Good morning.
My friends who know me well know that I
love to tell stories. Some people have even remarked that I get into preaching
mode when I am passionate about something. I am not sure if this means that I
go on a little too long or if my stories seem to get better and better the more
I tell them. Klarina usually tries to reel me in if I go a little too far. I am
sure she won’t speak up today so please bear with me as I have a story to share
with you. This is a story of a journey we have taken as a congregation. This
journey started during a time of change for our church. I see God’s call to
service and our decision to act as steadying constants during this time.
Max preached recently about moving from
knowledge to action. The history of the Family Promise service mission is a
good example of this. The story begins in the late 1980’s when Karen Olsen, the
founder of Family Promise, was working as a consumer products manager with
Warner Lambert. She was rushing to a meeting in New York City when she spotted
a homeless woman she’d passed many times before. This time, for some reason, she could not
just pass by. Instead, Karen bought a sandwich and handed it to the woman. Instead of taking the sandwich, the woman
reached for her hand. She said her name
was Millie. Karen came to realize that
while she was hungry for food, Millie was even hungrier for companionship.
The incident prompted Karen and her sons to
bring sandwiches to the homeless in Port Authority on weekends. She soon
learned that there were thousands of homeless people in her home state of New
Jersey, particularly families with children, who desperately needed help. Karen knew it would take a community effort
to reach so many people. So she
organized the community.
She met with religious and lay leaders in
Union County New Jersey and created a model, which mobilizes existing community
resources - basically a faith-based call to service together with congregational
real estate assets. I think this is the real genius of the Family Promise concept.
In the Family Promise program a Host
congregation furnishes safe, temporary lodging and nutritious meals for up to
fourteen guests once a quarter. Many Host congregations are supported by nearby
Support congregations, like Most Precious Blood supporting The Dover Church.
Local social service agencies and schools assist in referring and screening
guest families. Did you know that every school in Massachusetts has a
homelessness liaison? Guest use the local Family Promise Day Center to shower, care
for preschool children, seek employment and housing with the professional
support of the network director and other staff. The network and the families
enter a covenant of trust and respect. Hard work is expected from parents. Through
loving hospitality and focused case work, guest families do what it takes to move
toward permanent housing.
Today, the initial resources of one woman, her
family and her community have expanded to a bounty of caring congregations that
make up the 181 Family Promise affiliate networks nationwide.
In 2005, The Dover Church was a vibrant and
busy place much like it is today. I served on the Social Concerns Committee
along with Mary Hornsby, Greg Rice, Jan Scott, Patricia Hudson and others. We
were writing a lot of checks and organizing the occasional Service Day but we
were searching for something more – more meaning and a deeper connection than
could be found raking leaves or collecting winter coats. We enlisted the help
of an outreach and social action expert at the Massachusetts Conference of the
UCC. We also asked our congregation for ideas.
It was around this time that we heard about
the Family Promise opportunity. A Family Promise brochure was dropped off in
the Social Concerns mailbox, we looked at it during a meeting and there was not
a lot of enthusiasm. Homeless families staying in our church? How many
volunteers for a host week – 75? We had a hard time getting 10 people to go
into Boston to work at The Food Project. How would we recruit 75 people? We
kept the brochure but honestly it moved to the bottom of the pile.
There is one thing that you have learned,
or will learn, as you get more involved in this church – we deliberate really
well. In my experience no good idea truly goes away – we just need to look at
it from different perspectives and against different backgrounds.
As we kept searching for a new meaningful
mission, our minds on the Social Concerns Committee became more and more open
to new possibilities. Around 6 months after reviewing the brochure, The Dover
Church was contacted by representatives from Christ Lutheran Church in Natick
and The Village Church in Wellesley and told that they were starting to form a
local network. They had 5 churches and needed 13 to open. Would The Dover
Church consider joining? We invited Laraine Mathenson of Christ Lutheran and
Judy Mongiardo of The Village Church to present to us.
