The Variety of Christian Homeless Missions
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- Homelessness
To understand why Springs Rescue Mission was so interesting to me, you should know something about the other three Christian homeless missions I have stayed at recently. Knowledgeable people call them model programs. That’s true, but each is different.
The Orange County Rescue Mission (OCRM) in California is a beautiful place with an intensive, every-hour-occupied program in which individuals can advance over eighteen months or so from heavily regimented “freshman year” to a freer “senior year.” It’s perfect for men and women who are young enough and physically/mentally able enough to work again in the outside world.
Eden Village in Springfield, Missouri is a beautiful strip of brightly-painted tiny houses in which beaten-down older people, some mentally disabled, can live out their days. It’s the opposite of OCRM: With no program and few scheduled activities, but caring people at the helm, it’s a colorful haven in a gray world that was too hard for many of its residents.
Watered Gardens and its flagship program, Forge, do their work in drab buildings in Joplin, Missouri. One site is an overnight shelter with a “Worth Shop,” where people trapped in a cycle of dependency can earn what they need. A smaller site, across town, is a building full of felons least likely to succeed — but many do via an intense program of work and Bible study.
The site of my recent stay, Springs Rescue Mission (SRM), combines aspects of all three. It has a good-looking campus fenced off from a semi-industrial neighborhood. Its front door is, ironically enough, on Las Vegas St., a low-rent road where people who have gambled their lives and lost spend their days in a drugged daze. SRM features an everyone-welcome, do-nothing shelter side-by-side with a tiered program in which those who want to escape addiction and poverty often make step-by-step progress.
SRM’s geographic context is important. Year after year, Colorado Springs has been at or near the top of the Most Desirable Places to Live rankings by U.S. News & World Report. It’s also home to some big Christian ministries, including Compassion International and Focus on the Family. The city of 500,000 is certainly a desirable place for 2,000 or so homeless people to live during most of the year, but it can be fatal during the winter.
In 1994, two people who had overcome drug and alcohol addiction decided to help those who hadn’t. Marilyn and Paul Vyzourek started by bringing bag lunches and old clothes to people sleeping under bridges and in parks. In 1996, they opened a soup kitchen in a small space downtown and opened their home to the homeless, starting with four beds in their basement. They incorporated SRM, bought a building, and put in a cafeteria.
SRM puttered along for nearly two decades, with staffers gaining experience and developing big ideas. SRM and an architectural firm eventually developed plans for a campus that would become a one-stop shop for homeless people where they could sleep, eat, shower, wash clothes, access addiction treatment and mental health care, and get job training if they were ready for it.
In 2015, though, SRM’s $14 million fundraising campaign to create the campus was faltering. Meanwhile, Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach wanted to midwife a resource center. He had $3 million unallocated dollars from Housing and Urban Development to spend — but lacked a shovel-ready project. Bach learned about SRM’s hopes but initially did not think city government could partner with a religious organization.
Larry Yonker, then the CEO of SRM, recalls how “we got on our knees and prayed.” City officials finally said yes. Yonker says the government grant “saved us 25 years of gradual buildup. It would have taken that long of intentional donor development to get the funding because we didn’t have a track record doing something this size.”
The most quoted part of the prophet Jeremiah’s advice to Israelites stuck in Babylon goes like this: “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce.…Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jer. 29:5, 7). It would seem that when church leaders take those lines to heart, they can get along with civic leaders.
But in practice, it’s tricky.