{"id":262,"date":"2007-03-12T01:03:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-12T01:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jwalking\/2007\/03\/does-grace-go-there.html"},"modified":"2007-03-12T01:03:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-12T01:03:00","slug":"does-grace-go-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/03\/does-grace-go-there.html","title":{"rendered":"Does grace go there?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roy Ratcliff is an ordinary minister of Jesus Christ with a little church in Wisconsin called Mandrake Road Church of Christ. It is small enough to not even have its own website. But a story<\/a> today reminds us that being an ordinary minister for Jesus is to do extraordinary, even bizarre things. Roy Ratcliff became Jeffrey Dahmer’s<\/a> minister, baptizing him, counseling him, befriending him, mourning him when he was killed not too long after his conversion. And he paid a price:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n

People would walk away when introduced to him or argue that they wanted no part of a heaven that included Jeffrey Dahmer. He was rarely invited to other churches to talk about the salvation of the least of us because, he guesses, “there is a sense of shame.”<\/p>\n

At gatherings of preachers, he says, one minister from Milwaukee constantly points him out to others and says: Do you know who that man is? Do you know what he did?<\/p>\n

“I’ve become a little bit jaded by the hypocrisy,” Ratcliff says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n

But not too jaded:<\/p>\n

\n

Ratcliff says he is a better man for having known Jeffrey Dahmer but knows that some people will have trouble understanding this. He says he now visits several prisons a month. He says he has a keener understanding of faith, and of mercy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the best possible way, Ratcliff is a “Jesus freak”. The truth is that we need more freaks like him.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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