I met a homeless man this morning. Not on the streets of a poor neighborhood in the urban core of a big city, but instead sleeping under the carport where we park the church bus at Russell Springs United Methodist Church. That’s small-town, rural Kentucky. His story isn’t much different from the homeless persons I’ve met in the city streets, and there have been plenty. In fact, one thing I learned during my twenty years in the city of Lexington – fifteen of those spent planting a church within the urban core, with a primary focus on the ministry of recovery – is that a lot of the homeless on the streets and in the shelters of the city began their journey right where I met my new homeless friend this morning – small town, rural Kentucky.
I teach a class called Urban Mission at Lindsey Wilson College that includes an “Urban Immersion Weekend” where we travel from rural Kentucky to Lexington or Louisville to spend a few days serving the poor and homeless. I tell my students to treat the homeless as persons, not projects, and engage in what my friend, Dr. George Hunters, calls “the sacramental value of conversation”. I encourage them to hear the person’s story to better understand their journey and to not be surprised if your newfound homeless friend comes from your hometown or at least one just like it. I also point out that homelessness is not necessarily a choice. I mean, no one wakes up one morning with the thought, “I think I’ll be homeless for the rest of my life”. Instead, like any other journey, it involves a series of steps, only in the wrong direction, until you get so far from home that it’s almost impossible to find your way back. Maybe a man or woman moves to the city for a better job in order to provide for their family. Things go well for a while but then, due to a series of wrong choices (substance abuse, family conflict, debt overload, etc.) and/or situations beyond his or her control (car breakdown, health issues, layoffs, etc.) they get behind in rent, the utilities are cut off and eventually, the eviction notice is served. Next thing you know, you are in a homeless shelter in full-blown, day-to-day, survival mode. I tell my students that the distance from where we are to homelessness is not all that far. Just a few unforeseen happenings over a period of six months to a year or so and any of us could find ourselves in the same spot. But the distance from where they are to where we are? Well, that looks like a million miles from where they sit! I mean, how do you fill out a job application without an address to list or what do you wear to an interview without any place to wash your clothes, if you even have extra clothes? The distance from one to the other definitely depends on which end you are looking from.
I first saw the homeless man over at the church bus garage while looking out the kitchen window of the church parsonage, not more than thirty yards away from where he had set up camp. At first, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. Was someone working on the church bus? Had the landscapers that take care of mowing at the church come a couple of days earlier in the week than usual? Then I saw him rolling up his sleeping bag and getting his few personal belongings together to somehow pack onto his bicycle. I’m also pretty sure he was getting dressed as he was carefully looking around to make sure no one was watching him. He didn’t see me staring out the window. It didn’t take me long to understand what I was seeing, a homeless person who had found a relatively safe and somewhat secluded place to sleep for the night.
What should I do now? My thoughts initially went a few different directions. Was he stealing something from the bus garage or damaging church property? Should I call the police or maybe someone from our church Security Team to come check him out? Or should I maybe ask Jesus what to do? You know, Jesus, the One I’m following as His disciple. The One I want to pattern my life after. The One who told stories about “Good Samaritans” and several others that give me a picture of what a disciple of Jesus looks like. So, I walked out to meet my new homeless friend.
Before stepping out the back door and off the deck, I did send a text to a few church leaders just in case things went crazy (it happens) during my visit. One of those leaders left the gym during his early morning workout to join me. Jesus did send out His disciples two by two you know. Matt pulled up in his truck while I was talking to my new friend, Lee, and together we listened to as much of his story as he was willing to share. Lee is in his early 30s, been homeless for a significant time, born and raised right here in Russell County with what sounded like few and fairly broken family connections. When I told him I was the Pastor at the church, he said he was a believer in Christ, having been baptized in a church when he was boy. Not unlike a lot of church folk, the more Lee talked the more apparent it became that he was pretty confused about what it means to be a committed follower of Jesus and not just a “believer” as we understand “belief” in our 21st century, post-modern context. But he did express a desire for change and to get off the streets, so that’s what we focused on.
I encouraged Lee to not get overwhelmed by how far his journey from homelessness would be, but instead to focus on the one, next step he could take that would move him forward. Obviously, spending his nights in a sleeping bag on a concrete slab is not going to help, so step one might be to find some shelter for the night. Matt offered a suggestion and indicated that he was willing to help Lee make a connection with the owner of a homeless shelter. I slipped him enough money for a meal for the day, hoping that $20 will find its way to Lee’s stomach. We prayed with him and then watched him ride off on his bide, unfortunately in the opposite direction of where Matt encouraged him to go for the possibility of shelter. I continue to pray that the seed Matt and I planted will at least bear enough fruit for him to take that most important first step toward home.
Now, let’s take this story in a completely different direction. Let’s start by saying that my Monday morning encounter with a homeless man in a church bus garage was far different than my Sunday morning experience in basically the same place. On Sunday morning, Russell springs United Methodist Church held an outdoor worship service in the back parking lot which houses the same church bus garage. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the spike in positive cases across our state in the past weeks, and at the request of both the governor and the United Methodist Bishop of the Kentucky Conference, we had completely scrapped our plans for a return to in-house gathered worship. Instead, with limited capacity, masks and social distancing, we moved the 9:00 AM service outside and switched the 10:15AM service to exclusively virtual worship by livestream. The angst and stress over completely changing our plans with less than 48 hours notice was more than heavy, especially for our church leadership charged with putting it all together. The outdoor early service with limited capacity went well and, by all reports, so did the livestream, but be assured the effort to pull it all off took a firm resolve and a strong cooperative spirit among our leaders. But, now, here on Monday morning, as I watched a homeless man ride off on his bicycle, I wondered if it was really that big a deal after all?
Don’t misunderstand me. I get that it’s nice to see members of your spiritual family that you may not have seen in several months. I, too, love corporate worship and understand the importance for the community of faith to gather together in the presence of God. But I’m pretty sure that the number of people we can bring together and whether or not we can gather inside, with or without masks and other restrictions, was not on Lee’s mind yesterday at all. And, if it wasn’t on Lee’s mind, I really have to question whether it was on Jesus’ mind either. You see, in the American attractional church culture, we are too often prone to what I call “experientialism”. If we have just the right music and lighting and the preacher’s message is inspiring enough, then we come away with a great experience that feels like we have connected with Jesus. Yet, while we put so much energy, effort, and resources to create just the right atmosphere for an experience with Jesus, Jesus Himself told a very different story descripting what it looks like to connect with Him.
“When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on His right and the goats on His left.
34 “Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You something to drink? 38 When did we see You a stranger and invite You in, or needing clothes and clothe You? 39 When did we see You sick or in prison and go to visit You?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for Me.’
I enjoyed our Sunday morning gathering, both in-person and virtual. I would even say I was blessed by those experiences. I’m not intending to be critical, by any means, of the opportunity to worship the Lord with my RSUMC family. But I do want to thank the Holy Spirit and Lee, for the opportunity on Monday morning to connect with Jesus at an even deeper level. As disciples of Jesus, that connection should be our direction and desire.
David Calhoun