The movie “Same Kind of Different As Me” opened up Friday night and Central enjoyed the local premiere with thirty clients from The PARC. The new movie is based on the 2007 book by the same name about the unlikely friendship of Fort Worth art dealer Ron Hall and a homeless man named Denver Moore. Panhandle Adult Rebuilding Center (PARC), one of our local ministry partners here at Central, is an Amarillo organization dedicated to bringing more of our city’s homeless population into Christian community. As a fundraiser, our church at Central rented out the biggest theater at Hollywood 16 here in Amarillo and invited all the men and women from The PARC to watch the new movie with us. And we had a blast.

The evening began at the Cerulean Gallery downtown where we viewed many of Denver Moore’s original paintings and a whole bunch of other high-priced art. Mainly, most of us just walked around saying, “I could do that!”


 

But then it was off to the movies where about a hundred of us from Central hung out with PARC members eating popcorn, drinking cokes, and watching the show.


 

 

 

 

 

It was interesting how parts of the movie made the church people laugh and other parts of the movie made the homeless people laugh. Parts of the movie — and maybe parts of the whole evening — were a little uncomfortable. But it was a good “uncomfortable,” like we knew this was good for us, like we’re working in some small way to break down the walls between all of God’s children, like some of us are recognizing that what we have in common far outweighs our differences, like being together, even in these short spurts, is a really good thing.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you so much to Valerie and Jenna and Robert and everybody at The PARC for inviting us to participate with them Friday night. Thank you to all the folks from Central who made it happen. And may our Father continue to bless us with more opportunities to serve, more boldness to act, and more faith to believe that he is powerfully at work when we jump out of our comfort zones to be present with others.

Peace,

Allan