What Are Churches Doing In Your Area To Help The Homeless & Street People?

I am sure they must be doing something in my area, I am just not aware of it. There is lots of pressure put on local government to take care of the problem.

 

We have a Rescue Mission in our town which provides food and shelter to the homeless. My wife and I have made donations to it many times, and I have on occasion helped out in the church services there. We sang Christian songs (I once led the singing) and one of us would give a fairly short (not really a sermon, but shorter speech from the bible) talk and we would give an invitation afterwards. I haven't been for a few years now, but I would like to go back, now that things are getting back to more normal.

We also have what we call a RAM (Roanoke Area Ministries) house here in town, led and funded by our area ministers and others. Mostly its a free meal (at lunch time), and not a place where they can go at night (although in desperate situations it has taken someone in) because of lack of facilities. Church members volunteer to serve in the kitchen (it is overseen by two paid employees), serving plates of food, busing tables, and cleanup afterwards, etc. My wife and I have been volunteers several times, although not recently.

 

A block up the street from me is a midsized Lutheran church that has for several summers loaned out their back parking lot for use as an encampment for the homeless. I think they also open their washroom facilities to them as well. Not sure what else they do, but would imagine they provide at least one hot meal a day.

I do think local / county / state governments should be doing more for the homeless, and it wouldn't hurt big corporations to contribute too, especially when there are older properties that could be donated or converted into extra low cost housing. Our governor mobilized several empty old motels to house homeless during the pandemic, so clearly it CAN be done. We just need the political will and human compassion to do it.

 

Churches do a lot!
Every rescue mission i have ever visited or worked for has a major portion of their finances taken care of by church donations. Added to that, many churches have food pantries and open their doors on cold nights so the homeless can have a warm place to sleep.
One of our local and larger churches here even has a complex for food donations and prepares hot meals for lunch and dinner for the homeless. They even allow the community to come in a find food stuffs that have been donated no questions asked. Most of the volunteers come from the church community also.
Some local food banks throughout the U.S. are very church oriented in that many of the volunteers are members of local churches and some of the finances it takes to have those food banks comes from church donations.

That said, personal donations and volunteers are the backbone of any mission because it gives more exposure to the public and they can see first hand how much good a mission can do and how much work it takes to help the homeless.
I have asked many times on this and other forums for people to call a mission and volunteer just one hour of their time to go and help serve food on the service line. They get to see what the mission is doing to improve lives and even sit and talk to a few guys and gals who come through the line.

Government wise, because most missions are indeed a spur of the local churches the government can’t (or will not) help out a whole lot with the exception of USDA foods which isn’t advertised very heavily. I have helped a few rescue mission sign up for and receive USDA food and it helps a lot.
One mission I helped in Charlotte, N.C. receives around 4000 pounds of excellent canned and frozen food every 3 months. I love the frozen boneless lamb roasts!

But yeah, churches do a great job of helping the homeless!!

 

Offering jobs to them not handouts, mowing and general work cleanup. Also 2 county homes to stay in as we do not allow the tent cities here. Homes also provide meals for residents. We have a new home builder as a church member that gives jobs for construction cleanup to men and final purchase jobs to ladies of interior cleaning before move in by owner. They are paid a regular wage about $10-15 hour. Transported to and from work and fed lunch.. Those not on time are left behind..

1-2 times a month city/county employees from Mayor down are picked without notice at random to go have a meal or 2 in these homes and report on it honestly to counsel . The homes get no warning when this happens.

 

There are homeless here, but I don't know why anyone would choose to live on the streets here, but many do, especially single males. Homeless families are truly a sad thing, but providing support does increase their numbers, as it reduces the incentive to better their lot in life, similar to the extended unemployment benefits. The Catholic Church is the biggest provider of services to the homeless in this state, and is centered mostly in Anchorage, but also operates in Fairbanks and Juneau. They operate a huge soup kitchen, homeless shelter, and a large teen shelter operation as well. Lutheran churches have food banks and free meal operations too, but on a smaller scale. The Protestant churches in Anchorage operate a homeless mission, mostly for homeless males with substance abuse problems. Anchorage municipal government is buying up hotels to warehouse the homeless using Covid money that was supposed to go to support local small businesses.

 

In the area of our apartment complex, we see, or hear about, no homeless people at all. Then again, the population of the city is only 85,000, compared to where we use to live (Jacksonville, FL) that had 982,000. But, even in the area of Jacksonville that we lived, we didn't see any homeless.

Now, Denver is completely different with many homeless people living in "tent cities" near the Capital building.

 

The two non-denominational Churches I used to attend here are community minded and they organize and teach all the adult members how to help others in our community. Many men who have mechanical skills will help single mothers and the widows with car problems. And the Churches pick up the tabs for parts, etc.

Women make meals for those who just had a baby and also help the new mothers with anything they need help with. One of the Churches is involved with helping members become Foster parents and Grandparents. When we had the flooding over over here these Churches were some of the first to sent out teams and supplies to help those whose homes had flooded...at no cost to them.

Whatever the problem in the Community is...if someone makes the Churches aware of that problem...they will do what they can to help solve that problem.

 

Once after a Baptist convention in Atlanta, a young pastor from New Mexico asked me for advice on how to grow his congregation.
It was like God hit me with the answer almost immediately because I blubbered out, single women with her children. It almost surprised me when I said it but the explanation came even faster.
I told him to focus on finding ways to help out single mothers and one way would be to ask for volunteers with the “grandma’s” of his church for watching children whilst a mother went to work.
If a mother didn’t have work then the congregation should help her find a job and the wheels on the bus go round and round.
By doing that, the congregation not only fulfills an obligation to the community but will probably add the mother and children to the congregation.

I got a letter from the pastor a few months later and he told me that the suggestion was successful enough to add a day care center, food pantry and jobs listings for the unemployed.