Just Ideas: Be A Home for the Homeless

April 16, 2008 by Joshua Cody

This is part three of a four-part series called “Just Ideas,” looking at ways your church can commit itself to fighting for justice and righteousness in the society around you.

A while back, we covered a piece of satire discussing churches as a rotating homeless shelter. One of the most encouraging parts of the post (as the original link was a little discouraging) was the response in the comments. So many people have already been part of something like this or heard of something like this.

If you were to join with some other local churches, you could certainly share the burden of this and become a local network in support of local needs. If you could find ten or fifteen churches, you could give the homeless a roof every night in a month by just donating two or three nights yourself.

It puts minimal strain on church resources to be a homeless shelter for two days a month, yet it gets tons of people in your doors (in the shape of those experiencing homelessness and those looking to serve) who wouldn’t normally attend. From a marketing standpoint, folks will see that you care about people, and everyone wants to be a part of that. Not to mention Jesus was homeless, so you surely get some extra bling on your heavenly mansion for that.

Check out a story of one church that did this for some inspiration. And in the comments, we’d still love to hear stories of churches doing this or thinking of taking the plunge.

Matt Holley
April 16, 2008

We have a ministry at Reynoldsburg United Methodist Church called Home Again and it focuses on helping the homeless get back on their feet. We help them find a job, apartment, and then we furnish the apartment with donations from our church members. It really is a blessing to see what goes on through that ministry.

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Alex Lowe
April 16, 2008

Must be a Michigan thing! =)
We are in Michigan (Detroit area) as well and we’ve lost approximately 400,000 manufacturing jobs in the last 5 years. The homelessness rate has skyrocketed and this has become a huge social issue in the area. We have a similar organization setup to handle this issue using rotating churches: Macomb County Rotating Emergency Shelter Team (MCREST). Our church, Warren Woods Church of the Nazarene, has participated every year housing homeless in our school for one week during the summer. We’re looking for a way to house them for many more weeks each summer too! Organizations similar to MCREST are great because they do screening and provide a structure that really pushes/encourages the participants to get back on their feet. Christ called us to this kind of service so it is a blessing to be able to participate.