But not for Barry Peterson.
He advertises free yard work, free leaf blowing, free lawn mowing, free snow removal, free work of any kind for those who need it.
He calls this Service with a Purpose.
“I was living large,” he said. “But that's not all it's cracked up to be.”
After graduating from college in 2007, the 23-year-old Peterson started his working life like any other diligent citizen. But he was just not happy.
“People have been trying to pay him, but that's not what Barry is trying to portray,” said Peterson's brother, Casey. “He says he is actually more wealthy in life than he ever has been.”
Barry Peterson lives hand to mouth, with most of his food donated, and rent taken care of by Aric Hoffman, junior high youth pastor at SHEC, the church Peterson attends.
Peterson has also put the word out requesting $5-per-month donations, hoping to receive $125 per month to support himself.
So far it hasn't been enough, but Peterson's faith in what he's doing, and his belief that if one helps others, others will return the help, have kept him persevering.
“I probably make under $200 per month, and I have a $210 debt payment,” Peterson said. “So essentially I'm in the negative, but I sell stuff, like I sold my Nintendo Wii for $500.”
Peterson also sold his '97 Chevy Cavalier and now uses a scooter as his sole form of transportation.
People he's helped generally provide him with food, and he claims not to need much of it.
One woman, a 90-year-old former nun, gave him tomatoes and cucumbers from her garden in exchange for weeding and mowing her lawn. One of her neighbors gave him squash and pumpkins for working her yard.
One night, said Peterson, he went to sleep hungry, only to wake in the morning to a cupboard full of food.
“One individual came to me and said they wanted to help, but didn't want Barry to know about it,” said his roommate and benefactor Hoffman. “So I just put (the food) away and didn't tell him about it.”
Still, Peterson said people have called him “dumb,” and asked how is he going to support himself, or a family.
To this he responds by reciting a story. When he first decided this was his calling, he argued with many about it. One day during a party with his brother's friends, he was on the phone defending what he was doing.
“I'm trying to defend myself, but I'm unsure of myself,” he said. “My brother's friend walks over and puts
50 bucks in my hand.”
This, he says, being the spiritual person that he is, was God's intervention.
The story really begins when Barry Peterson was leaving Seattle to see his brother Casey, who lives in Missoula.
He felt lost and unhappy in Seattle and moved here to be with one of his six siblings.
Because Peterson's parents have both passed away, his siblings are his main source of family support. One of the inspirations for Peterson's life of charity is his father, who he says was always a giving man.
“He used to do stuff like this,” Peterson said. “He used to make toys and used to hand out flowers.”
But unlike his father, Barry Peterson does volunteer work full time. When he cannot find individuals to help, he volunteers at Youth for Christ's new City Life Community Center, which has scheduled its grand opening Friday. (See story above.)
Upon leaving Seattle, Peterson, who had recently renewed his faith, called Casey for help finding a church when he arrived.
“I was like, ‘Hey bro, I want to move out here but a church is a big part of my life,' ” he said. “And he said, ‘There's this church with a skatepark. That must be a rad church.' ”
When Peterson walked into SHEC on North Avenue, he started to see places where he could get involved. He became increasingly interested with youth groups at the church, something with which his roommate, Hoffman, has been involved for years.
“He's just one of those guys that showed up and you started seeing him a lot,” said SHEC Senior Pastor John Luhmann.
SHEC, which until it expanded to have branches outside Missoula stood for South Hills Evangelical Church, works to help people in the community in much the same way as Peterson, without too much pressure or preaching. The church puts on many events such as concerts and dances, and provides space for counseling and addiction recovery.
“These events aren't to get you in the door and hit you over the head with Jesus,” Luhmann said.
Peterson's approach is similar.
“I don't really preach the Gospel, but I want to show them a different kind of love ... that Jesus wants to be shown,” Peterson said.
Peterson said he first realized that God had a purpose for him while on a youth group trip to a conference in Post Falls, Idaho, last February. But he said he could not immediately figure out what that was.
“In the coming weeks, I just kept praying about it and kept thinking about it until I came up with a revelation,” he said.
Peterson has since been trying to figure out just how to get people to let him help them. He started out by holding a huge sign up outside of the City Life Community Center telling people exactly what he was trying to do.
But the unassuming Peterson, bald, with plugs in his ears and wearing a rock band T-shirt, did not get any serious responses.
Since then, he has been working diligently to spread the word through fliers and on the Web. He has created a site called servicewithapurpose.net, to detail what he's trying to do.
It includes his biography, stories about the people he's helped, and details his finances and expenditures, so people who give him money know where it's going.
Peterson considers this his missionary work, his duty to the community. If he figures out how to make Service with a Purpose successful in Missoula, he says he will take this work around the country.
“I would love for this to be my life goal,” he said.
As for going abroad and doing traditional missionary work, Peterson simply says there are too many people in his own community who need help.
“I don't see myself going overseas, because a lot of times we don't see our own problems,” he said. “You don't have to go to Africa to make a difference.”
City Life Community Center to hold grand opening
By MARK PAGEfor the Missoulian
Teens now have a place to go to play basketball, shoot paintball, play video games, learn a musical instrument and receive mentoring, counseling, job training and teaching help.
“The mission of the building is a family-focused facility with a teen emphasis,” said executive director Brent Gyuricza.
On Friday, the City Life Community Center on Fairview Avenue is holding its grand opening celebration starting at noon. Everything is free for the open house: food, paintball, video games and a bounce house, jumbo slide and jousting.
Though it is not officially open, the $4.3 million facility is already in use. While contractors hammer and saw away in one room, a volleyball team will be playing in the gym, and a paintball tournament will be going on downstairs.
“Probably in the last two weeks alone we've had about 600 people use the facility,” Gyuricza said. “And we're not even open yet.“
While the goal of the building is to provide a place for adolescents, it is also home to nine different nonprofits, who all pay below-market rent to help support the building's programs. The main nonprofit and benefactor of the building is Youth for Christ, for which Gyuricza works.
In addition to Youth for Christ, the building hosts a slew of other organizations, not all of which are faith-based, such as credit-counseling services and juvenile rehabilitation programs.
Now that the building is almost complete, it will have this revenue stream, along with money from a café. But during the construction of the 33,000-square-foot building, money did not always come easy. At one point last March, the center had completely run out.
Through donations of time, materials and cash, the project has been pulled off over four years of work, and the center has $90,000 to spare. The $4.3 million dollar cost is broken down into cash payments for the land and the initial construction, and donations of labor and materials.
Gyuricza gave many examples of the community's generosity: The center paid less than half-price for electronics from Vanns, bought lumber from Boyce at cost, and also bought carpeting from five different retailers at cost.
The building is now full, but Gyuricza said other nonprofits can pay a small monthly charge to use the center's phone, mailbox, meeting spaces and copy facilities.
“We've turned away over eight organizations just in the past two months,” Gyuricza said. “just 'cause we don't have any rooms left.”
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