Travis Doodles started a street ministry, Worth and Purpose, that emphasizes evangelism and generosity. He is based out of Lakeland, FL. The ministry’s goal is to love God, love people, and change the world through love. 

PEER: What inspired you to start Worth and Purpose?

TRAVIS DOODLES: I was actually working for a multimillionaire in Tampa [FL], and I was his personal videographer. My job was to ride around in Rolls-Royces’ and private jets, and film him, and make content about money and being rich. The older I’m getting, I am wanting to chase impact more than income. I just was miserable at this job. I wasn’t really happy. I was getting paid six figures. It was an easy job. But I just felt like there was more. I wanted to do something more meaningful. I was talking to my friend, and I said, if I had this guy’s money, I would give it all away. As soon as I said that I felt like God checked me. He said, “Well, put your money where your mouth is. If you’re not doing it now, the little you have, what makes you think you’re going to do it if I give you millions?” I was like, oh, wow that’s interesting. I had this crazy vision, that I felt like God gave me, to quit my job and give away all my money. It made no sense on paper. I talked to my wife about it. I thought maybe she was going to talk some sense into me. But she told me to do it. She said, “Yeah, do it. If you feel like God’s calling you to do that, then quit your job and let’s see what happens.” I had no money coming in. All I had was this vision to do ministry and give away thousands of dollars to random people on the streets. And that’s how it started.

P: Can you explain how this organization shows and shares the love of Jesus every day?

TD: Yeah, so it is an evangelism ministry. The whole concept is going out into the streets and telling people about the love of God, praying for people, building those relationships and creating disciples. That’s like our main thing. But we do it through creative ways. We have an ice cream truck that gives out free ice cream. We have a barber trailer that has mobile haircuts—all free. And we also now have a pizza van, which is all free pizza. It’s doing it creatively in a fun way and everything is just based off generosity—it’s all free. That’s how you just build people’s trust, get their relationship going—by loving on people. It’s constant outreach every day. We go out into the streets, and our goal is to pray: “God, lead us to the people that need you.” I don’t know, it’s supernatural every time. God answers that prayer every single time and it’s super cool. And we just creatively evangelize to people, and we have cool vehicles to do it in. It’s fun.

P: Can you share a particular experience from Worth and Purpose that has made a significant impact on you?

TD: It turned into a homeless ministry because we go out and we run the streets and see who needs help. And it’s pretty obvious who needs help when you go out. There have been a couple of instances, but when we get homeless people off the street permanently, we’ll raise money for them and buy them campers and put them on a property that we’re partnered with. And it’s just amazing to meet somebody. They’re at their lowest point. Then you help them build that relationship, get them off the street, and then watch them thrive and just like just do so well. And it really does something to you when you’re there the whole journey and you watch it happen in real time. So that’s been amazing to watch people’s lives just radically change.

And then some of the stories that you hear are so heartbreaking. But then you get to be a part of the solution and God will use you to just, I don’t know, just be the missing link of their life to help them get to where they need to be. You just watch God just totally change their life. It’s just so cool to be a part of it. It’s mind-blowing that I get to do this every day.

P: Can you tell me about your faith? How did you come to know Jesus? And how does your relationship with God influence your work?

TD: I actually became a Christian when I was 19 years old and a homeless guy shared the gospel with me, which is crazy because 20 years later I’m doing homeless ministry. And I just, I didn’t grow up in church. When I heard the gospel and I gave my life to Jesus, it was just radical change overnight. And my life has never been the same since. Years later, starting a ministry, I serve such a generous God and that just overflows out of me. I feel like that’s the main reason why I started the ministry because I’m like, God is so good. He’s so generous. And I’m just going to start a ministry that’s all about generosity and points people back to Him. It’s a full-time thing now. I’m never going to do anything else until the day I die. I’m fully committed to street ministry forever. I love it. 

P: Your website, the Worth and Purpose website, talked about youth impact. Can you share about the youth impact from this organization? What does that look like?

TD: When it comes to the youth, it’s 90% of my audience online, because we have a pretty big social media following. It’s all, I don’t know, probably young 20s down to high school, down to elementary. The ripple effect is unbelievable with what the social media has done with the youth. I mean, I had a mom email me. She was like, “I don’t know if I’m mad or if I’m happy.” And I’m like, “Oh, gosh, where’s this going? I don’t know what that means.” I read through the email and she’s like: “My son watches your videos every day. And he tried to bring a homeless guy home for lunch.” And I was like, oh, my gosh, that’s amazing and extremely dangerous. Okay, well, the fact that this kid wants to change the world and love on people and bring homeless people home. I don’t recommend people doing that. But the fact that his heart wants to. When I was that young, I didn’t care about anything except what Ninja Turtle I wanted to be or what video game I was going to play that day. The fact that the youth are being activated, it has a massive ripple effect through social media and the videos. So that’s been amazing.

