbie: And you know, cell phones were not smart phones back then. Mm-hmm. But they were there and I was in Texas and my phone rang and I could see that it was Matt. Number, and so our coworkers calling me. That's nice. When I got on the phone, it was one of the friends that I'd made in Denver. He went by Tiny and he said, Matt just told me your mom died. He said, I just wanna know I love you and I'm thinking about you. Some very common words, but the heart that came through the phone, I was like, I can't believe this. And then what I couldn't believe is that I didn't realize that love, like I said, was reciprocal.

Alina: Yes, absolutely.

Alina: It's interesting. All these places are much-needed shelters and overnight places for them to stay, or day centers and systems are good and good social workers are needed. Absolutely. But at the same time, there's a tremendous need for children who grew up without a normal family or have been on the streets most of their life for them to attach in a healthy way. And unfortunately, this is almost impossible in your normal shelter with social workers and clients and cases and files and folders, and where they are a number that you have to present to the founders or, you know, how they've made progress or not. And I really, really appreciate how you do ministry from this point of view where you companion these beautiful houseless youth, are very aware of their trauma, are very aware of their survival mode in which they operate a hundred percent of the time, and their attachment needs and their needs to have someone to give to and to have someone to love and to have someone to trust. And you and I have spoken a couple of times about this aspect of trauma and attachment. Let's, let's talk about this for our listeners. Tell us about what is happening with those children and how you meet them where they are.

Robbie: Yeah. Again, one of the common phrases that came up really early was how did we get here? Or as an individual we would often be in these situations, hearing stories or seeing physical effects of life on the streets or situations. You're like, why, how did I get here? Why am I the human standing in this? I see. Yes. You know, we had college training as youth pastors and seminary training, but not psychologists and psych. We, that's not who we are that shows up. And you know, when you start hearing and get into the lives of anyone, one of my favorite song lines says, he writes to the song that talks about there's millions of lives moving in and out like the tide every day. And each life story is incomprehensible. Every life. It doesn't matter if you see a human you cannot comprehend their story. That's, that line speaks so much to me. But then you hear the stories, or like I said, you see the physical scars of these young people. And they may be a teenager, they may be 20 right now, they could be 30.

Alina: Right.

Robbie: But we knew we needed to stand there and, and learn and get education and do the best we could. We also knew the story of Jesus. We did. We couldn't deny that. And if you read in some of our descriptions of ourselves, we say we practiced the ways of Jesus. And that became a centering point.
That became a way to go, well, maybe Jesus met someone who had had trauma. Let's see. Mm-hmm. And well, that's pretty quickly you find out that there was a very common thing that folks who experienced trauma were in the life of this man walking around, teaching and loving and doing his thing. And then someone with trauma, whether it was, had been bleeding for many, many, many years or had just lost a child or, and were like, how did that follow through? And so that became one of our core areas. It was how do we practice what we see there right here on the streets of Denver? And of course the common thing was everything was approached with love, everything, and matter of fact, so often he would say, well, your faith did this, created this healing. But what they had faith in was this love. I believe that was right in front of them. Mm. And so that became our first thing. If we can't do anything else, we're gonna step and they're gonna be right there. And sometimes use the words, I love you.
Sometimes it might be "you do not deserve that". Your worth and value is so much more than that. I know that, that whatever happened, happened, but you did not deserve that.

Robbie: You, your worth and value is not determined by that trauma.

Alina: That happened to you.

Robbie: That happened to you. Mm-hmm. And one of the reasons you may not have gotten help is you haven't had anyone to just walk to the doctor to get that physical thing taken care of, or sit in the dentist's office with you to get your mouth repaired.

Alina: Absolutely.

Robbie: Or to sit at the psychologist, social worker, and not send you there, but be with you there,

Alina: companioning you,

Robbie: companioning you, be with you there. We had no idea what we were doing, but everything in our heart said, do that. Mm-hmm. And so we started doing that. We're still doing that today. Mm-hmm. That's still a huge part of dealing with trauma. And then over the years, of course, experience has helped, and we've gained beautiful collaborations with amazing doctors and amazing nurses and amazing psychiatrists.

Alina: Thank God.

Robbie: And other theological perspectives, but it's still the same thing. I love you. God loves you. You're a child of God. Those words, those meanings and then consistency. Being there, showing up, loving that person and it's not despite their trauma, no, in their trauma. We use the phrase, if you have power in this world, it's not to push down over someone, it's to place that power under them. Power under them. Yeah. Jesus said, we're not like the people that place their power over them. Then what are we? We must be the people that place their power under them and lift them up so I can read, learn, place it under someone. Little things. We have a beautiful office space, beautiful office space. We had a beautiful trauma-informed architect that helped us lay out the physical space. So she taught us, have your space where someone who has experienced trauma in big rooms can see the exits. Oh. Make sure that you don't position the chairs with their backs towards the door. Where somebody can come in unexpectedly, don't have blind corners. Hmm. Have very safe rooms that if somebody needs to be by themselves, they can, they can be by themselves and feel very protected.Robbie: Furniture that is soft and just so many little things that she designed in the colors and the lighting. Mm-hmm. We had no idea, but we trusted her.

