Last week, Kristen sent me a news story about Chris Baker. He’s a tattoo artist in Oswego, Illinois who does free cover-up tats for folks leaving gang life or women who have been trafficked.
Talk about Good News in the Neighborhood? I’ve never been in a gang and I’ve never been trafficked, so I have no idea what it like to have a tattoo which tells the world, “I belong to ____.”
But I can imagine it being a constant physical reminder that I can try to start over but I really can’t. Even if my new life has me around people who don’t know what the marks mean, I know, and that’s debilitating. But getting a new tattoo done which covers up my past pain and rewrites the possibilities of a better life?
To Smell Like the Gospel
That story wreaked of Jesus.
And sure enough… Chris Baker, a former youth pastor, is the founder of a ministry called INK180ministry. This is part of his story:
“God, show me what I can do to serve and bless people.” Chris realized gang markings went beyond graffiti on buildings; gangs relied on body-altering tattoos to signify everything from allegiance to the gang hierarchy to keeping tallies of violent criminal activity. He realized his greatest artistic love, tattoos, was to become his ministry calling, covering up the markings of dark and destructive lifestyles with beautiful works of art.
No Fast Passes
Pretty regularly, I’ll have a conversation with a youth worker trying to figure out what Good News in the Neighborhood is. They are looking for ideas. Their heart is in the right place. But the truth is that they are looking for an easy answer where there is none.
- Until you know your neighborhood you can’t know what Good News smells like on your block.
- Until you know yourself you can’t know how Ephesians 2:10 can play out.
Until you stop looking for freebies, ideas from other people, fast passes, and start getting dirty in your own neighborhood… you’re just trying to look like Jesus when you should smell like him.
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