Affordable Housing and Homelessness Sunday
August
10, 2008
Download these worship ideas 
Call to Worship
(based on Isaiah 1)
Leader: God demands that we pray on behalf of the oppressed.
People: How will we pray on their behalf?
Leader: We will raise our voices to the Lord that God may revive the “cause of the poor.”
People: How will we ask the Lord to relieve the suffering of the oppressed?
All: We shall petition God with our constant prayers to raise the fortunes of the oppressed so they may be acceptable in the eyes of all, as they are in God’s eyes. Amen.
Call to Worship
(based on 1 Col 4.11: “... we are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless...”)
One: The Lord Almighty has set the path of the Savior’s apostles before us!
Many: May their strength be our strength in suffering.
One: Jesus gives the apostles His Word of support ...
Many: Even when their clothes were tattered....
One: Even when they had no place to lay their head ....
Many: Even when Jesus’ word, through them, returns rejection and beating as their reward.
One: Because God poured the blessings of His Son on the apostles
Many: We know that God’s blessings will fall as grace itself to lift the shoulders of the poor and downtrodden.
Prayer of Invocation
Our Holy God, fill us with wonder at your earth
And fill us with compassion for what society deems the least of these
If we see those whose strangeness is off-putting,
May we overcome our fear to embrace them as Christ!
For those who walk naked down the street
May we offer prayer and clothes and hope
To those languishing in cold, unhappy prison,
May we pray for repentance and forgiveness.
As we see those hungry or thirsty on the street
May our response be not rejection but as they were the king!
Open us to see clearly how we can finally live out the wonder of your creation earth
In our relationship with those most unlike us, and yet
Most like You in the margins of life
Confession and Assurance of Pardon
(based on Matthew 19: 21 and Matthew 6:33.)
Unison: Creator God, we confess that too many times our voices sound like that of the rich young man in Matthew. We want to follow you but we don't want to do the things to which you have called us. We do not want to sell all of our belongings and give the money to the poor. We do not want to reach out to the marginalized, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked and visit the imprisoned. Forgive us for not loving our brothers and sisters as you love us. Forgive us for taking what we want and not sharing our gifts that come from you. Forgive us for hiding behind our walls of money, greed and fear. Forgive us for thinking of ourselves first and not our neighbor. Forgive us and help us turn from our errant ways and to strive first and always for the kingdom of God.
The Great News is this: God will fight along with us and stand beside us in our struggle for righteousness, to overcome the poverty in our soul so we can overcome the poverty in the world, to bring justice to our world, justice that roars like a mighty river. A mighty river that pours over us like the incredible grace of God. God's promise is forever! Amen.
Hymns from Sing the Faith
- Now it is Evening
- Unsettled World
- We Need a Faith
- Here Am I
- We Are Called
- Make Me a Channel of Your Peace
Hymns from the Presbyterian Hymnal
- Called as Partners in Christ's Service
- There's a Spirit in The Air
- We are All One in Mission
- We Are Your People
- I Come With Joy
Scriptures and sermon ideas
Social and economic justice is clear and predominant biblical themes. Christian and Jewish texts remind us that those in poverty have often been made poor through oppression, greed and broken relationships with the human family. Here are a few of the scripture texts that can be read or used for your sermon.
Genesis 15:13-16 — God promised to end homelessness for Israel and give them a new home.
Exodus 2:23-25 — God hears the cry of the destitute homeless.
Exodus 3:1-12 (and other excerpts from chapters 1, 2 and 3) — God hears, sees and knows human suffering, especially that caused by economic exploitation. God's will is for slavery and oppression to end and for Creation's gifts to be shared by all.
Leviticus 19:9-18 (or Deut. 24:10-21) — In grateful response to the God who frees from slavery and oppression, the community sets rules to provide for the needs of the lowest wage workers, widows, orphans and aliens.
Isaiah 1:17 — Be action people; the hands and feet and voice of Jesus Christ in this place. We are called to make things right for people in need.
Isaiah 58:6-12 — The Lord promises favor on those who care for others, who build up what has been torn down, who do His work.
Isaiah 65:17-25 — In God's realm, work brings life's necessities in ample supply, and our children and elders dwell in health and security.
Jeremiah 29:1-9 — As people exiled from our true home, we are to seek the welfare of the city within which we find ourselves.
Amos 5:21-25 — Our worship offends God if not accompanied by righteousness and justice within society.
Micah 6:6-8 — Ending homelessness is what God requires us to do.