Alina: Trauma-informed architect. Wow.

Robbie: It was beautiful. So that makes total...

Alina: Sense.

Robbie: And I, I tell you, we have people walk in, they're like, wow, this feels so nice.

Alina: It does. I've been there and it is, it feels so nice. It is an open space for sure. And a loving space. Can we please go through... I just love this, practicing the ways of Jesus. Mm-hmm. What are the ways of Jesus you practice and can we practice them in our daily lives as well?

Robbie: Absolutely. We, we love that term because it reminds us of the way a lawyer will say it's a law of practice, right?

Alina: Mm-hmm. Interesting.

Robbie: Uh, if you go to a physician, they're practicing medicine. Yes. And I'm so thankful that doctors continue to practice medicine and not just say if you have a headache, you just take this hammer. Mm-hmm. And hit your toe and your head. See, now your head doesn't hurt.

And that's the only thing we do. I don't know if the doctor’s ever said that. Right. But it's the sense of, would we still be doing frontal lobotomies on folks for mental illness? If they'd have said, that's all we'll ever do? Some doctors somewhere said, you know what? Let's keep practicing. And some lawyer somewhere said, hey, there was a law written in the early 18th, 19th centuries, it's still relevant today. And we can bring that in and practice law. They practice it. Mm-hmm. And so we're like, mm-hmm. What would it look like if we saw these principles and these ideas of Jesus? We're not walking through Jerusalem and Palestine doing ministry, but we're walking through Denver, Colorado, with human beings that need to be loved and cared for and shown that the great wild creator, God loves them. And so if we see him meet someone, we read of that and we're like, we read of him washing feet. Yes. Probably not gonna be the very first thing I go do on the streets of Denver like, hey everybody, take your shoes off, I'm here to wash feet. Doesn't mean you couldn't, but what is the practice I can learn by that?

What is the practice I can learn when he says, did you see who showed the loving kindness? Was it the priest, the Levite, or was it the man that you called a Samaritan?

Alina: Yes.

Robbie: And he says, go do that. And they called that your neighbor. Well, there's a practice involved there. I can't help you today because I didn't find you beaten on the side of the road.

And that's how Jesus said that I know your neighbor. No, today I found you lonely. And tired. And hungry. Oh, that's that same principle.

Alina: Yes.

Robbie: That's the same practice. That's what it looks like in Denver, Colorado in 2025. That's the practice moving it forward. This is the same Jesus who said, you're gonna do greater things than I did.

Well, the only way you can do that is if we practice the principles and ideas and the love that Jesus showed for centuries. Can you believe that? Centuries now? Yes. What's wrong with our world? Why? Well, it is not like we discovered something, but we're like, ask the question. Had our world been practicing these principles?

And I'm not saying no one does. That a concerted effort just to take this human, Jesus, God, three years of practice. If we'd have been practicing it as a humanity, as a species for the last 2000 years, wonder what our world would be.

Alina: We would definitely be in a very, very different place right now.

Robbie: And it doesn't mean we're practicing to find the answer. We're practicing to show and be able to show up today the way we need to be today. Just like that Samaritan walking down the road. Yes. Showed up to be what they needed to be for that human that day.

Alina: Yeah, whatever is in front of us, and respond to that need.

Robbie: In the ways of Jesus.

Alina: Yes. I love that. What do you mean when you say Jesus was interruptible?

Robbie: Oh, I love that. He was the most interruptible teacher, I think, in Palestine.

Alina: Tell us more about that.

Robbie: So I love the way the gospels tell the story. You could always interrupt Jesus. Mm-hmm. He could be preaching in a house, doing his thing, and can you imagine, all of a sudden the roof tiles start moving and the dirt starts falling down, and all of a sudden there's a hole, and all of a sudden there's a man on a rope being lowered down on a makeshift gurney right in the middle of your sermon.

Alina: Yes.

Robbie: Do that in your church this Sunday and see what happens. I wonder if security, who was called...

Alina: The police.

Robbie: Would security be the first thing?

Alina: Absolutely. Yes.

Robbie: Not with Jesus. He's like, oh, hold on, guys. I guess I need to talk to the man that's on the mat in front of me now.

Alina: Yes, that came through the roof.

