Home for Christmas: Tales of Hope and Second Chances

By Gregory Boyle and Justin Coleman

Home for Christmas brings inspiring stories of hope and second chances into the Advent season. Author and pastor Justin Coleman matches real life stories of struggle and triumph to the Advent themes of hope, love, joy, and peace to show how the light of Christmas shines brightly even in hard times. Each chapter lifts up a scripture reflection alongside tales of men and women who reflect on the Advent themes with love and longing.

Throughout each of the four chapters and the accompanying DVD for a small-group experience, Coleman captures the stories of formerly incarcerated men and women as they find work and opportunity through Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, California. These men and women share their holiday memories and experiences in light of the hope and new life they’ve experienced at Homeboy. Forward by Father Gregory Boyle.

Additional components for this four-week study include a comprehensive Leader Guide and a DVD featuring author and pastor Justin Coleman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: Sep 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781501870453

Gregory Boyle

Gregory Boyle is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In 2014, the President Obama named Boyle a Champion of Change. He received the University of Notre Dame’s 2017 Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics. He is the acclaimed author of Tattoos on the Heart, Barking to the Choir, and The Whole Language. Cherished Belonging is his fourth book, and he will be donating all net proceeds to Homeboy Industries.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Coming home. It sounds like something we do every day, something that most of us take for granted: opening our door and returning to our own space, a safe place. It’s an idea that has everything to do with Advent, a time when we remember the home in God we are always invited to return to. It’s a time of hope and expectation, of joy and thanksgiving for the home we’re offered, the home we’re reminded of in the birth of Jesus.

But for so many people, home is far from certain; it may be a concept so unfamiliar it’s impossible to hope for it. This is especially true during the Christmas season, when it seems to a lot of us that everyone else has a happy family, a place to go. And for people who have experienced brokenness in their homes, for those who live in poverty and situations of violence, home, if the physical place exists, may be a nightmare. For many young people in East Los Angeles, the reality of gangs and a lack of resources make the thought of home something less than pleasant. It’s easy for these children of God, born into conditions of structural violence, racism, and poverty, to live without hope. That’s why this Advent study is looking at a place that’s changing things for people who have sometimes been without homes or family or a friendly or safe place to be in this world.

For the past thirty years, Homeboy Industries has been working to provide young people in violent and under-resourced parts of Los Angeles with a home, and with the hope that comes along with it. The largest gang intervention and post-incarceration rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world, Homeboy works each year with more than 8,000 individuals who are looking for hope and second chances.

When he was a new priest in East Los Angeles, Homeboy’s founder, Father Gregory Boyle, realized that the area’s young gang members were suffering from what he calls a lethal absence of hope.¹ He decided to combat that lack by providing this community with the economic, material, emotional, and spiritual resources required for its people and places not only to survive, but to thrive—to make an area dismissed as hopeless into a vibrant and mutually supportive home. Ever since, Homeboy has offered services such as tattoo removal, education, anger-management and substance-abuse classes, counseling, legal help, and job training. Homeboy businesses, which include silk screening, the Homeboy Bakery, and the Homegirl Cafe, give participants job skills that will translate into a productive life outside Homeboy Industries. And the entire enterprise has the feel of an intimate home, where participants come together in celebration, support, and kinship.

As we hear the stories of the homeboys and homegirls who have found new life and new possibilities through Homeboy Industries, we’ll see what Advent means, what it offers to all of us, not only for a single season, but throughout the rest of our lives as well. As we look at participants’ lives alongside Scripture, we’ll learn not only what we’re given in Advent, but also what we are called to give one another: the hope, love, joy, and peace—the new home—God offers us all.

I gave you a general introduction to what Homeboy Industries is about—but I want to let you in on a fuller picture of exactly what goes on there, so that you can keep in mind how this place exemplifies the aspects of Christian life made so evident during Advent.

I first came to Homeboy on a research trip when I was a pastor in southwest Houston. My church in Texas was located in a neutral zone between two areas experiencing high levels of juvenile gang activity. Wanting to address the needs of the area, and to try to bring some peace and healing to the people who lived there, some other church members and I joined in with a group from an Episcopal church we were partnered with to see what we could do. As we researched how other religious organizations around the country were addressing similar situations, we were surprised to find that very few of them could point to the strong redemptive track record that Homeboy had. And so it made sense for our group to seek advice from the clear leader of organizations working with juvenile gang members. We travelled from Houston to Los Angeles looking for hope, and we found it in the lives and stories of Father Gregory Boyle and those we encountered at Homeboy