Their pitch was compelling – we could serve
children and parents without homes right here in Kraft Hall. The light bulb
went off – we had everything we needed - an active congregation, a perfect
facility and a central location. The Social Concerns Committee met in the
library and I remember walking downstairs into the Christian Education classrooms
and sensing immediately how welcoming they could be made to be as bedrooms.
We started formulating a plan. Questions
were asked. Answers were found. Volunteers were dragged kicking and screaming…I
mean, came forward. The Congregational Church machinery started cranking up. We
presented our plan to all church committees for feedback and finally presented
our ideas to the Church Council. There was again fruitful discussion leading to
improvement and clarity. We checked in with the Town of Dover public safety and
building officials and with our insurance agency. All the T’s were crossed and
the I’s dotted. The day that our congregation voted unanimously to join the
network was truly knowledge leading to action. We did it! But of course that
decision was just the next step in the journey.
As the network took shape, the initial
community organizers moved from an ad hoc working group to a Board of
Directors. This was followed soon after by registration of the network as a 501
c3 organization. I joined the board at that time.
The Dover Church was the 8th
congregation to join the network. It took another year to enlist the other 5
congregations. During that time The First Baptist Church in Natick provided
rent-free space for our Day Center. The location right off the Common in Natick
Center was perfect. Chris Newport organized Shawmut Construction tradesmen to
donate the services needed to add bathrooms and showers to the Day Center. A 14
person passenger van was donated by The Good News Garage. The Village Church
donated $75,000 in seed money. I am pleased
to report that The Dover Church also made meaningful financial contributions
during this start up period. We hired our Director and opened in October of
2008.
Our timing was perfect – perfect as in the perfect
storm. We opened at the midst of the worst economic recession since the Great
Depression. And then the weather hit – hurricanes, floods, and blizzards. In
our first year we came together to serve families that lost their homes and
apartments to financial ruin and then had to move out of relatives or friends
basements when storm waters flooded them out. Thank God we were there for them.
From our modest beginning, this
congregation should be pleased to know that it is one of 39 congregations in
the Metrowest network and one 5,500 congregations nationwide. We count our
2,200 local volunteers and supporters among the 150,000 volunteers nationwide.
We have now served 62 families – 84 parents and 109 children. Nationwide, the
network served over 50,000 children last year.
If you look in your bulletin, you will see a
list of nearly everyone in our community who has volunteered. Since there are
so many ways to serve and we have been at this for a long time, I am sure that
I have missed someone and I apologize if I have missed you. I think this list
is tremendous. If you haven’t volunteered yet, you are so welcome to join us in
service. Our next host week begins on March 17 so sign up!
So where do we go from here? Let’s take a
closer look at the current situation in Massachusetts
The face of homelessness today is often not
what we expect. According to the
Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, the average age of a person who is
homeless in our commonwealth is 8 years old.
Let me repeat, 8 years old. Approximately 41,000 school age children and
40,000 preschool children are without their own home – in Massachusetts! We
know from experience that a majority of our guest families have very young
children. We know that early childhood development is crucial to success later
in life. Supporting these young families has to be a priority if we expect a
vibrant community in the future.
Massachusetts has one of the most expensive
housing markets in the country. To live
unsubsidized in Boston a family of three must earn $64,000. This means that many hard working families,
who provide services necessary for us to live, are struggling to make ends
meet.
Presently all shelters in Massachusetts are
filled. Because of this, more than 1400
families are housed in roadside motels without access to stoves to prepare hot
meals, without safe places for children to play and without adequate access to
transportation for work, school or job searches. These families are isolated and disconnected.
It gets worse. Today, 40% of all homeless
families do not even qualify for a motel room or state shelter. If a mother
earns more than $26,000 and she has a family of four, she is ineligible for
state shelter because he earns too much. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has
recently passed new regulations that make it much more difficult to gain access
to shelters. Families have to actually prove that they are living in dangerous
conditions before they are eligible.
