Chrys Beckley felt certain about her calling to ministry, but what that looked like remained to be seen.
“I don’t really see myself working in a church,” she said. “To me, ministry work is done in the spaces that most people usually aren’t — where the disenfranchised or the oppressed are.”
Beckley’s uncertainty led her to Be The Neighbor, a Fort Worth-based nonprofit focused on service and justice work. She found a different way of understanding and using faith itself.
Be The Neighbor brings young people from across the nation into communities for short-term mission trips that combine service with guided reflection.
Participants work with people dealing with issues such as housing, food access and immigration struggles. They also examine the broader systems related to these problems.
Rev. Allison Lanza, executive director and co-founder of Be The Neighbor, describes the model as a balance between immediate care and long-term change.
“Service is meeting an immediate need,” Lanza said. “Justice is solving a problem at the root cause.”
That distinction became central to Beckley’s experience.
She began an internship at the organization and focused on food insecurity. Her days often began before the sun rose. Along with other like-minded young people, Beckley spent time at food banks, farms and other community sites across Texas.
After each day of mission work, participants gathered to reflect on what they had seen, connecting those experiences back to Scripture and asking a pivotal question: Why is this work needed?
“We’re guided by Jesus’ life. We’re guided by the Bible as we do this work, and it’s very intentional and very interconnected,” Beckley said.
That connection between action and belief began to reshape how she thought about ministry.
Her emphasis shifted away from citing verse to people and encouraging them to live it.
“I learned to view the Bible as a tool of community,” she said.
Chrys Beckley leads a time of reflection with a group of volunteers. (Courtesy | Chrys Beckley)
How that tool is used, she said, carries weight.
“I try, every time I read my Bible, to work with it, to use it as a tool of inclusion and of love and of radicalism,” Beckley said. “But there are still people that use it as a tool to hurt or harm.”
Beckley, 27, serves as an associate pastor at First Christian Church in Arkansas, leading youth programming and continuing the same justice-aligned philosophy she first encountered through Be The Neighbor.
She teaches students to engage in service, how to think critically about the systems behind it — and how their beliefs should inform their work.
“I try to be very intentional at teaching my youth about how to use faith as a tool,” she said. “And what they choose to do with it is powerful.”
Joseph Morgan is a reporting fellow for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at joseph.morgan@fortworthreport.org.
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