Robbie: Came through the roof, yeah. Let his friends let down, or walking along the road and someone's yelling his name, what is happening? He goes, hang on, who's calling my name? And it was the children, and his own people are saying, tell those kids to be quiet. And he's like, no, no, no, tell those kids to come to me now.

He's talking, his predecessor, John, has been teaching in some of his John's disciples there, and they've asked Jesus a question. And it's a big question. It was about old wineskin. He was given the old wineskins and the new wineskins and old message and new. That's a big one. And all of a sudden, a man rushes and says, Jesus, my daughter's dying.

And if you read that story, Jesus really never answered the question. He's like, okay, guys, I'm outta here. And on the way to heal the man's daughter, that's when the lady touched his robe and he says, what, what was wrong? And you've been healed. And then another blind man are yelling at him, heal us, heal us, and they follow him into the house. Mm-hmm. And then he finally gets there and he has to move people out and says, hey, she's not dead. She's just asleep. And, and all these interruptions. Yes. But his focus was still, in each of the interruptions, was loving that person that interrupted him. And how, how do we practice that? How do we not be so focused on what I showed up here today to do? Is this? And it doesn't mean it's a bad thing, but the spirit brought this.

Alina: Yes.

Robbie: And how do I move? And you, you're probably hearing me thinking, well, you're just burned out then all the time, probably. And so what do you do? You also do like Christ and you practice these ways. And I was like, it's time to go to the mountain. I need to go to, I need to take care of myself. And if you don't read that as one of the practices that Jesus did often, where he was interruptible, he was in the move of the spirit and how things are going.

He also said, I need to go away and pray. Yes. And be by myself. So that's, he was able, probably the hardest thing to do and the biggest practice of Jesus that we've had to learn at Dry Bones is to interrupt your ministry, to take care of yourself. And that's okay.

Alina: Yes. And what you're describing also happens in a family, in a normal family, if there is, um, a plan for the day and all of a sudden there is a bigger need that arises, everybody shifts their attention there, I think it's, it's much easier to ignore the needs of those who are not yours or they belong to nobody, so, yeah, I'm very grateful, and we are very grateful that you are out there doing this amazing ministry.

Let's talk more about how can these children, how do you help them develop trust? Tell us more about your relationship with them.

Robbie: Yeah. The trust thing that we pretty early discovered is a lot of organizations have funding that holds them to age restrictions or situational restrictions. I'm not saying that that's bad. Sure. It's just how that funding works. Of course. Well then we quickly realized that a lot of our friends were kind in between or at the edge of a lot of these services or someone that had been there left quickly or the expectation was for us to not be around long. Or, when I turned 20 something, you're not gonna be able to give me a slice of pizza anymore. No, that doesn't feel right. And then we pretty quickly said if we meet you as a young person on the streets of Colorado, we're not gonna kick you out someday because you're 35.

How do we, how do you kick someone out from being your friend? Didn't match the language. I see. And so we started saying that early on, and then as time would go, we would just prove it. We would just like, Nope, you're still here. Some of it was the trust building with letting your guard down a little bit and letting your vulnerability come out a little bit and that there were no restrictions or ideas. That probably is what turned into our idea that, that we heard the words, everyone belongs, not every action belongs. You can't come and fight people and do drugs and do things, you know, in our community like that.

But that doesn't mean you don't belong. And because we found out that that's what these kids were missing, they didn't have where to belong.

Alina: Belong. Yeah...

Robbie: Where do I fit? And so yeah. The streets offered them a sense of belonging but it didn't have a lot of security, it didn't have a lot of compassion. Some of those were there, but it wasn't like an abundance. And so, we were like, that is probably what, what we're offering. We didn't even realize it was belonging and compassion and love and abundance. And this presence that wasn't conditional. Because so many of our friends' actions they went through every day were conditioned: what do you have to bring? What? Are you gonna take? And we were just like, no, just. Just show up really. If we have socks, it's not take one, it's how many do you need? If you don't think you need, but three, how many do you want? Mm-hmm. You want seven pairs? Go ahead.

You know, and all. And then the idea was how then if, if they're gonna be that generous with their things, are they that generous with their selves and their hearts? And so before we knew it, there’s relationships and people are like, oh, you can't tell us, don't get that close. You can't be that close and that we're like, why not? Like, that didn’t feel right. And so what developed was trust was, was the ability then to speak into each other's lives. And this idea to say, I don't think that the best, the best of who you are is when you're, you're strung out on Fentanyl. I'm, I'm not condemning you. I, I don't understand, but that's, it's just not the best of who I see. I see someone in pain. I see someone struggling or whatever's going on, and we can say, we're not saying, so you can't be around us if you're strung out on fentanyl. We're saying it's heartbreaking because it's not the best of who you are. And we see that, I see that beautiful human being in there and that loving, trusting relationship developed and became the central focus of how we still do move today. How do we help ourselves and our friends live out the best of who they are and live out their story?

