08/09/2026
THE ELIZA PARK EXPERIENCE
For those who have never been to Eliza Park—or haven’t been there lately—you should know this:
Something happens there that is difficult to find anywhere else.
It is not simply a service site.
It is not simply a homeless outreach.
And it is certainly not a place where people with lived experience are simply waiting to be helped.
At Eliza Park, lived experience leads.
People who have walked through homelessness, addiction, loss, trauma, incarceration, poverty, and rejection are becoming the leaders, ministers, organizers, protectors, and intercessors of a community.
And something powerful happens when the people who were once considered the last become the ones standing at the front.
Several Sundays ago, I was sick for days with what I can only describe as some serious gastrointestinal misery. I came forward and asked for prayer.
Of course, I eventually got better.
But something happened that I still struggle to explain.
That same day, I noticed that several lifelong scars on my body had seemingly disappeared.
I don’t pretend to have an explanation for that.
But I do know what I experienced:
Community prayer matters.
Prayer in the name of Jesus matters.
And there is something profoundly different about being prayed over by people who have themselves been through the fire.
Today was no exception.
A family—and others—came forward asking to be touched, prayed over, and interceded for by people who, in another context, society might have labeled the untouchable.
Our modern-day lepers.
Except at Eliza Park, the hierarchy gets turned upside down.
The person society overlooks becomes the person laying hands on someone else.
The person who was once asking for help becomes the person offering it.
The person who was once isolated becomes a source of belonging.
The last truly does become first.
That is the Eliza Park Experience.
And perhaps the most important thing happening at Eliza isn’t what we are doing for people experiencing homelessness.
It is what happens when we finally trust people with lived experience to lead.
They don’t simply have a story about the problem.
They carry wisdom about the way through it.
And at Eliza Park, we are beginning to see what happens when that wisdom is given responsibility, authority, dignity, and a community willing to listen.
Lived experience isn’t a footnote at Eliza Park.
It is leadership.
And maybe that’s where the healing begins.
