My friend Scott Bullock, the senior pastor at Irvine Presbyterian Church in california and Wheaton grad, gave me a new book about a week ago by a friend of his from his time at Wheaton.

It isn’t the sort of book I ordinarily read, but as I had just finished David Mamet’s The Secret Knowledge and had nothing to throw in the carry-on bag for the take-off and landing segments of cross country flights to and from the east coast when the iPad must be turned off, I took it along this past weekend.

John Green’s Streetwalking with Jesus is riveting and horribly sad and gritty, but also inspiring and full of conviction about what can and ought to be done for some of the most marginalized people in ou country, the young male hustlers of Chicago and no doubt every other urban center in America. Green, a deacon in the Roman Catholic Church –the only Wheaton deacon in the world?– has been with the ministry he began since 1990. His story and the story of Emmaus Ministries is very much worth your time.