I am not here to write their story. I'm not here to say, make a left turn, make a right turn. Do this or do that. That's not my job. I am here to be present and love and show them a light that is already there. I'm not bringing it. We didn't load Jesus in our backpack and come drop him off on the mall. There's Jesus. Oh, oh. There's, Jesus was presented to me in that phone call from that young man about my mom. There's Jesus.

Alina: What are the... I don't know if they're taglines, but like, you have some beautiful words like unsurpassable worth, right? What, what are those? Uh, so we call 'em You belong. Yeah. Yeah.

Robbie: They, we've really, over the years, we moved into this building that we're in several years ago and quickly noticed there were these giant concrete pillars that most offices would try to hide and cover up with, you know, paint and stuff. And we're like, no, let's leave those. 'Cause they kind of looked cool, but then were like, there were three of these pillars really not covered anymore.

And we were like, we kind of have three pillars that we kind of go, does our mission statement, does our daily presence do that? And we realized that the pillars that we're talking about were foundationally deep pillars. That had, are holding up this thing we call Dry Bones Denver. And if any of the pillars in our building were hit or cracked, the stability of that building would be less if you just took out one of them. Sure. You would probably be told don't reside in that building anymore until that pillar's repaired. And we feel the same way about Dry Bones. The concept came, the way we, I always tell people, you've probably been raised your whole life, "Don't judge people. It's wrong to judge people. Don't be a judgment." And I'm like, no, judge people correctly. Judge people correctly. I love that. When you see a human being, you judge 'em with this starting point. And I look at a human, I look at you across this table. I see someone of unsurpassable worth and value. There's not anything in this world that's more valuable than Alina in front of me.

If that's my starting point with every human I see at the grocery store, the gas station, the guy that just cut me off in traffic. If I can start with they have unsurpassable worth and value, that will hold up anything.

What if we did that with every news story, with every person standing on the corner? Like I don't have to agree with what they're saying, but as a human being, they have unsurpassable worth and value. And then we're like, what is something common that every human in some form should know? And that became our second pillar, is that every human knows and needs to know that they're unconditionally loved as adults, even the adults in this room right here, and I know your background, some human changed your diaper, some human changed mine, and the others in this room, and we could not give them anything. We were probably screaming when they did it. But someone stopped their day. Stopped their moment, and I'm not judging or knowing their hearts. They took a child that could not do something for themselves and did something for them. They must have fed us something. Yes. They must have done something, bathed us because we're still here. Infants are not sustainable species without somebody unconditionally loving them in some form. I believe we all have a memory of that, and that need is there. And when another human being offers us something that's unconditional like that, that we respond to it and we respond to it by saying, I need that. I want that. I deserve that. That's part of me. So that became our second pillar.

And then through reading and talking about the belonging and what we could see, we realize that, that there's our third pillar that everyone belongs. If, if someone walks in and there's, they don't have, there's no secret handshake, there's no special code or acceptance thing, there's nothing. You belong here, you belong here. It's, it is a community primarily made up of, you know, young people, youth, and young adults and friends we've had for over two decades. But if someone walks up to our meal and they're hungry, they belong there.

Alina: That's beautiful.

Robbie: We've since found out that science has proven as human beings, if we don't belong anywhere, we, we go away. Our mind goes away, our body goes away. They're saying even that it's possible our DNA changes.

Alina: Wow.

Robbie: That our bodies need to belong as much as we need air, food, and water.

Alina: Yes.

Robbie: If we don't belong, we are not real. I think our penal system here in the United States is realizing when we leave human beings in isolation for too long, they go mad.

Alina: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Robbie: It's maddening. Yes. And so if our friends on the streets know that when they walk into this community or part of this community, they belong.

And we really feel like if we make our decisions based on all of our ethical decisions, our spiritual decisions, physical, mental health decisions with those three pillars at the core—the unsurpassable worth of every human being, the unconditional love needed and responded to by every human being, and that everyone belongs—that, that will support this structure for long past the time that I'm alive.

Alina: Absolutely beautiful! My prayer is that the vibe of your ministry multiplies. Yeah. Because it's so human and, if we can talk about a tender-hearted God, your ministry definitely is an expression of that. Thank God!

You said to me once that you are doing 49% ministry for the street youth and 51% for everybody else involved.

Robbie: Flip it, excuse me. 51% for youth and young adults living on...

Alina: Okay, so you say it.

