Brian Yarbrough

There are people in every community who get called on when something needs doing, and somewhere along the way I became one of them. That comes with an obligation, and it points in a particular direction which is toward the least of these. The person nobody returns calls to. The person nobody advocates for. The person nobody counts. My passion is not charity that keeps people dependent, but helping people reach self-sufficiency and stand on their own. I became ordained so that work could be carried out as ministry, under the church, where the calling belongs, rather than as something separate from it. Same thing, sitting with someone at a hard moment and making sure they are not facing it alone or uninformed. Families I already served kept asking me to stand with them at the moments that matter most: weddings, memorials, blessings over a new home. Ordination let me answer yes instead of referring them somewhere else. It also formalized the ministry work I was already doing, giving it a foundation that can carry weight legally and organizationally.

I am originally from Illinois. Texas is home now, and it is where the work is. I am where dedication, patience, and service are needed for people who are doing everything right and still coming up short. That is the ground I stand on.

The hope is to move people from being helped to standing on their own. That means meeting the immediate need, but never stopping there. A family that gets through this month and no further has not been served, they have been managed. So the aim is the harder thing. Teach people what they need to know, connect them to what they are owed, and walk with them until the help is no longer needed. Ordination places that work under the church, where it belongs, rather than leaving it as favors done on the side. The calling does not begin with me and it does not end with me. It only asks that whoever hears it answers, and keeps answering.

My faith is not separate from the work. Scripture is plain about where attention belongs, and it is not with the comfortable. I try to hold to that. What a person believes matters less to me than whether they are being cared for, and I serve people of every faith and none.

My experience is strongest where resources are thinnest. I travel throughout the region and go wherever the need takes me.

These are offered freely and without condition. I answer when people call, I follow through, and I stay until the work is done. If what someone needs falls outside what I can properly provide, I will say so and help them find who can.