Rudy rasmus story
Rudy Rasmus is a pastor, author and global humanitarian who is known for his outreach efforts to the world’s poorest citizens. He often says his primary spiritual gift is “hanging out.” He owned and operated a “Borderline Bordello” before joining the ministry and today Pastor Rudy co-pastors the St. John’s United Methodist Church located on two campuses in Downtown and Northwest Houston with his wife Juanita.
Contents
St. John's began with 9 members in 1992 and in 22 years grew to over 9,000 members. It is one of the most culturally diverse congregations in the country. Every week people of every social, economic and ethnic background share the same pew. He attributes the success of the church to a compassionate group of people who embraced the vision of tearing down the walls of classism, sexism, and racism and building bridges of unconditional love, universal recovery and unprecedented hope. An in-house poll revealed that the number one reason people attend St. John’s is because they can “feel the love” from the parking lot to the pew.
Rudy rasmus building community
Career
Rudy was a monthly contributor to Oprah Winfrey’s “O Magazine” and is currently a featured faith-blogger in the Houston Defender and the Houston Chronicle’s online edition. He is a 2008 gospel music industry Stellar Award nominee for the music project “Touch” and is the author of three books including Jesus Insurgency with coauthor Dottie Escobedo-Frank (Abingdon Publishing, Nashville), and Touch: Pressing against the wounds of a broken world (Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville). His latest book is entitled Love.Period - When all else fails. Rudy joined SiriusXM Radio as an on air personality in 2010 and can be heard weekly on his show The Love Revolution with Pastor Rudy on SiriusXm’s Praise Channel.
Pastor Rudy founded a nonprofit corporation, the Bread of Life, Inc. with Juanita in December 1992 and began serving dinners to the homeless in the sanctuary at St. John’s. Bread of Life changed the landscape of Downtown Houston, providing an array of services to homeless men and women seven nights a week in the Bread of Life facility on the St. John’s campus. The project provides hot meals to the homeless and distributes over 9 tons of fresh food weekly to hungry families.
St. John’s is one of few faith communities in the U.S. that provides HIV/AIDS testing to churchgoers on Sundays through the innovative “Get Tested Project.” After many years of service to the community, Pastor Rudy received the coveted Jefferson Award (considered the Nobel Prize of community service) at a ceremony in Washington, DC in 2009. For years Pastor Rudy coordinated domestic and global anti-hunger initiatives in conjunction with Beyoncé’s concert tours and travels extensively developing food programs around the world for people experiencing food insufficiency. After a recent life-altering trip to India, Pastor Rudy now reflects on the need for Americans to address human trafficking and mass incarceration with urgency.
Philanthropy
Thanks to generous donations from long time friends and church members to the program, including Tina Knowles, Mathew Knowles and Kelly Rowland; the campus includes the Knowles-Rowland Center for Youth and the Knowles-Temenos Place Apartments. The Temenos project is a 43-unit Single Room Occupancy development designed to provide permanent living accommodations for formerly homeless women and men. Temenos CDC is currently constructing a $10 million, 80-unit apartment community to meet the growing need for permanent supportive housing for the previously homeless in Houston, Texas.
Personal life
Rudy and Juanita have been married for 29 years and are the parents of daughters, Morgan and Ryan and a son-in-law Hamilton (Ryan).