The good news is that because of you and
our network of supporting congregations and friends, we are acting to improve
the situation in our local community. Family Promise offers a clear alternative
– a safe, comfortable “home” where families can remain together while they seek
permanent housing. Our congregations and
volunteers are a community of support providing all that guests need so that
parents may successfully move from homelessness to becoming permanently housed.
I think it’s clear to say that the need for our service is not going away.
Many of us have served our homeless guests
during a host week. This opportunity to act and connect is invaluable. We get
to know the guest parents, read to or play with the children and connect with
our neighbors and friends through service.
I volunteered during a recent host week and
had the pleasure to play ball again with Matthew. I had met Matthew when he and
his family entered the program last year. I noticed a very positive change in
Matthew over this period. He seemed calmer and more focused; more relaxed. We
played ball both times we have been together. This time, his catching and
throwing had really improved. It was clear to me that he had settled in and
matured during the relatively brief time I have known him. These host week
experiences are so rewarding and a primary reason that many of us volunteer for
every host week.
When you open your heart to a stranger,
invite that stranger in and experience the transforming power of God’s love,
you cannot help but be called to further action. We have a developed a deeper
understanding on the importance that stable housing has on individual and
family economic outcomes. We know the
importance of skill development, education and training for success. As we look to our future, our Board of
Directors and other stakeholders have developed a strategic plan where ensuring
stable housing and providing access to appropriate education and training are
cornerstones. The goal of this plan is to serve more families in more ways and
improve our success rates.
Executing on this strategy will be both
exciting and challenging. It will take more of everything and we need your
help. We are looking to build our Board of Directors and subcommittees. We will
need to increase our financial support. We are actively searching for real
estate that might become transitional housing. If you are interested in
increasing your support for the Family Promise mission in any way, please see
me after the service, contact our Director Beth Cooper at our Day Center or
respond generously to our next appeal.
Our Christian faith calls us forward to
serve others. Our Congregational tradition rallies us to this service by directing
us to serve God together. Anything is possible when we come together in God’s
name. When we doubt what we should do, the Bible helps direct us.
Jesus taught us by the parable of the good Samaritan.
A man was travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho. The road to Jericho was a very
dangerous road in those days – it probably still is. This traveller fell into
the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him and left him half dead. A
priest passed the man and did nothing. Others did too. But a Samaritan stopped,
took pity on the man, bandaged his wounds, carried the man to an inn and paid
the innkeeper to take care of him. History tells us that Samaritans and Jew
generally despised each other. What made him stop and help?
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. gave us
these thought in his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” speech. King said “And
so the first question the priest asked, the first question the Levite asked was
“If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? But then the Good
Samaritan came by and he reversed the question “If I do not stop to help this
man, what will happen to him?’
The Dover Church ended up asking the second
question “What will happen to him, to them?” and everything changed for the
better.
I think it is getting better. It is better
primarily because we decided to act – to serve our brothers and sisters, to
welcome the most vulnerable people into our hospitality, strengthen our
relationships and extend our fellowship. What we have received in return is
greater than we might have imagined - love, hope, meaning, connection. I hope
that these are the gifts you feel in your heart when you envision your service
to Family Promise.
I guess I am like most people. I am wired
to always want more. More money, more horsepower, a quicker release on my wrist
shot leading to more goals, more mountain bikes. More can sound pretty shallow until
you think about all the cases were it’s not. More love, more patience, more
grace, more time, more connection, more meaning. Most people I know want all of
this too. By becoming active with social concerns and outreach both here with
The Dover Church and in our wider world I am confident that we will find more
together.
I want to encourage all of you to join in
our service and outreach mission. Whether it is Family Promise, KIVA, or our
Haiti mission get involved, join in – be part of the story. If you have a
passion for another mission, our church is ready to support you. Get involved. Get
the Congregational Church machinery cranking. Drive this wonderful vehicle of
love and caring. Our church is ready to learn with you, develop a plan and act.
Thank you.
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