He cut to the chase quickly.

It wasn't his idea, Chris Honein told me, to spend part of his summer re-roofing a house for the needy.

But before the five-day pro-ject ended Wednesday night, Chris was digging it. Mom and Dad were right.

"Every morning you wake and you're tired and you have to get going," the 13-year-old said. "But once you get up on the roof, you get into it. It's cool."

Well, actually it was hot for a group of young people who hung shingles on three homes in the Tucker area this week. What started out as a youth project for Tucker First United Methodist Church has morphed into a privately sponsored nonprofit called TIME —- Tucker Interfaith Mission Experience. Its purpose: To re-roof one-story homes at no cost to select homeowners who can't afford it.

TIME volunteers will tear off an old roof and tack on a new one if a homeowner qualifies and lives within a few miles of Main Street in Tucker. New shingles are the tangible benefits. But TIME aims to improve the community, connect the church to the people and, it is hoped, instill in teens a benevolent spirit that continues into adulthood.

The Badie Tour was drawn to TIME for a number of reasons, some selfish. My family attends Tucker First. My son Miles, 12, took part in TIME. Like Chris, he had a change of heart as time moved on. So it was special to see my church and its youth take the lead in a pro-ject so simple and humane yet practically an anomaly in these parts.

See, I get it.

Perhaps you don't. Maybe you take issue with "hand outs" and "helping hands." Maybe you believe individual responsibility supercedes and overcomes most any and everything. Maybe you generalize about the less fortunate, judge them, their situation, with scant evidence. Criticism from a position of comfort is crude, callous, inhumane, arrogant.

Know what?

You probably could benefit from spending a little time with TIME. If nothing else, think about the "what ifs." Imagine. Dream big.

It's what John Lukens, the nonprofit's board chairman, and I did Tuesday evening. Dinner had been served, the tables were clear. The TIME volunteers were lounging around the Tucker First campus.

"Can you imagine what our youth could be like in 20 years?" he asked. "This is like putting a down payment on the future. Can you imagine the power if every church partnered with another church and did three or four [roofs] a year? You could help people in a way no government assistance could ever provide."

Make no mistake: TIME is youth driven, though adults work, supervise and chaperone. Teens from Tucker First and Lithonia's Northlake Church of Christ teamed up this year. They bunked at Tucker First and ate most meals there. They were on the job sites by 8 o'clock or so most mornings and back at the church in the afternoons for dinner, chapel, activities and down time.

Lukens and his daughter, Libby, were part of the 2007 inaugural mission pro-ject, when TIME repaired four houses. This year, they worked on the same roof, part of the same 22-person crew. Libby, a rising senior at Parkview High, was the "timekeeper." In other words, she was the boss.

"The house we worked on this year was in better shape than the one I worked on last year," she told me. "I love this experience, and I have learned a lot. I want to play a part in this as long as I can. The youth have to keep this going. We're helping the community.

And we're all just one community."

See photos of the work at http://projects.ajc.com/gallery/view/metro/gwinnett/0618badie/.

For more information about Tucker Interfaith Mission Experience, visit www.timesmission.org.

> Rick Badie's column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875 or e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com.