Ministry Spotlight - Panama City Rescue Mission

Billy Fox, executive director of Panama City Rescue Mission, talks about the mission's ministry.


Fill us in just a little bit. Tell us what the Panama City Rescue Mission is all about.

We've been at this a long time.

Rescue mission here, and every other rescue mission I've been at, is not a faith-based mission. It is faith at the top, middle, and bottom.

We start off sheltering people, feeding them - we're feeding about 800 meals a day.

We give them opportunities to either connect with the other social services in the community.

If the people are working on their problems, then we continue to extend their time of stay.

My rule is, "We'll try to match your effort. But if you don't make an effort, we'll match that."

A lot of people establish programs that aren't godly, because they make people dependent on their services. How important is it to make people self sufficient?

It's essential in my biblical philosophy.

Those who are not ready to help themselves, and don't want to let their pride down.

Then they just continue to stay in their bad behavior as long as we aid and abet it.

If they're not ready, it's never a waste of time sharing the love of God with someone.

One of the things that is really interesting to me. All of the ministries that are really working have said no to government funding. What would happen to the Panama City Rescue mission if you started taking government money?

The other night we had two young Muslim men who were here who refused to go to chapel.

I offered to call the mosque to pick them up.

If I was getting government money, and we did that, not only would they stop the money, many times there have been times where the money has been taken back.

Our purpose is to share the gospel. We've had about 900 people who have accepted Christ in the last nine months.

We're going to pray and thank God for everything He has given us. You have to sit there and deal with it.

If you were at my house and ate dinner, you would hear me pray.

You sound like a tough love guy. Which comes first, tough or love?

Tough has to come first.

It's a lot easier to start tough and get easy than it is to start easy, then get tough.

But the tough is still delivered with dignity.

That's tough, but it's also with respect and dignity.

How do you know whether you're being successful or not?

The people in all of our programs are having devotions or bible studies.

They're constantly seeing the power of God in our lives.

I'm not responsible for that. I just have to make sure that we're delivering the gospel pure and clean?

And lives are being changed.

We had five adults through our programs get custody of their children back this year.

We just finished a project last week, and outfitted almost 600 children with back-to-school uniforms and supplies.

That says we're successful, because the Christian community believes in the fact that we do this through faith.