Matthew 25:31-46 — Our love of Christ is demonstrated through our regard for "the least of these," those despised and forsaken in our communities.
Acts 2:43-47 and 4:32-35 — The Pentecostal blessing of the Holy Spirit leads to sharing by all so that none experience scarcity.
Ephesians 2:11-22 — Christ is our peace, breaking down the walls that divide us and building one united household in God.
James 2:14-26 — Ending poverty and homelessness takes action and cannot be done by confession alone.
What a congregation can do
by the Rev. Dr. Jean Kim
Within your congregation
- Move one step forward toward permanent solution — ending homelessness.
- Encourage your church to pray faithfully on the issue of ending homelessness.
- Encourage your pastor to preach on the issue of homelessness.
- Encourage your church to offer a special seminar on homelessness by inviting speakers.
- Encourage your church to hold a Mission Fair Sunday and allow guest speakers to address the issue.
- Encourage your church to include homeless issues in “minutes for mission” during the worship service.
- Promote the PC(USA) Homeless and Affordable Housing Sunday each August
- Build resource library at your church on the issue of poverty and homelessness.
- Begin to share with homeless people what you have accumulated at your house.
- Encourage your presbytery to provide a pre-Presbytery seminar on Homelessness.
- Invite your neighbors living in a homeless shelter to a picnic at your church and befriend them.
- Encourage your church to open a room to be a shelter in partnership with local homeless programs.
- Share what you are doing to help end homelessness with Jean Kim by email.
With other churches
- Inspire other congregations to do the same as your church is doing or vice versa.
- Build partnerships with other churches to carry out homeless mission more effectively.
- Develop a new homeless mission in partnership with other churches and civic organizations.
- Identify landlord in your and other congregations and convince them to rent units to homeless people in
- partnership with local shelters or transitional housing programs for ongoing support services.
- Identify those who own mother-in-law apartments and encourage them to share it with homeless people in partnership with local shelter or transitional housing programs for ongoing support services.
With community civic groups
- Encourage your church to endorse and support your local 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness.
- Have your congregation rent an apartment for the homeless in partnership with a shelter in your neighborhood or city (Model: Washington State Korean — American Christian Coalition for the Homeless.) Contact: Jean Kim (425) 712-1677 or by email.
- Encourage your church to adopt a homeless family and mentor them in partnership with local homeless programs.
- Attend meetings/homeless conferences of local church/ civic organizations that work toward ending homelessness.
- Participate in local groups that develop housing for the homeless.
- Join local and/or national public policy advocacy.
- Make a house warming package for a new tenant in partnership with a local agency for the homeless.
- Cook meals for local shelters or for local meal programs or cook community dinner for the homeless.
- Make financial contributions or volunteer for local homeless programs.
- Help your church join the Presbyterian Network to End Homelessness.
- Help to start a local Presbytery Network to End Homelessness with $100 contribution, encourage other churches and organizations to join your network.
Adding low-income housing in your community
Individual, Congregational and Community Actions
Individual
- Read everything you can about homelessness and housing issues
- Find about about your community’s amount and quality of affordable housing and extremely low-income housing. What are neighboring cities doing? More? Less?
- Volunteer for your city’s Housing or Planning Commission where housing decisions are made.
- Attend public discussions about housing, zoning, possible funding sources.
- Network with people who know about building affordable housing.
Congregational
- Join a faith-based community organizing group, like PICO National Network, to gather support for building low-income housing.
- Educate the community about possibilities: have a speaker or speaker series, show films like “Holding Ground: the rebirth of Dudley Street” and excite people about housing issues.
- Research land availability, funding sources (there are many non-profit housing developers who know how to put funding together for housing projects such as Charities Housing.
- Participate with local Habitat for Humanity house-building and building-rehab projects.
- Become an active member of a low-income housing development organization in your community, such as Bethel New Life.
- Provide funding or a no/low interest loan to support a non-profit housing development organization to create or build affordable housing.
- Acquire, rehab and sell/rent an affordable housing unit.
Community
- Create a “community care” consortium with other churches, community, and neighborhood groups and then lobby, raise money for, and raise awareness about the need for low-income housing in your community.
- Join with other congregations and/or neighborhood organizations to form a non-profit housing development corporation.
- Research Federal “Community Development Block Grant” (CDBG) funding in your community (call your Housing Authority or City Housing office). CDBG funds can be used to build low-income housing (or repair or renovate existing housing).
