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Gaining from 20 years of valuable experience, Starlight is training new church teams to create redemptive “communities of faith” with people in our towns and cities who are without housing or are street involved.

A survey of Christians found that while nearly 80% agreed that Jesus spent considerable time with the poor, less than 2% surveyed were themselves actually spending any time with them.¹ This gap points to the struggle of many believers and churches today to know how to bring the marginalized back into our community. Yet despite the fact that many people who are homeless or street involved desire relationships that offer mercy, hope, and support for a healthier life off the streets, not many people—including people in churches—are looking to connect with them in return. For many believers, homelessness seems like someone else’s problem. But given the present economy and unprecedented demographic shifts, homelessness, like many other social concerns, is a growing problem not only in the cities, but in the suburbs and rural communities as well. From its perspective of serving people who are homeless for 20 years, Starlight is carefully watching these new trends.

EGC exists to serve churches, and it is our hope and goal to see networks of churches take up their responsibility for serving the poor. Claire Sullivan, the founding director of Starlight Ministries, came up with the tag line, “Taking the Church to the Streets.” Rev. Dr. Brian Gearin, recently named director of Starlight Ministries, says Starlight’s main emphasis, more than ever, is equipping and connecting churches to do the work of this ministry. “The Starlight staff and I sense the Lord wants us to train volunteers and churches throughout New England to address not only the growing needs of the people on the streets of Boston and Cambridge by entering into real relationships with those who find themselves homeless, but to also prepare these volunteers and churches for the ministry that awaits them as many of those that are homeless migrate to more suburban locales in the future.”

BUILDING COMMUNITIES OF FAITH

One of EGC’s principles of ministry is the importance of respectful relationships. “In Starlight, we value relationships,” Brian affirms. “The relationships that we have are what empower our ministry.” Starlight builds relationships through outreach on the streets, visits to shelters and treatment programs, and through in-house services such as advocacy and a resource center. Through these venues, Starlight engages the personal concerns of homeless and street-involved adults and youth while, at the same time, providing essential field training for church teams and volunteers seeking to minister more effectively. Brian says the goal is to connect both the people on the streets and volunteers from the churches into “caring communities of faith.” His vision for these communities of faith, where both the rich and the poor share equally in the life of the community, is nothing less than how Luke describes Christians’ interdependence in Acts 2. “So our core mission,” Brian says, “is to seek to create an environment in which communities of faith are empowered and readily embrace those who are facing homelessness and then become a true reflection of the communities of faith as described in Acts.” 

Admittedly, this is not easy. And one of the main problems in seeing these communities of faith emerge is not centered among those who are homeless, but is the lack of understanding among Christians. “One of the first things we try to do is destroy this paradigm of ‘us and them,’” Brian says. “When we are characterizing or generalizing people, we tend to say these people have these types of needs, or everybody is like that in the same way, and this is not true. One of the ways we try to [move beyond] that is to have real relationships. Then we start to see that these are people who have needs just like anyone else.” 

There may be some practical ways to start. Suppose some people who are poor come to your church, as James suggests in his epistle. We may have to make some adjustments in our routines and in the way we have always conducted ourselves in our churches. We may need to let go of pride and take up a true spirit of love and humility. Brian says, “In your church, sometimes you have to make accommodations for people who are disabled. There may be other ways you have to make some accommodations for people who have some struggles and issues. It is important to learn what those issues are. It might be mental illness. It might be substance abuse. It might be not having enough money, and so on, but the important thing is not to put people in the category of ‘they are in need so I am going to be the savior.’ You can ask, ‘how would I want to be treated?’ or ‘how would I want people to react to me if I were in that situation?’” 

For several years, Starlight has been putting more energy into establishing church-based outreach teams to serve those who are homeless. In 2009, Starlight trained more than 70 new individuals from nine different churches. Several of these churches have launched various outreach and “inreach” programs. Inreach refers to opportunities within the Center or within a church, either a Bible study or a recovery group, or something like Starlight’s Opportunity Resource Center. Whenever Starlight holds an inreach program here at the Center, Brian explains, “we make sure we invite volunteers and teams from churches to work alongside us so that we are providing the field training necessary to effectively meet the practical and spiritual needs of our friends from the street.”

Outreach programs, on the other hand, are venues where staff and volunteers create interaction with those who are homeless in places outside EGC, such as Boston’s Long Island Shelter, or Starlight’s going night or day to where people hang out on the streets. 

Starlight Ministries has prepared various training opportunities as well as what they are calling “learning clinics” through which staff is able to mentor and train volunteers while doing ministry. This helps churches and individuals meet not just the physical needs but also the spiritual needs of those who are homeless by providing opportunities for everyone to experience God’s love and presence in the midst of caring, safe, and nurturing environments. Starlight strives to make each of these learning clinics a safe environment so that real sharing and mutual relationships can be developed.

In 2010, Starlight is looking ahead to discover new opportunities to train individuals and church teams, and to share its learning by building new networks among individuals and among churches where we can all continue to learn together and to experience the blessing of serving in the context of vibrant communities of faith.

by Steve Daman

[published in Inside EGC, July-August, 2010]

¹ Shane Claiborne. The irresistible revolution: Living as an ordinary radical. Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 2006. p. 113. He does not claim this to be a formal survey, but Claiborne explains how he made a reasonable attempt to gather objective data.