Jason Hale, a retired youth minister and teacher, founded Street Ministries in 2018 with the goal of helping the homeless get back on their feet and others facing temporary set backs to stay on their feet.
Street Ministries, which became a nonprofit organization in September of 2019, is based on Matthew 25:40 (NAS), “The King will reply, Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine you did for me.”
“Our main focus is helping people with their needs. Our main work is benevolence, but we do offer Bible classes on Wednesday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 10 a.m.,” Hale said.
“Street Ministries comes from Jesus’ ministry which was with people in homes, on the streets, boats anywhere,” Hale said.
Then, the ministry—which Hale points out is not a church—just this week opened a shop in a building on Main Street to help fund the ministry, he said.
While the shop in the front of the building will sell T-shirts, hoodies, coffee mugs and crafts made by area people, there will be classes offered in the back of the building, he said.
“The goal will be to help people learn skills and develop talent so they can better themselves,” he said. “We hope to have howto classes such as how to fill out resumes, learn about insurance and tax returns, and how to conduct yourself in an interview.
“We hope to get business owners to come in and teach people,” he said.
There is also a plan to have craft classes and cooking classes.
Hale taught school in Midland and Uvalde, and when he wasn’t serving as a full-time teacher, he was a full-time youth minister at churches around the state.
In all he worked for 30 years teaching and ministering in schools and churches, but now he hopes to build Street Ministries into a center for those who need help to help themselves up life’s ladder.
Bobby Walker, a Rockdale native, is one person who has been helped by Street Ministries and he is now a committed volunteer to the organization.
“He has a heart for everybody,” Walker said of Hale. “He has a heart like God does. He has helped me so much in the past year. I will never leave the street ministry. I love it.”
Walker had attended churches in the past but found some congregations to be too judgmental and he felt he didn’t really understand the Bible.
But he found a better understanding of it through the Bible studies at the ministry.
“I get a lot out of it. It makes the Bible make more sense to me,” he said.
But a better understanding of the Bible and the works of Jesus, aren’t the only ways Walker has been helped.
“It got me off drugs and made me a better person than I used to be. It got me closer to God,” he said.
Walker said he had made a lot of bad choices early on in life that had him in foster care until his grandmother got him out to give him a place to live.
But even though he had his grandmother’s love, he felt abandon by his dad who Walker last saw when he was nine years old.
“She did the best she could, but I was just hard-headed,” he said. “I guess you could say I gave up on life. I would skip school and just wander around.”
He dropped out of school when he was 16 and started doing cocaine, he said. He ended up spending time in jail for a probation violation.
But that is all behind him now he said.
“I learned from all the mistakes I made. That made me a better person, but I regret hurting people; especially my grandmother,” he said.
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