Robbie: Yeah. So our ministry, and we say these numbers to kind of show the emphasis. 51% of our time and effort is for youth and young adults living on the streets. Okay. Or street connected with Denver. Okay. But we're like 49% is for everyone else that's not doing that.

And what do you mean by that? It's our hope, our hope is not that we have it all figured out. But we realized if we just did a hundred percent here, we're not focusing on others that help the others that we are like, wow, whatever was happening here. If we minister in a sense with them along the side, whoever they are, whether it's a Doctor's new perspective of street youth, they're part of that 49%.

If we can come in and talk to someone that's at a law office and say, Hey, do you understand what's happening on our streets?

Alina: I see.

Robbie: And that's part of it. Or we can minister to a church. Yes. One of our biggest outreaches in the summer, we have youth groups from different churches join us for a week.

Alina: I love that.

Robbie: And some people early, it's like, you guys gonna plant Dry Bones across the country? We're like, that doesn't feel right. Well, then we started inviting these youth groups to come and when they're here, we call them vision trips. And the vision we're trying to cast is that 49% vision. Go home. Who's not being loved well in your school, in your community, wow. Spend a week with us here, catching a vision, catching this beautiful contagion of love, and take it home. Take that home. And while you're here, look at, let's explore those pillars. Let's see how those pillars could emerge and support your little youth group, or your big church or your community, whoever. That 49% then would feel more comfortable to ask questions. And, almost spend time in a laboratory and we tell 'em all this, we don't need you in Denver. We don't need you. We don't need you at Dry Bones. The world needs you. Yeah. Your world needs you. Whatever you are needs you. Yes. So come here, spend some time in this laboratory with this love. Let these street kids teach you. Yes. How to love better. Allow them to enter into your hearts. Mm-hmm. And never leave your hearts so that you go home and the person that stood on your little tiny Texas town corner for the last 20 years holding a sign, you finally stop and you do this amazing thing and you say, Hey, my name is Robbie. What's your name? That's an amazing thing because you've went beyond, so that's 49% is vol. Our volunteers, our, these kids that come with youth groups. We have church adult groups come. We have a group of nursing students from a college every year that come, their instructors bring them so that they can see this and say, you're going to be a nurse or a doctor. See this. Spend a week here and take it into your love. We've, we've had Elevation is the name of our program. As adults come back and say, I'm a banker, but I do banking the way I learned at Dry Bones. Really? What does that look like? And then they're telling us, You're like, that is way beyond. Yes. The way you approve a loan is not based just on numbers but on your heart. Amazing. That's, that's the 49%.

Alina: I love that. What a way to help people catch this bug. Love bug, you know? Yes. Love. Bug. Bug. Amazing. Walk us through a week or a month at Dry Bones. What kind of activities do you do with the youth and how do you engage them?

Robbie: Yeah, we have found, again, consistency is a great thing. Yes. So we try to have a pretty good rhythm. Uh, we have a staff of eight now at Dry Bones. We have, we've moved just from the three of us. We would all be long-time exhausted if we tried to do this. So we've had several staff members over the years. We have an amazing staff right now.

We have a beautiful place that we are able to invite friends into. It's in the downtown area of Denver. We kind of go Monday through Friday through what you might call the typical USA school year. You know, August to May thing, and then our summer is kind of a different schedule, but the rhythms are the same.

We started early with like, what can we do on a Thursday night that would just be fun? Just a place to gather. So during the winter or cooler months, we gather at our office and we have a pool table. This is every Thursday. It's kind of weird to start with Thursday, but that's kind of our bigger day and that Thursday is an open night.

Everybody can come and hang out. Then we have a beautiful meal served every week by amazing volunteers that cook an incredible meal that's full of the three principles of love, belonging, and unsurpassable worth and value. I love it. And unconditional love because it's like a meal served every week that's not packaged, prepackaged in a brown bag.

And not that that's not needed sometimes, but it's a meal. It's like, are you allergic to tomatoes? Well, we don't have tomatoes in the salad, but there's tomatoes if you want tomatoes. And yes, yes. Everything's kind of pulled apart where everybody can do it. If, if our meal service finds out we have friends that are gluten free or have allergies every week, they'll show up with those safe things. That's a rhythm. So Thursdays is kind of that movement of really fun time. And a really big meal with all of us. Fridays are a little more calm, a lot of outreach and hanging out one-on-ones. We have some groups that meet and hang out and do specific things like we're working on bringing more lived experience voices into the everyday workings of Dry Bones. So some of our friends we've known for so long, it's like, why don't we bring their voices in so they can help us stay informed. We have Monday meals in the evening, it's we're a small gathering of friends with another volunteer that makes a beautiful meal.

