“Wow. You people at New Life Church go all out,” said Mike Johnson, who runs Port Townsend’s homeless shelter.

“That’s what Jesus does for us. We just want to spread it around,” replied Melannie Jackson, Executive Pastor of New Life Church as she delivered the days’ hot food and a special treat of “You are Loved,” “You Matter” and “One Day at a Time” cupcakes.

Why do people go out of their way to help the homeless? They don’t know the people they help, who may or may not be responsible for their circumstances in life. Some of the beneficiaries of these acts of kindness may not be the nicest people, or they may be sweethearts simply broken by the weight of a life they cannot shoulder.

The Christian churches that prepare hot meals for residents of the shelter do it because they believe Jesus loves them and wants them to share His love with others.

There are other reasons people help the homeless, other motivations and other agendas. We have a worsening housing affordability and homelessness crisis in Jefferson County that is fast becoming a miniature of Seattle’s situation. More public funds are being chased by groups for building projects, material and salaries. As Christopher Rufo observed in his excellent analysis of Seattle’s example, “Seattle Under Siege,” this creates a perverse incentive: those groups do better when things get worse. Things are getting worse in Seattle, though it annually pours more than $1 billion into the organizations that are supposed to be ending homelessness. That’s nearly $100,000 a year for every homeless individual man, woman and child on Settle’s streets. Yet there are many more people making less than that who are not homeless and hold jobs and build families. They have hard lives, health problems, addictions, and other vulnerabilities. But they have not let themselves or their loved ones join the ranks of the homeless.

Rufo divides the landscape of Seattle’s helpers into four groups. We have the same groups in Jefferson County. I am sure you will associate the names of local activists and officials with each of these categories:

The socialists.  “Using homelessness as a symbol of ‘capitalism’s moral failure,’ the socialists hope to build support for their agenda of rent control, public housing, minimum-wage hikes, and punitive corporate taxation.”

The compassion brigades are “the moral crusaders of homelessness policy, the activists who put signs on their lawns that read: ‘In this house, we believe black lives matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal,’ and so on. They see compassion as the highest virtue; all else must be subordinated to it.”

The homeless-industrial complex are the social service providers who receive the staggering amounts of public funds dedicated to “ending homelessness.” Rufo writes, “When their policy ideas fail to deliver results, they repackage them, write a proposal using the latest buzzwords, and return for more funding. Homelessness might rise or fall, but the leaders of the homeless-industrial complex always get paid….Ultimately, the homeless-industrial complex is a creation of public incentives, constantly on the hunt for bigger contracts.”

The addiction evangelists are “the intellectual heirs of the 1960s counterculture: whereas the beats and hippies rejected bourgeois values but largely confined their efforts to culture—music, literature, photography, and poetry—the addiction evangelists have a more audacious goal: to capture political power and elevate addicts and street people into a protected class. They don’t want society simply to accept their choices; they want society to pay for them.”

Whatever their motivations and methods, whether they get another $100 million or only $1 million, these groups are not producing positive results for Seattle. That city is in a worse crisis every year even though these groups gain more power, influence and resources. None of what they do, Rufo writes, can end homelessness because homelessness is not caused by anything they address as the cause of the problem. It is necessary to quote Rufo at length:

“[T[he reality is that homelessness is a product of disaffiliation. For the past 70 years, sociologists, political scientists, and theologians have documented the slow atomization of society. As family and community bonds weaken, our most vulnerable citizens fall victim to the addiction, mental illness, isolation, poverty, and despair that almost always precipitate the final slide into homelessness. Alice Baum and Donald Burnes, who wrote the definitive book on homelessness in the early 1990s, put it this way:

Homelessness is a condition of disengagement from ordinary society—from family, friends, neighborhood, church, and community. . . . Poor people who have family ties, teenaged mothers who have support systems, mentally ill individuals who are able to maintain social and family relationships, alcoholics who are still connected to their friends and jobs, even drug addicts who manage to remain part of their community do not become homeless. Homelessness occurs when people no longer have relationships; they have drifted into isolation, often running away from the support networks they could count on in the past.”

Missing from the homelessness power and money map Rufo sees in Seattle are churches. They are there, working. They’ve always been at work. But with the annual billion dollars thrown by government at Seattle’s homelessness epidemic, churches seem to have been edged out of the picture, even though what they have to offer may more directly address the forces feeding Seattle’s crises on its streets and public spaces.

It Will Take More Than Cupcakes, or Socks

Food for Port Townsend’s homeless shelter is provided by four or five church groups. They prepare the meals off-site and for the time being just drop it off. There is little more they can do with Covid restrictions in place. The food is set out on tables and residents pretty much help themselves. Before all of the current restrictions, there was more interaction between the Christians and the residents. They made friends, stayed over night, brought residents to church services and classes, took them out for coffee, gave them rides, tried to find answers to their problems. I got to know some of the Shelter’s residents when Marica Reidel, former president of COAST, the coalition of churches supporting the Shelter, invited or brought them to Sunday services.

If what is behind our homelessness crisis is broken people and broken relationships (which comes first?), churches will tell you this is right up God’s alley. Jesus is in the business of fixing brokenness. The Holy Spirit can and will lead people to healing and wholeness.

Those are strange, perhaps offensive statements to many ears, and certainly not the words one hears in the meetings of elected officials or the task forces they have created. We live in a town that is not reluctant to show contempt for Christians and their faith, especially traditional and conservative Christians. One does not have to search long to find local officials mocking Christians on their social media.