Stories of hope
“One-Stop” Centers that Help the Homeless
A trend in support for the homeless is “one-stop” service, from counseling to intake evaluation, medical referrals and finding transitional housing. This new way of attacking the issue of homelessness is seeing “regional homeless centers” appearing around the country.
The first such center may have been the “PATH Mall,” erected in Los Angeles in 2002 through a support organization started by a Presbyterian couple, the Rev. Charles Orr, pastor of Westwood Presbyterian Church, and his wife, Claire West Orr.
She explained, “We made two decisions — that people would truly be able to help themselves if we offered ‘a hand up, not a hand out,” and we committed to being multi-denominational and community-based.” This model, with a three-story, 40,000 square foot facility which houses nearly two dozen social service agencies in the PATH Mall, and a 98-bed transitional housing program, is spreading around the country.
In Seattle there is YWCAWorks, with programs to end homelessness, create jobs, care for children and youth and prevent violence.
A recent “one-stop” model is in San Jose, Calif., where the county of Santa Clara, San Jose city homeless officials and InnVision, a homeless services agency, are joining forces to provide “one-stop” support. It opens this summer.
Called “Destination: Home,” the project will have a Homelessness Prevention Center at InnVision’s current Commercial Street Inn where clients receive intake evaluation, counseling and other services and for a variety of issues, from jobs to mental and physical health problems.
If needed, clients can go to a medical respite facility and, when they are ready, clients move into transitional housing based on the “Housing First” model.
Key to all these projects is a push for affordable housing, which ties into the National Housing Trust Fund Act just passed from committee onto the Senate floor. It would provide local communities with federal funds to match local funding for low-income and extremely-low-income housing.
Give your tax refund to help the poor!
A grassroots effort, Rebates in Service of Everyone (RISE), is asking that people to consider donating all or part of their 2008 tax rebates to non-profit organizations they know and trust to serve the poor. RISE Co-founder Alan Garcia writes, "My home church, Columbia Presbyterian Church, a 1000-member congregation in Vancouver, Wash., has lent its full support to this call and is actively requesting our members to consider donating their rebates. RISE volunteers are working to build on this early success by asking other Presbyterian congregations to do the same!"
From May through July, the federal government's $168 billion Economic Stimulus Act will kick in with mailings of tax rebate checks to 130 million US households. If individuals, churches, and non-profit organizations make this idea their own, collectively $100 million can be raised to serve the poor.
With average rebates expected to be $1200, reaching $100 million requires only 83,300 people to make donations, according to Garcia.
Interested tax rebate recipients can contact their local homeless- or hunger-support agency. If you are not sure of that agency's name, contact your local county social services department.
Living Wage Key To Lifting People From Poverty
The issue of a living wage is at the heart of concerns over homelessness and affordable housing. When individuals and families' incomes are too low, these households are at a greater risk of homelessness than families whose incomes are sufficient to secure stable, permanent housing. Therefore, the issue of living wage is of vital importance to those who wish to prevent and address homelessness. By extension, the question of the minimum wage is at stake, for a minimum wage that functions as a poverty wage, keeping people in poverty, ensures that wages stay artificially low. Low-income workers, then, are forced to make difficult decisions in order to make ends meet — choices among food, housing, medicine, utilities, child care, transportation, etc.
The question of an adequate minimum wage, one that will set the wage floor high enough to ensure that all workers can afford a basic human-needs budget, must come in to all conversations meant to address homelessness, especially homelessness prevention.
Currently, the federal minimum wage is inadequate, having stagnated for ten years in between the most recent increases (1997-2007). The recently passed wage of $7.25 an hour by July 24, 2009 will have lost much of its value to inflation by the time it has taken full effect. Advocates, therefore, are turning to states and local municipalities to raise the wage floor. State, regional and local minimum and living wage campaigns have met with many successes in recent years. As of Oct. 31, 2007, thirty-four states had minimum wages higher than the current federal minimum of $5.85 an hour.
For more information on minimum and living wage campaigns across the country, as well as advocacy for an adequate federal minimum wage, please visit the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has been a member of the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign since its inception, under the auspices of the National Council of Churches Anti-Poverty Mobilization Initiative.
Northwest Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network
On every night of the year, over 1,000 children and their families are homeless in Philadelphia. Due to the shortage of affordable housing combined with tough economic times, family shelters are overflowing and often house families dormitory-style. In this difficult time of their lives, shelters are unable to provide calm, comfort, safety, and individualized support necessary to help homeless families rebuild their lives. Northwest Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network (NPIHN) provides three to five families with private rooms, quiet safety and caring support in the calm setting of participating area congregations. Because we are small, we accommodate intact couples, single father households and adolescent boys as well as single women with children.