And we have dinner together. We have a big, long 14-foot table that we sit down and have a beautiful family meal together on Mondays. Mondays during the days are filled with our job and life readiness program. We're revamping ...that right now, but we have several participants that will work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
Learning life skills, getting things ready for what's next, and our outreach team is still on Mondays. We do so many court dates, doctor's visits, and things like that through the week. On Tuesday, it's another big day. After our staff meeting, our doors open, and we have what we call Tuesday lunch together.
Tuesday lunch is, again, kind of not by invite only, but it's kind of a core group that assembles—20 to 25 young people.

Alina: That's amazing.

Robbie: Eating at our big tables and having home-cooked meals this week. That's beautiful. This week was, I think, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and chili-glazed carrots.
Yeah. And double fudge brownies and yeast rolls. And it's just everybody's sitting at a big table filled with food. It's Thanksgiving every week. Wednesdays, again, are one-on-one if you kind of notice. We try to focus on small gatherings. Yes. And large gatherings. Yes. And so our staff just moves at that rhythm.
 Yes. Throughout the year. And then in the summer, we keep doing all that, but we add in these youth groups, Elevation, and, uh, four to six college interns that come and work with us all summer long. And so, yeah, it is a rhythm. It's, you know, Monday through Saturday we don't officially host a church service, but a lot of our friends go to church with us or different things. And so it's just a beautiful rhythm of life that we get to flow through and really stay consistent. So we're seeing, you know, different kids. We still work right alongside Urban Peak. Right now we're doing picnics every Friday and then we're gonna start doing Friday and Saturday in a park near Urban Peak.
 Alina: That's great.
Robbie: The kids come over and we have hot dogs and nachos and just spend, you know, three hours in a park together, hanging out and building relationships, building this relational trust. And so our hope is if some young person is in the Urban Peak shelter on a Friday afternoon, they're like, I know where I can go. They're gonna be over there in the park.


 Alina: That's incredible. Yeah. And very, very unique. Yeah. Very unique for their world. Yeah. Otherwise, very normal in the context of a family—you always know where to find your parents.


 Robbie: Yeah.


 Alina: And, uh, thank you... thank you for the incredible energy you bring into this world and the beautiful ministry. I'm working for Bible Chat, I'm their podcast host, and we have all kinds of devotionals in our app that cover any topic you can possibly imagine from leadership to trauma, to addictions, to character traits, everything. And we are receiving a lot of questions from our users, and it is incredible to see how many people who are committed Christians suffer and struggle and question, which I guess is part of life. What would you say to somebody who is struggling, maybe with suicidal thoughts or just this level of despair and they have no meaning and purpose? I mean, I know you are also a pastor, so how would you, how would you minister to them?


 Robbie: Yeah. You know, that's pretty common, that's a pretty commonplace that I find myself. One of my primary roles is spiritual and emotional health and development. Yes. And so I find myself in that situation often. The first thing that I like to say is, it's kind of like what Richard Rohr says: "It's through great love and great suffering that transition happens." It's usually one of those two things. And that may be where we find ourselves right now in the midst of great suffering, but that's not where we're gonna have to stay. And so finding the source and the reason when someone's acting out in that, and if it's violent or if it's to harm themselves, is to assure them there's a reason. There's a reason, and where they find themselves right now, it feels like that reason is to the point where they need to do this, commit this, say this, act on themselves this way, hurt someone else. We're just like, that's the action. That's not the reason. Saying, I may not have all the credentials to get to the reason, but I know in my heart that that reason is there, and there's a reason your body needs to respond somehow.
And how, how can we get there? How is it that we can get there? And the biggest thing is you don't have to go alone. You're not gonna go alone to find what's happening inside of you. And there might be systems, there might be people, there might be, you know, places you've had answered before. You may have cried out to God and got an answer, and this time you're getting nothing. You may have cried out to family before, and this time they're telling you you're not there this time. That still doesn't change the fact that you belong, you have unsurpassable worth, and you're unconditionally loved—that fact remains. And so if we stand there. And then we sit long enough. One of our methods, methods, I guess ways of viewing it is we say our intention is to help people have a long, loving conversation with themselves. If we can engage with that person to say, whatever this is causing, whatever this trauma, whatever this thing is, how can we learn?
How can we give it time to have a long, loving conversation with yourself? Like right now, you're having this argument with yourself, this conflict within yourself. And I'm not saying there's no reason not to, there's a reason creating it. How do we shift it and have a long, loving conversation with ourselves? It's not a magic bullet. Yes, but it's a start. And so we try to approach that, what we have right now probably belongs too. Not only do you belong, but maybe everything belongs. Maybe this situation you're in right now, it belongs. It doesn't mean it feels right, but that's where we are today, and how do we move ourselves into it so that we can move with it and through it.
That's beautiful. And it's that compassionate love. It's compassionate listening, learning how to become a listener, learning how to become the person that sits and not just sit in the mud puddle with someone, but sit alongside of them and not say, well, as soon as you get up, just clean yourself off and move on, you'll be fine. But how do we sit in that space with that person? And that's what I would say with anyone that's going through trauma or going through things. Don't say yourself that you're crazy. Don't say that you've lost your mind. No. Look for that reason, see where it is, and say, I know that the way I'm acting may not be the best place right now, but it came from something, it didn't come out of nothing. And if you find that something and someone can help you deal with that something and realize, hey, my body really wanted whatever that was to be gone, my brain, my heart wants that out, but the way I'm doing it right now is harmful. How do we go back to that, you know, and find that loving spot within yourself to have that conversation? And that's what we try to do as pastors, that's what we try to do as our organization.


