Kelley Williams
About Mission Year
Mission Year is a year long urban ministry program focused on Christian service and discipleship. We take teams of young people, place them in an area of need, and help them to serve people and create community. We are committed to the command of Jesus to “love God and love people,” by placing the needs of our neighbors first and developing committed disciples of Christ with a heart for the poor. Learn more about our first year program…
Kelley Williams's Blog
Narrow roads. / Jul 9, 11:00 AM
“Be a child of your times!
Not knowing (something) isn’t a shame, not asking is.”
I sometimes wonder how different my life would be if I would have simply asked more questions and been more involved with people. Instead I choose a shameful route. I choose a path that is marked with capriciousness, ire, and loneliness.
This path is narrow. This path is dark. This path leads nowhere.
But I keep on walking.
These Kids. / Jul 9, 10:57 AM
The following is a letter all of my first and second grade kids wrote me the third week of summer camp:
Dear Kelley,
We appreciate you because you give us snacks. It is fun when you tickle our bellies! You are fun to play with and we like it when you pick us up. We love you because you take us to the park. You are funny and cool and very sensitive.
Love,
1st and 2nd grade
These kids are what make fifty hour weeks (in four days) wonderful.
Unsettled. / Jun 28, 04:38 PM
What is unsettling for those who want to know what the original text of the New Testament said is not the number of New Testament manuscripts but the dates of these manuscripts and the differences among them. Of course, we would expect The New Testament to be copied in the Middle Ages more frequently than Homer or Euripides or Tacitus; the trained copyists throughout the western world at the time were Christian scribes, frequently monks, who for the most part were preparing copies of texts for religious purposes. But the fact that we have thousands of New Testament manuscripts does not in itself mean that we can rest assured that we know what the original text said. If we have very few early copes-in fact, scarcely any-how can we know that the text was not changed significantly before the New Testament began to be reproduced in such large quantities? Most surviving copies were made during the Middle Ages, many of them a thousand years after Paul and his companions had died.
I should emphasize that it is not simply a matter of scholarly speculation to say that the words of the New Testament were changed in the process of copying. We know that they were changed, because we can compare these 5,400 copies with one another. What is striking is that when we do so, we find that no two copies (except the smallest fragments) agree in all of their wording. There can only be one reason for this. The scribes who copied the texts changed them. Nobody knows for certain how often they changed them, because no one has been able yet to count all of the differences among the manuscripts. Some estimates put the number at around 200,000, others at around 300,000 or more. Perhaps it is simplest to express the figure in comparative terms: There are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.
-Bart D. Ehrman
Among berries in the forest. / May 7, 11:03 AM
Too proud indeed am I to receive wages, but not gifts.
And though I have eaten berries among the hills when you would have had me sit at your board,
And slept in the portico of the temple when you would gladly have sheltered me,
Yet was it not your loving mindfulness of my days and my nights that made food sweet to my mouth and girdled my sleep with visions?
For this I bless you most:
You give much and know not that you give at all.
Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone,
And a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse.
And some of you have called me aloof, and drunk with my own aloneness,
And you have said, “He holds council with the trees of the forest, but not with men.
He sits alone on hill-tops and looks down upon our city.”
True it is that I have climbed the hills and walked in remote places.
How could I have seen you save from a great height or a great distance?
How can one be indeed near unless he be far?
—-Kahlil Gibran
The other day... / Apr 22, 02:02 PM
The other day my room-mate Stephen and I went with a friend to a Halal pizza place.(Halal is an Arabic term used by Muslims to designate what is permissible under Islamic Law. It’s like Kosher for Muslims. And it’s the best pizza I’ve ever had.)
His name is Abdullahi and he’s seventeen from Somalia and is quick to tell you he’s only one and a half months away from graduating high school. After we completed ordering a large cheese pizza, we sat at a table with Abdullahi. We talked about how school was going for him and what he planned to do after high school had ended. He told us he planned on becoming a pilot.
“Why a pilot?” I asked surprised. Abdullahi doesn’t seem like the pilot type.
“Because my uncle tells me that’s what he wants for me. He’s taken care of me since I came to this country. I have no other family besides him. How can I refuse?”
My room-mate told him that he could be whatever he wanted to be and that only he could reach the verdict on his life.
“I don’t really like to think about what I’m going to do with my life after high school.” He exclaimed.
“Aren’t you really excited about graduating?” we asked.
“I am, but I get discouraged. Nobody wants to hire Muslims for work in America. And no one will hire Somali’s either.”
I looked at Abdullahi. I thought about how false assumptions such as these creep into peoples hearts. It seems that Abdullahi has lost a lot of courage over the time that he’s been in America.
“I don’t think that’s true, Abdullahi. I’ve met many Muslims working in America. And what about Halal Pizza? It’s owned and operated by Somali’s. I think you’re selling Muslims and yourself short.”
He looked at me and smiled, “I hope you’re right.”
We continued to eat our delicious cheese pizza and went back to our house to hang out.
I come across so many people everyday here in Clarkston who don’t think they have anything to offer. They look to my room-mates and I for answers daily. They look to us like we have all the answers. The truth is, is that we have none of the answers. Refugee or American citizen.
We are all the same.
We can only abide in G-d for answers.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned while I’ve been in Clarkston, it’s that everyone is a refugee.
Everybody is running from something.
What are you running from?
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