Harder to Ignore?

URBAN MINISTRY

As homeless men and women attract national attention, urban missions look for help.

Earlier this fall, members of a panel appointed by the National Academy of Sciences to study homelessness called the plight of Americans without shelter “an inexcusable disgrace.” Estimates put the number of homeless Americans anywhere from 500,000 to three million (at least 100,000 of those are children). And up to two million people will be homeless one night or more this year.

Many of those without a place to spend the night will seek shelter in urban rescue missions. “We are the ones who do the most with the homeless, because our missions have always been located in the areas where the problem is the worst,” said Stephen E. Burger, director of Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission and president of the International Union of Gospel Missions (IUGM).

According to Burger, the profile of the typical homeless person is changing. “Twenty years ago, missions worked with older male alcoholics,” Burger said, “but today, the average age of clients served by rescue missions is 31. Seventy-five percent of all who come in are under 40, and 40 percent are women.” Burger also noted that a majority of the homeless visiting shelters are local, as opposed to the transients that frequented shelters in previous years.

Increasingly, said Burger, families are seeking help at shelters. In fact, a study by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that one-third of all homeless were families with young children. Moreover, the fastest-growing group of homeless are children under six years of age. “A plant closes in the Midwest, so the family packs up with a couple of thousand dollars and heads west. Within a few weeks, the money is gone, they’re evicted from the apartment, the kids are hungry, and they show up at our mission.”

Lonely Ministry

In spite of increased media attention to homelessness, many evangelical rescue mission leaders say they receive minimal support from churches. “The church is running to the suburbs,” said Burger. “It is becoming more affluent and more removed.” In Denver, where Del Maxfield runs the Denver Rescue Mission, only 40 churches on his 890-church mailing list give more than $100 annually. And at the Olive Branch Mission, a Free Methodist Church-affiliated ministry in Chicago, lack of funds is a perennial problem.

But Larry Davis, director of the Olive Branch Mission, says churches are not as insensitive to the needs of the homeless as their lack of financial support implies. “Most evangelicals do not really understand this is a reality,” said Davis. “It is possible to live one block away and never be confronted with the magnitude of the problem. But once a church visits our mission, they generally become enthusiastic supporters.”

Maxfield agrees. “It’s not a case of churches not wanting to help,” he said. “In spite of the national attention, they just don’t see it as being much of a problem.”

Davis also blames the very nature of urban ministry for the lack of response from churches: “You can’t validate this kind of ministry on the basis of results, because our success stories are so few. While we indeed see lives being changed, we see a lot of our people returning to their problems. It’s not the kind of ministry people get excited about.”

Building Bridges

Given the level of funding from churches, most rescue missions require government assistance in order to provide services to the homeless. For example, at the Olive Branch Mission, government aid accounts for half the cost of their emergency services. “But the government can’t solve the problem,” said Davis. He would like to see more partnerships with area churches because he feels Christians would better understand the spiritual nature of urban ministry.

In Denver, Maxfield is trying to match projects with the interests of individual churches. He discovered some churches are more likely to be interested in senior citizens, so he began a food program for older people virtually trapped in low-income, urban high rises. “Once they are willing to do this, they are more likely to help us with other urban problems like homelessness,” Maxfield said.

Earlier this year, Gifford Claiborne, a vice-president of the Russ Reid advertising agency, met with IUGM’s Burger to plan a national media campaign soliciting donations to 32 missions. Using direct mail and display advertising in major newspapers, they hope to increase the donor lists of the participating missions. The program was piloted at the Los Angeles Mission where the annual budget grew from $125,000 to $8 million in six years.

With winter weather approaching, however, mission workers say the source of funds takes a back seat to ministry concerns. “For Christians, working with the homeless is more than merely providing a meal and a warm place to sleep,” says Davis. “We try to see Jesus in the faces of our clients. That makes it easier to help them catch a vision for what they can become.”

By Lyn Cryderman.

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