THE CONVICTION
THE REASON
UNDER THE WORK.
This page states a motive. It is not written to persuade you of anything, and nothing on this site is conditional on your agreeing with a word of it.
Ben's own position, stated as his
Ben Lovro is a Christian. He served five years in prison and was released in 2014, and the belief that carried him through the years afterward — including three of them with nothing to show — was that a person's story is not finished by what they have already done.
That is a theological claim before it is a practical one. It is not observable. Nothing in his circumstances in 2014 supported it. He held it anyway, and it is the reason he could keep a standard for his own life during a period when every available signal said the standard was pointless.
This is stated in the first person because it belongs to him. It is not a claim about you, not a diagnosis of what you are missing, and not a condition attached to anything on this site.
Help is offered regardless of belief
To be entirely unambiguous, because people coming home have learned to read the fine print on offers of help:
- Nobody is asked what they believe, at intake or ever.
- Nobody is required to attend a service, a study, a prayer or a meeting.
- Nobody's access to a mentor, an introduction or any other help depends on professing anything.
- Nobody is asked to say something they do not mean in order to keep support.
- Volunteers and mentors do not evangelize the men they work with as a condition of the relationship. They are people, not pipelines.
An atheist coming home in the Midlands who needs a ride to a 6 a.m. shift gets the same ride as anybody else, and the drive is about the shift.
The rest of the material, including the free learning community, lives on the main site.
Why keep it in at all
The obvious commercial move is to strip the faith language out and make the work broadly palatable. There are two reasons that is not the choice here.
The first is accuracy. If you ask why a man who rebuilt a business from nothing spends a significant part of his week on people who cannot pay him, the true answer involves his faith. Give a sanitized answer and you have started the relationship with a small lie about something that matters.
The second is that the men this work serves are unusually good at detecting management. They have spent years around institutions that said one thing on the wall and ran on another logic underneath. Naming the actual motive out loud, once, and then not mentioning it again is more trustworthy than either hiding it or leading with it.
There is a third reason, smaller and more practical. A man who does share this faith and is looking for people who hold it should be able to find out without an awkward interrogation. Stating it plainly on one page answers that question for him, and leaves every other page free to be about logistics.
The difference between a motive and a message
A motive explains why somebody showed up. A message is something they need you to accept. Most people who have been on the receiving end of religious outreach can tell the difference within about ninety seconds, and they have usually been on the receiving end of both.
The practical rule here is that the work is the work. If a man asks Ben directly what he believes, he will be told directly and at whatever length is wanted. If he does not ask, nobody raises it. A ride is not a captive audience and a meal is not a service with food attached.
There is also the matter of standing. A person who needs something from you cannot freely decline a conversation, which means any spiritual conversation conducted while he is dependent on you for transport is not a fair one. Wait until he is not.
What faith does not do
Worth saying, because the opposite gets implied constantly in this space.
Faith does not produce a birth certificate. It does not clear a background check, satisfy a landlord's income requirement, resolve child support arrears, shorten a waiting period, or make a supervision condition go away. A man who believes with total sincerity and has no identity documents still cannot start the job on Monday.
That is why the rest of this network is practical to the point of being tedious — the order of operations for the first ninety days, which office issues what, how the Federal Bonding Program actually works. Conviction supplies the reason to keep going. It does not supply the paperwork, and treating it as though it does is how people get failed by organizations that meant well.
The same rule runs the other way. A man who is not sure what he believes, or who has decided he believes nothing, is not further from a job, a mentor or an introduction than anyone else here. Nothing in the sequence depends on it, because the sequence is made of offices, forms, employers and hours — none of which check.
Frequently asked
Questions people actually ask
Do I have to be religious to get help?
No. Nobody is asked what they believe, nothing is conditional on belief, and no one is required to attend anything. Help is offered regardless.
Will volunteers try to convert me?
No. Naming a motive once is not the same as running a message at somebody, and conversations about belief while a man is dependent on a volunteer for transport or work are not fair conversations. If you ask, you get an honest answer. If you do not, it does not come up.
Is Kingdom Alliance part of a denomination?
No. It works alongside congregations of various kinds and is not governed by any of them.
Why is faith mentioned at all then?
Because it is the true answer to why this work exists, and starting a relationship with a sanitized answer about your own motive is a poor foundation for asking anyone else to be honest.
Can a volunteer who is not a believer take part?
Yes. Plenty do. The requirement is reliability and the boundaries on the <a href="/volunteer/">volunteer page</a>, not a statement of belief.
Make your next move
A year from now, what will you be glad you started today?
You don't need another promise that everything will be easy. You need something useful to learn — and a next step you're willing to take.