homelessness

In discussions of poverty’s ills and cures, it doesn’t take long for the subject of root causes to come up. Not everyone agrees what those root causes are, of course—or whose fault they are. But it’s often taken for granted that you can’t just tackle a presenting problem directly; you have to go for the root, whatever it is.

This certainly isn’t always wrong, but it does have a way of obscuring simple, obvious solutions.

A particular verse of scripture has been haunting me lately. I hear it as an indictment of an aspect of my personal life.

First, it was a lectionary text in Epiphany. Then I found it in the unifying passage of a devotional book I read.

“Bring the homeless poor into your house,” we read in Isaiah 58:7, part of a passage on genuine fasting.

Hugh Hollowell didn't start Love Wins to convert souls or sober up addicts. He wanted to provide pastoral care to homeless people.

Every year, Unco is a good gauge to find out what’s exciting and difficult about being an innovative church leader. Here are ten things that I gleaned from our recent gathering.

I gave the woman a Dunkin Donuts gift card and told her to get something hot. She didn't thank me. She said, "Those mittens look warm."

I recently spent a night on the streets of London. I had two companions, who wondered if I was checking up on them in some way.

Over the years, the fiberglass steeple had gradually weakened, and the hot sun and brutal winters had changed it into a streaked and stained obelisk. Its paint was flaking and splintering, its cracks widening. The “case of the stained steeple” went on the council agenda, and the steeple was taken down and carted off to a field just south of the building. The council neglected to decide on its disposal, so there it rested. The grass grew high and the steeple was forgotten—until the day the director of the preschool looked out the window and shouted, “Pastor, we have to do something about that man out there!”

Every week day, as I walk my son to school through Central Park, I pass a man in a yellow coat. His face, burnished by the sun, is the same smooth-and-taut coppery brown. Next to him sit a large rolling suitcase and assorted smaller bags. A bright yellow cloth neatly covers his belongings and is anchored in place by two apples, each nestled in a paper coffee cup. The yellow cloth and the yellow coat—along with other items, including a plastic yellow banana and a cardboard yellow taxicab—are the reason I took to calling him The Man Who Likes Yellow.