Editor’s Note: The following first appeared in the October-December 2025 issue of Good Faith Magazine.
I am homeless and hungry most of the time. I’ve been renting and traveling most of my life, never staying put. High school was the longest I stayed anywhere — and I dropped out at 17.
So living in one city for nine years isn’t normal for me. Now I own a house and a business. I travel the world preaching and starting disciple-making movements, having been to South Korea, South Africa, and Mexico in the past three years. I’m confident in living nomadically as a Black businessman with no formal roots — just spirit and truth.
Right now, I live in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where I started a movement that draws on all my nomadic experiences, pouring them into the place I now call home.
My faith wasn’t always rooted in the life of Jesus. I’ve lived a life most people would have nightmares about. I am a product of extreme grace.
I was saved at 29 — a Black nationalist turned multicultural church planter. Growing up in the shadows of Jim Crow and the legacy of the civil rights movement, I went from hating white people to loving all people.
I’ve found a connection in my life through food, faith, and culture. My mission is to make disciples in those spaces where Jesus is missing from the conversation. I’m edgy, passionate, and unafraid to speak truth. I was here in Minnesota after Philando Castile was murdered. I was here when George Floyd was murdered. In between those two tragedies, five to six other Black men lost their lives locally.
When I first moved here, I had a strange dream: I was in a bathroom and met a white man wearing a do-rag. It was 1955, and I was at a civil rights rally. I was shocked to see him there. That dream stayed with me.
When I arrived in Minnesota, I saw homelessness and hunger everywhere. Kids hungry and angry. Every day violence that could have been eased with something as simple as nourishment. I realized people had no power to break the daily cycle of pain.
The groan became the birth of a grocery store. We entered the grocery and coffee game through faith. We imagined our city without hunger and poverty. We planted a church for the poor, but at first, people ignored us. Some were afraid — until we showed up with community meals and burritos. We gave away good food repeatedly — thousands of hot meals.
Last year, we used our store’s profit to provide Halal meals for immigrant families for a month. For six weeks, we fed kids from an after-school program that had been cut.
This is why I’ve stayed. Because people here are hungry, as I was, and they need a safe place to eat. The violence is real, but so are the hot meals. I could tell you countless stories of transformation. But instead, I’d rather invite you to help us start more stores so that you can be part of that transformation yourself.
We could build resilient communities of faith through trust, not conflict. We could show our compassion through consistent giving and let our efforts birth new disciples for Jesus.
How can you be part of this?
Let’s talk about investment over charity. Let’s talk about reformation, not just transformation. Let’s build ecosystems of consistent change for our communities. This is a call to action. This is a mission.
This is the sent church in our city — raising up new policymakers and a new covenant.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Founder of Storehouse Grocers in St. Paul, Minnesota. Carl is an Invested Faith Fellow.
