My Brother Danny

I said goodbye early this morning to the crew of six men and one lady who built the floor system for our homeless shelter.

Their leader and pastor, Daniel Crosby, is my younger brother. He works like a Trojan.

We have been building things together all our lives including our tree house construction phase when we successfully (without falling) established a perch on a branch 30 feet above the ground followed by our excavation phase when we successfully (without dying) tunneled 20 feet into a sandy hill in the desert. These and other boyhood follies still stand as our major preparation for pastoral leadership.

We have often been confused. By that I mean that he is Pastor D.E. Crosby, Ph.D., and so am I. We received each other’s denominational mail through the years, and often corrected colleagues who thought they knew who we were.

Danny has led five volunteer teams to work in New Orleans since the great devastation. His chainsaw crews were phenomenal in removing the tallest trees from the smallest yards without damaging (significantly) surrounding structures. Pictures of his exploits in tree removal and demolition feature his red truck connected with sagging ropes to the tops of towering trees. No crew members have been lost, officially, despite the risks.

I hugged them all before they piled into the church van this morning for the long trip back to Fort Worth, Texas. They were a great encouragement to me, and they arrived, providentially, at the very moment we needed a skilled carpentry crew to help us build a floor for the emergency sheltering program.

I told them that many homeless people will enjoy in a warm bed this winter because their capable crew took six days out of their lives to bless the people of our city.