I find it interesting that people are willing to live on the street rather than live at a Christian shelter. Having something Christian in the name makes people believe that you are standing by ready to shove Jesus down their throats. Something about a 30–40-minute church service or even a prayer over the meal is too much and is declared to be an abomination to the secular world. Even social workers get in on the action. Consider the Grants Pass Supreme Court case. The less discussed element of the story is that Grants Pass has a shelter, but it simply does not count because it is faith based. Social workers seem to hate the church. Part of that may go with the fact that God can bring healing and restoration and the pretenders can only medicate and treat. It is true that the shelter in Grants Pass could not have handled all of the homeless. In our community we can actually offer shelter to all of them. Yet people stand before the city council and declare that we have no shelter. What a joke.
Try to tell that to the seventy or so folks who stayed at our mission last night. Less than 5% of their time was direct Bible teaching. Yes, we pray over the meals and teach from the Bible. But 5% of any week for most of our guests is too much for these antichristian zealots.
What they don’t understand is that all people, that includes the social workers themselves, have a spiritual piece. For all of us at some point that part of us that is connected to our creator is broken. We hurt and the only way to relieve the hurt is reconnection with the Creator. Because I have stated that you might say, “See, he is forcing religion down our throats!” I am not. I too don’t care much for religion. It is true that I have declared allegiance to King Jesus. This is deeper than the common phrase, “give my heart to Jesus”. As a servant of the King I have been commissioned to invite folks into a relationship with Him. I would never force someone to make a fake confession of faith so that they can eat. I have had great meals with orthodox Jews, with Muslims and even a Satanist or two. We serve them all and my invitation to Christianity was ignored by them. While I still hope they will change their mind, they continued their stay here and I can still call some of them friends.