 Alina: It's amazing how, in fact, everything you offer to the friends of Dry Bones, the houseless youth, you know, the friendship, the companioning, everything we all need it. Yeah. Everybody needs it. I need it. Yes. Everybody needs it. And maybe we should send some people on the streets so you can minister to them or send them to Elevations. You know,


 Robbie: Elevations, yes. Come to Elevations. 


 Alina: Instead of becoming homeless. That's a better solution. Where is Dry Bones going next? What's, what's exciting for you? What's, what are you looking forward to?


 Robbie: I think what's unfolding now is we used to do job training that involved coffee and that was beautiful, but it was becoming kind of unsustainable in our own realm. It's a beautiful place, but we're not doing coffee anymore.
 So what's new right now is us sitting with our friends that come to us saying, I want to do something different. I want to become something, do something, whether it's school, whether it's education, whether it's getting my health in a place that's never been, finding something new to do so they can sit with us and work through beautifully crafted curriculum and movement that helps 'em find things. And that's developing. It used to be at a separate location and now that is gonna office in the same building we're in. We have a beautiful staff that's loving, compassionate. Also our lived experience group that's getting started, this is a group of our young friends that have committed to two years of developing this group that's gonna help. And you know, one thing I've never done, Alina? Is be a homeless youth.
 I've never done that. Yes. Yes. I cannot be that.
 But I have a major resource of friends that have and so this group is coming together. And so as staff, when we say, Hey, this is what we're thinking, they have the ability to go, I don't think that's gonna work. It's not gonna work. But if you did this, that would work.
 And so they're able to speak in and help us gather insight to take us where we go. Our goal as far as what's next, the way we look at it, we're trying to plan for what can be sustainable for the next hundred years. Mm-hmm. 'Cause that way it guarantees that I won't be on this earth when it happens.
 I'm not trying to make Dry Bones sustainable for a year, because then I feel like I have too much control. But if it's a hundred or 500 years from now, and they're gonna do greater things than we've ever thought about doing. And that's the way we're planning it. That's what's next. I hope the plan has to involve that there's no more houseless youth than young adults in Denver.

 Alina: Yes. Amen.


 Robbie: That would be absolutely amazing.


 Alina: Amazing!


 Robbie: Who needs to be loved today?
 

Alina: Yes, absolutely. I was talking to someone the other day about the difference between impact, influence, and legacy, with each one being greater than the other, and I think definitely you are having an impact and an influence, and now you are working towards legacy, and that's absolutely wonderful.
Can we think of what you are trying to do as maybe a year of life coaching and involving all kinds of professionals from therapists to...


 Robbie: Job coaches. That's where we're moving. We can't use the word university, but that's what it feels like to us. Dry Bones U—so you show up and it's you, it's all about you for one year. And so we're kind of toying around as that being the name. It is Dry Bones U! You are Dry Bones and Dry Bones is you. Yeah. It is that year of, you know, we, we use, like you said, therapist, we have bankers, we have anyone that can show up in the lives of our friends, we try to say what's needed here. And we're hoping that that also will keep impacting the entire community. We probably can't have the several hundreds that we work with a year come through that particular program, but we feel like the ones or four, the eight that come through impact the entire community as they keep kind of becoming the elders of our community. That was a beautiful thing of not aging out people is building a community that has built-in elders.
 

Alina: Bible Chat is very passionate about helping. We started a foundation, it's called Open Soul Foundation, and we want to collaborate with incredible ministries like yours. Yeah. And in fact, I'm having a meeting with Matt Wallace, your executive director, in a couple of hours, and we are very excited to collaborate and see how we can help and sponsor monthly activities.
 Yeah. We know where the money is going and we know what's happening in the ministry, and I've been privileged, like I mentioned in the beginning, to witness this for the past 23 years. Yeah. It's incredible. Yeah. So thank you for how you show up in the world once again, and I'm very, very grateful for this conversation.
 Do you have a final word or anything I haven't asked, but you would have liked to be asked?


