Dallas, Texas. It’s a big city. They call it the big D. It’s an area that’s known for its affluence and its Dallas Cowboys and Dallas Mavericks. But beyond the sports and beyond those who are living well, there’s something going on in Dallas that’s problematic, not only for this city, but for every city in America – homelessness.
But there’s a ministry in Dallas that is dedicated to helping to eradicate homelessness. Our Calling ministry follows one fundamental theme: Love your neighbor.
Located on the edge of downtown Dallas, the group’s mission is to reach the homeless, teach them to walk with Jesus, and ultimately, get them off the streets. Wayne Walker is the founder and CEO. He says his call to help the unhoused began during his childhood.
“So when I was a child, a small child, my parents became foster parents. So I’ve been around homelessness and brokenness my whole life. We had kids living in our home that had escaped all kinds of abuse, including child pornography and sex trafficking. We watched the parents commit crimes and many crimes committed on them,” he recalls.
That gave Walker a heart for the lost. A graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, he had plans of serving in the Middle East as a missionary along with his wife, Carolyn. Instead, they found their mission field to be in their own backyard.
“And so really, initially we just wanted to provide a pastor, you know, just a bit of care and provide and support discipleship, one-on-one evangelism, for people under bridges and deep in the woods. I mean, in the early days, I was treating somebody with a gunshot wound, trying to get them to the hospital. And, you know, my office was a van,” he recalls.
Now, 24 years later, Our Calling has grown to a staff of 60, more than 3,000 volunteers, and a massive outreach across Dallas County, to help get people off the streets and right with God.
Walker explains, “Well, our facility is the only all-inclusive facility in Dallas County, meaning we take everybody. We’re not a shelter. And really, because we’re not a shelter, we have a lot more flexibility. But today, we’ll have a family with children. We’ll have domestic violence victims come in here, and we work with sex trafficking victims every day. We work with single adults. People with pets. We have senior citizens come in here, people dropped off from the hospitals. We have teenage runaways that come in here. You know, we have people of every gender and lifestyle. They’re all welcome here. This is a zero barrier, including those with criminal backgrounds, all are welcome here as we help them in those ways, you know, walk with Jesus and get off the streets.”
Walker sees Our Calling as a one-stop shop for those with no place to call home. It provides a litany of important services offering medical care, housing assistance, veterans assistance, and even a women’s center that helps women who are encountering life in the streets.
Walker says everyone, regardless of gender, needs to be loved and helped.
“We’re going to serve everybody here,” he says. “Faith-based is voluntary. Jesus is not the chips and salsa in order to get the meal here. You know, you don’t have to participate in a Bible study or go to our church service or any of those things because we want to be invitational, right? Like Christ was, you know, when He fed the 5,000, He didn’t force-feed them the Word right. They came to Him because, like, read in the book of Amos, there’s a famine in the land for truth, God’s Word. And so they were coming to Him for truth, and they got hungry. And for us, we see the same opportunity here, to love our neighbors.”