At two- to four-week intervals, member congregations offer hospitality and provide volunteers for our guest families. Each volunteer accepts a small task once or twice a week during the hosting period at their congregation. All of these small tasks make a huge difference in the lives of our families as they achieve and accomplish their goals on the path to stability. During the past 15 years, NPIHN has moved 250 families from homelessness to stability. The NPIHN program provides knowledgeable staff assessment, referrals and life skills training including parenting, financial literacy, career counseling, housing placement, relocation assistance, mentoring and community building. Equipped with new skills and relationships, 96 percent of our families never utilize another shelter following their NPIHN experience. Our graduates often stop in to visit us and provide support for our current guest families.
Our hospitality network is comprised of 1,200 caring volunteers and we are growing. We are congregations, concerned citizens of the community, generous donors, community businesses and institutions. There is space in our volunteer list for you and your congregation or organization, in this richly rewarding service to our neighbors.
Ending Homelessness … One Church, One Family at a Time
Karen Ferich has moved beyond her comfort zone. It began when she and nine others from Lower Providence Presbyterian Church (Penna.) became mentoring friends for a homeless single mother, Valerie (namechanged), and her 2-year-old daughter.
They partnered with Bridge of Hope BuxMont, a local affiliate of a national program that helps single mothers find long-term solutions to homelessness using three-way partnerships between homeless families, trained church-based mentoring groups and professional case managers. More than 80% of participants successfully find permanent housing, financial self-sufficiency through employment, and a circle of friends. “I didn’t want to ask Valerie a thousand questions about her past,” says Karen, a regulatory specialist for Exelon who is also a wife and mother of two teenaged sons. “I wanted to tread lightly. We got to know each other over breakfast, celebrating her daughter’s birthday, and then decorating her Christmas tree.” Later Karen agreed to be the support volunteer for Bridge of Hope graduates who had worked with various local churches. In the process, she and the women have developed friendships that bridge traditional socioeconomic, educational and ethnic divides.
“Bridge of Hope has given me a chance to reach out in friendship to people I wouldn’t have necessarily bumped into,” says Karen. “These women are wonderful people who hit a bump in the road. They need and really appreciate friendships; and I’ve grown from my relationships with them, too!” Bridge of Hope National works to end and prevent homelessness for women and children across the United States by calling and equipping churches to exemplify Christ’s love through a life-changing mentoring ministry with homeless families. For more information, visit the Bridge of Hope Web site or call (866) 670-HOPE.
Two Success Stories from Providence House, Shreveport, La.
The Latrisha Ball Family entered Providence House on January 21, 2005. Latrisha and her two children, Melqueisha Ball, age 3, and Tristan Ball, age 6, were without a home for nine months prior to entering the program. Latrisha completed the Pathways to Success program, and on April 7, 2005, graduated to our apartment on-site program, Project Next Step.
Latrisha states, “The best part about this program is that I had a chance to get where I want to be, and I’m only a hop away from getting my own place to live, a great job and having an associates degree in office systems technology.” Latrisha is pursuing that degree at Louisiana Technical College, and will graduate this May.
At the same time Latrisha works as a sales representative at Rainbow Apparel in Bossier City. Her future plans include graduating from college, pursuing a career, and buying a home in five years. While in the program, Latrisha saved $322.50 in her resettlement fund and $1,100.00 in her graduation fund.
The Betty Hampton Family arrived at Providence House on November 28, 2006. Betty and her son, Indion’Tae, age 5, were immediately placed in an apartment. At the time, Betty was suffering from drug addiction, had nowhere to go and wanted a fresh start in life. Betty completed the Pathways to Success program, and is currently attending Bossier Parish Community College while working at Cracker Barrel Restaurant.
Betty is a very hard worker, and stays focused on what she needs to do to maintain self-sufficiency. Her future plans include completing her studies at BPCC, while working towards owning her own home. Betty states, “We are extremely thankful for the opportunities Providence House provided for our success.” While in the program, Betty saved $543.75 in her resettlement fund and $700 in her graduation fund.
Links to more information on Affordable Housing and Ending Homelessness
Affordable Housing
Ending Homelessness
Advocacy
Resources
“How to Be an Effective Advocate...Let your Voices Be Heard” PC(USA), Washington Office; FREE, PDS #7282206001
“Speaking Truth to Power — The Washington Office”; FREE, PDS #7294201002 |