 Robbie: A final word for someone that's listening to this podcast or maybe came not having a clue what they were listening to would be a blessing that may their life be touched today by someone who challenges them to see within themselves the beauty that's already there, and then once they see it, to free it and let that beauty go into the world today.


 Alina: And where can we find you?

 Robbie: We are available on the internet through drybonesdenver.org, and physically it's 1600 North Downing Street in Denver, Colorado, and those are the best ways to find us and contact us, mainly probably through the web, and just come see us.
 

Alina: And if this conversation inspired someone, how can we help?

Robbie: You know, in a world of unconditional love, unfortunately, there's conditional funding. Our funds, you know, we try to run it as lean and bare bones because that's kind of where we started as we can, but it costs things, so funding is always part of it, and that's available on the web.
One special way is to please notice who's right around you and prayers. We do have a newsletter where you can stay informed, but notice who's around you. You wanna support Dry Bones? Find your valley. Ask that question. Listen to that question being asked of you. Can they live? God may be asking you, can they live? And then you can say, I don't know God, only You know that. And then follow. We do have things on our web. We have an Amazon wishlist. We have all the things. We're the real thing. We have all the things, we kind of sound a little, I don't know, woo woo, you might say in our world today in some ways, but we have the real stuff. All of our staff have dedicated their lives. We don't work outside of this ministry. There's no time, and so we are all missionaries. We all fundraise. What we don't have is a giant endowment, so we try to keep it as a lower percentage of all of our staff that they have to try to fundraise, but that's really, Alina, to be honest, that's as you know, working in nonprofits, that's where we are in our world today. Maybe someday, and I will tell this story, I'll tell her first name, her name is Lois. It was a lady in the little church that I was fired from in Texas 24 years ago who has never missed 10 or $20 a month for 24 years.
 

Alina: Wow.

Robbie: My family's personal support through Dry Bones. She's the most amazing human being. Not 'cause of her money, not 'cause it's millions of dollars, but because of her heart. And her commitment. Each check is a prayer. Yes. And she's, I talked to her last year and she says, I pray for you every single day.
 

Alina: That's beautiful!


 Robbie: So that's support. When we've had a financial crisis, Alina, in our country, Dry Bones didn't go out of business because our money doesn't come from that. It comes from listeners of Bible Chat. Yes. One beautiful lady in Texas. God says, I've got more money than the hills of the world. So that's our support, that's how we keep this going. Way beyond me.


 Alina: Yes. Absolutely. Will you please close us in prayer?


 Robbie: I will. Father God, Creator, Being, Sustainer, Lover of all of us, our prayers are for all of those young folks that not only in Denver, but that surround this world every day that don't know what today means because it looks so much like yesterday when things were hard. Father, our world continues to be in turmoil in so many ways, and so many ways still reflect the beauty of your love. Father, please help us to look past grievances and heartaches and harsh words every day and see the beauty of the human across from us and see their worth and value and their love. And Father, help us to know the belonging we need and share that with someone else today. In Christ, we pray. Amen.

Alina: Amen. Thank you, Robbie. Thank you for your heart and for your ministry. We did it. We did it. Thank you. We made a podcast. Thank you so much! With an amazing conversationalist like you... I have to hug you. God bless you. That was amazing. Thank you very, very much. Thank you so much for tuning in. Maybe now after this conversation, you understand a little better why I pray for anyone in need to both find and be found by Dry Bones Denver. Here are two of my takeaways from all the gems Robbie dropped. Number one, unsurpassable worth, unconditional love and belonging aren't luxuries. They are survival. To be treated as someone who matters, not because of what you've done, but because of who you are. That's where healing begins, and when love stays, people begin to believe they're worth loving. Number two, Jesus was interruptible. He didn't rush past the hurting. He stopped for the woman at the well, for the child in the crowd, for the one who reached for His hem. People weren't detours. They were the destination. If you'd like to support Dry Bones, please visit drybonesdenver.org to learn more, donate or get involved. We are honored that Open Soul Foundation, the philanthropic wing of the Bible Chat app, is partnering with Dry Bones Denver sponsoring monthly activities that offer not just food, but dignity, belonging, and hope.

 If you'd like to help spread this message, please subscribe, like, leave a review and share your takeaways wherever you listen. And don't forget to check out the Bible Chat app with devotionals on all possible topics ranging from trauma to leadership, finances, addictions, and more, all through the lens of scripture.
Until we Bible chat again, let's keep practicing the ways of Jesus.