But government can’t get it done. Exhibit 1: Seattle.

Our greatest homeless problems seem to be concentrated in the most unchurched cities and areas of this country. That is a reflection of the disaffiliation and disengagement Rufo cites as the driving force in Seattle’s out-of-control homelessness tragedy.

Government, and government-funded programs run by social service agencies, won’t fix the decades of disaffiliation and disengagement that have produced today’s homeless, mental illness and addiction tidal wave. Indeed, as many scholars have shown, government in many ways has created or exacerbated those problems. Vibrant, healthy, sound churches can do much more to address the problem of broken, isolated people than people on government contracts or payrolls.

It would be great if we had a mega-church or even a large church here that could support its own Adult and Teen Challenge Center, a highly successful organization that loudly proclaims its vision of “seeing all people freed from life-controlling issues through the power of Jesus Christ!” The organization has developed a less costly model for areas that cannot support a full residential center, a possibility that may be within reach of our local churches. An energetic Celebrate Recovery program–a Christ-centered 12-step recovery program–is sorely needed in Port Townsend (one has been going in Quilcene for a number of years). Our rural area would be perfect for something like Hope Farms, a residential recovery program for women, many of whom have been victims of rape, sexual abuse, and sex trafficking. These programs work.

The churches behind these programs will insist it is not them producing results. It is God working through them to transform lives. If we truly want to see progress in reducing homelessness and stemming the flow of new recruits to the streets, our secular society needs to put aside its antipathy and respect such statements.

In my limited experience, I’ve seen the benefits of Rescue Missions, a venerable ministry to the homeless operating in many cities. I remember Mark, a young man we found one morning on the loading dock at the back of our church in downtown Albuquerque. He was tweaking terribly. Meth had kept him awake for days. The church brought him in, washed and fed him, gave him some clothes and took him to the Rescue Mission a couple blocks away. I don’t recall exactly how he was enrolled so quickly in their program, but I remember what happened afterwards. He became part of our church family, participated in choir and helped with the weekly feeding of 400 people. The Rescue Mission’s residential program of rigorous Bible study, worship, prayer, life skills training and educational courses was demanding. But it worked. He defeated the streets and worked his way up through an entry level job at a high-rise hotel to be entrusted eventually with the entire operation.

It would be great if we had something like the efforts I’ve described here.

I’ve seen marriages saved, families kept intact, families reunited, children put on the right path, and friendships for life formed in churches. I know of suicides prevented, addictions overcome, and of the lonely and isolated finding a new family that loves them in churches. Government programs don’t and can’t do this. Government doesn’t love. The people you meet in church do because, as Pastor Jackson explained above, they believe Jesus loves them and they want to spread it around.

Revival

Disaffiliation and disengagement have risen as churches have declined. Some churches in the area have dropped their youth and children programs as they’ve failed to attract or keep young families.  It may be a revival of healthy, doctrinally sound churches and greater collaboration among the faithful of different denominations that could be the answer to Port Townsend’s growing homelessness, addiction and suicide crises.

Take a look at Seattle. Don’t ever not learn from Seattle. We are still small enough, not yet locked into the errors of that troubled city, that we might still have a chance.

This is not to say government should wrap its arms around churches and fund them. That would be a death embrace. Dependency on government money and the strings that come with it would lead to churches being compromised and losing their truths and power. Look at what European governments have done to churches on that continent. But government can welcome and encourage churches in other ways and pull them more into their discussions and committees. Most churches already have food pantries, homeless outreach and Agape programs–unconditional gifting to help families pay utility bills, rent, buy medicine, etc. They could and should be at the table as respected partners.

Perhaps our small to medium-sized churches could pool resources, or jointly approach one of the national providers of the very successful Christian recovery programs. Or simply come together to buy a car for someone when the cost of the vehicle would exceed the reach of a single congregation.

The excitement about the Port Hadlock Community United Methodist Church welcoming a tiny homes village to its property is a wonderful development. County government showed a willingness to accommodate a unique experiment that did not precisely fit within existing land use regulations. City and county regulations, however, continue to stand in the way of churches doing more. Government could make it possible for churches to provide more services and material support for the homeless by loosening land use regulations. Many Port Townsend churches with large tracts of land are zoned out of doing multi-family or temporary housing. Perhaps a special zoning category for churches/religious organizations could unlock some of that land for very low income and residential recovery program development.

A Fifth Column

Alice Cooper once said that the most radical, rebellious thing he has ever done was become a Christian. Yes, that Alice Cooper.

In a disaffiliating, disengaged society that is producing our rising population of homeless, addicts and the hopeless, a Fifth Column of churches, working behind those enemy lines, sabotaging the forces that push people into despair, building and repairing the bonds that prevent the ups and downs of life from putting someone on the street, this secret weapon may be the only thing that will stem the tide. But it can’t be too secret. It can’t be secret at all.

There’s a lot happening in our local churches already. More is coming. There are many good people here who want to spread the love they profess they know from Jesus Christ. That is the reason they go “all out” for the homeless and others in physical and spiritual need. They’ve watched government try and fail. And it will continue to fail. For government is no substitute for the family and community or the fellowship and friendship of believers that can keep a person afloat in the roughest seas, or pull them out of the water when they are sinking to dark depths below.

 

(Disclosure: The conversation related at the start of this article came from announcements about the New Life Church homeless ministry. I am a member of that church. I do not intend to suggest that our congregation in any way is doing more or is any better than any other church family. We have much to learn and much, much more to do. Always.)