Hope for the Mission: Getting It Right in the Call to End Homelessness

Nye (Grace Can Lead Us Home), an advocate for ending homelessness, reimagines in this optimistic treatise how faith communities can better meet “the interconnected physical and spiritual needs of unhoused people.” He critiques the historically entrenched “gospel rescue mission system,” which often requires an initial conversion to Christianity and continued attendance of religious services to maintain access to social programs. Such a system, he writes, is ineffective and wrongly frames homelessness as a “spiritual failure” to be repaired with religion. In its place, Nye advocates for an approach where housing serves as a foundation from which people can rebuild their lives. He shares examples of churches and nonprofits that have used this principle to help unhoused people; Calvary Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, for example, converted their entire property to affordable housing and leases back the chapel for their weekly services. Several churches in the Los Angeles area offer guarded parking spaces for those who live in their vehicles, while churches elsewhere organize social events to establish long-term relationships with local unhoused communities. Nye wisely promotes solutions that center the unique needs of individual unhoused communities instead of the well-meaning but often misguided priorities of spiritual communities looking to help. The result is an uplifting faith-based plan for tackling a pressing social problem. (Feb.)