Then we also do youth camps at our headquarters building. We’ll do art camps, but it’s all faith-based because my wife and I are both artists. We’ll use art and faith and all of that to package together like a really cool summer camp so that’s been fun as well. Outreach is bringing in the youth with us, youth groups, churches all that stuff; it’s cool to do this ministry and then young people want to replicate it’s been really cool. 

P: You touched a little bit on this with the ice cream truck and the barber trailer. What does the street evangelism outreach look like? What is the street evangelism outreach look like? 

TD: We’ll show up with the ice cream truck and with the barber trailer. We have a big loud intercom system. We yell at people like, “Hey, my man, you won a free haircut.” And it just builds this quick fun friendship. And then they’ll get a free haircut. They’ll get free food. We use generosity to get people in the door, basically. And we’ll give free haircuts. We’ll give free food and free ice cream. And then it opens up the opportunity to share our faith to just have worship and pray for people and just really build those relationships.

Some people think the ice cream truck is silly. They’re like, “Oh, why are you giving out free ice cream?” But a simple ice cream sandwich has completely changed multiple people’s lives. I mean, I go with the ice cream truck. I’ll give a homeless guy an ice cream sandwich. And we become friends and then it just becomes relational. And then, they can get saved. They can get off the street and we get them in a home permanently. Every scenario has happened just because of a silly ice cream sandwich. It’s been really cool to have these different evangelistic vehicles to creatively reach people. It’s been a lot of fun. But it’s really just a matter of going out into the streets and loving on people that most people walk past every day.

P: What advice do you have for young college-age Christians who want to make a difference in their own community? How can they do that?

TD: I would say don’t overthink it. Just go do it. That’s what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to go out and just love God, love people. Whatever that looks like, just go do it. Don’t overthink it. And just be bold. Who cares? I don’t care anymore what people think of me. I’m a Jesus freak. I love Jesus. And I want the world to know His love and feel His love and His peace. I know that life is so short, and I don’t try to go dark, like oh, you’re going to die. But it’s the truth. Like you don’t know when you’re going to go. Life is really short. And I want to make my life count. When I look at it in that perspective, it causes urgency. And I’m like, okay, let’s make today count. And let’s go do this. So don’t overthink it and just be bold. You never know what somebody’s going through. God can totally use you. Pray about it, pray that God would give you supernatural encounters, that He would give you creative ideas. He’s going to answer that prayer every time.

P: Do you have anything exciting in the works with Worth and Purpose that you want to share?

TD: So many creative things in the works. We want to get a mobile shower trailer. That would be like, to me, the ultimate way to finish off our mobile outreach because we have the hot pizza, we have the ice cream, we have the free haircuts and then if we had free showers, then that would be awesome—maybe showers and laundry. But our main goal is we want to acquire land to put all of these things on the property. And then we have just a big outreach hub. We would love to put an event space on there, like a faith-based community center. We want to call it the Jesus Factory where it’s like this massive place for the community that’s not a church, but a place where the church can come and be the church and be at the hands and feet of Jesus. There is no weird competition or anything like that. It’s just everybody coming together: rich, poor, churches, businesses, whoever. We come and we serve the community. It’s an outreach hub, a faith-based community, and then we can have big events there. We want to do the Jesus Factory.

P: What is a Bible verse that’s been on your heart recently?

TD: My favorite Bible verse since I started this ministry is Matthew 5:16. And that’s, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (ESV). I want to be an example. I’m a videographer, so I started documenting what I do and that Bible verse to me represents how I’m showing the world the goodness of God. I don’t do these good works to say, hey, look how good I am. I’m doing them because I want to show the goodness of God and connect kindness to the name of Jesus. It’s that simple. That verse has stuck out a lot to me., especially when like, Christians are the ones who point out Matthew 6:1, (paraphrasing) you shouldn’t show anyone what you’re doing. And I was like, oh wow, I’m trying to show the world that God is good amongst the garbage that’s on the internet. We’re trying to combat that and show good. That’s a verse that people hit me with a lot. Then I hit them with Matthew 5:16 about letting your light shine and showing your good works. Because I believe if Jesus was here, He would be using social media to get the message out because that’s the language of the world. That’s what we use. Matthew 6:1 was geared towards the Pharisees who wanted self-glorification, and they wanted to be praised by man. If you don’t want to praise a man and your heart’s in the right place and you do want Jesus to become more famous and you do want the gospel to get out, then I would encourage you to use social media to get your message out and film your ministry, film your street ministry, because that’s going to show people who God is. Matthew 5:16 is a great verse that applies to social media as well. Let your light shine and let them see your good works so that your Father in heaven can get the glory. That’s why I use social media.

Follow Travis on Instagram @travisdoodles.