Gospel Renewal Among the Homeless

It is impossible to avoid homelessness in Austin, where it is estimated that on any given night up to 6,000 people sleep without a home. In January, at Austin City Life, we talked about renewing our beloved city by moving people from a place of mercy to a place of justice, from temporary hand-outs to permanent transformation. As one City Group discussed the call of the gospel to advocate for justice, they began to ask questions about what it would look like to do this with Austin’s homeless. In a matter of months, a vibrant, viral gospel ministry has begun among Austin’s homeless, moving them from mercy to justice. Here are some stories of transformation among our homeless friends (by Nate Schlueter, a mission leader in one of our City Groups).

In a matter of months, a vibrant, viral gospel ministry has begun among Austin’s homeless, moving them from mercy to justice.

Reflecting Christ in Relationship with the Homeless

We decided that to effectively engage the homeless we would not be able to judge our success based on tangible help. There are plenty of excellent organizations in our city that can feed or clothe homeless people with way more resources than a small group like ours could ever expect to have. Instead, success in our mission is based only on two things: 1) What kind of friends we are to the homeless and 2) How well we reflect Christ’s love to them. Simply said our mission is: To Reflect Christ through genuine relationships with homeless people. We treat them with the same love, dignity, and respect that we would our closest friends. As we began to build these relationships, it became very clear to us that our new friends were in fact very talented and interested in working, especially in the idea of micro-enterprise.

Micro-enterprise Among the Homeless

We worked with them to discover their skills and develop a plan for them to create art, crafts, and contemporary home furnishings to sell at Austin’s weekly art shows. We create all of the items from recycled or renewed material. Our slogan is RENEW: Recycle, Restore, Repurpose- this is what we do when making the items and what we fully expect Christ to do in their lives and in ours. The results have been incredible.

We have seen people that were initially scared and skeptical of homeless people loving them, sharing meals with them, opening their homes to them for showers, and sitting in the woods for hours talking to them about Christ and life.

In the first five weeks, through the art shows and part time jobs we facilitated for them, we have been able to build platforms for them to earn over $1600. They are spend it wisely. Many of their lives are beginning to  change dramatically and, maybe even more so, our lives are changing. We have seen people that were initially scared and skeptical of homeless people loving them, sharing meals with them, opening their homes to them for showers, and sitting in the woods for hours talking to them about Christ and life. There are many amazing stories of how God is moving, Here are just a few that I have personally witnessed.

From Bitter Religion to Gospel Dignity

About a month ago I came out to their camp to check up on them and discovered that Dan was the only one there. He seemed like something was on his mind so I asked him what it was. He told me that everyday he wakes up thinking about how his parents got divorced and how angry he still is about it. He told me they got divorced when he was 13, he is now 46. He was raised in a strict Roman Catholic home and does not understand how his parents could break God’s commandments like that. It became apparent that the very religion and legalism that he believed to bind him to God was actually keeping him from forgiving and living in grace. He judges himself with the same standards he judges his parents because he too has broken several commandments. He has woken up every day for 33 years angry about what happened.

We talked, we prayed, we shared life, we cried, and we shared our dreams for over two hours. Dan is now working on operating daily through Christ’s forgiveness and grace instead of through anger. Dan is a very talented craftsman and mechanic and we are currently working with him to get him a job as a mechanics helper or lube technician. We are also helping him open up a savings account so that he can start saving to buy a camper and rent a place to put it at an RV park.

Master Craftsmen Discipling Urban Christians

When we first started hanging out with our friends the subject came up about what I would be doing on that Saturday. I told them that I was going to help some some people from my church replace a very old deck in their backyard that had become unsafe for their children to play on. They immediately said that they wanted to come and to pick them up at 9 that Saturday. I graciously explained that this was volunteer work and nobody had budgeted to pay anyone to help. They looked offended and said they just wanted to help.

It isn’t just a one-way street anymore, people from total opposite ends of society are starting to live life together and everything is changing for all of us.

When we got their they immediately started taking apart the things that we hard started to assemble and began reconstructing and revising our initial plans for the deck. Apparently the deck we were planning on building would not be any safer than the old one and would not be up to code. I watched amused as these homeless craftsmen gently pushed us middle-class urbanites out of the way and built this totally amazing deck for some people they hardly knew. It became apparent that not only did they have amazing skills, but that we were all learning from them. Here were three men with nothing giving there time to people with way more than them. As I watched them give back and minister to us that day, I realized that we were crossing into an area that none of us had ever been before. They truly loved us back and thought of us as their friends and they were just trying to be good friends. It isn’t just a one-way street anymore, people from total opposite ends of society are starting to live life together and everything is changing for all of us.