Across the country, American cities are unsuccessfully grappling with how best to address homelessness. This month, Austin criminalized sitting, lying, or camping in public. Sausalito, an upscale community in the Bay Area canceled its annual art festival when its location conflicted with the proposed place to relocate the homeless population that is currently living on the city’s waterfront. Los Angeles is considering moving forward with establishing a government-funded tent encampment.
Nationally, here’s how
The New York Timessummed it up in March of this year. Homelessness in the United States rose for the fourth straight year, with about 580,000 people living on the streets or in temporary shelter at the start of 2020, according to an annual nationwide survey that was completed before the pandemic.
In recent years, rescue missions have experienced transformation. Ed Stetzer
Today, I am pleased to welcome John Ashmen, President and CEO of Citygate Network for a conversation on the transformation that is currently occuring in city missions.
Ed Stetzer: John, everyone knows that there is a city mission in most towns, but a lot of people don’t know how the ministry approach has changed. Can you tell us?
John Ashmen: In recent years, most city missions or rescue missions, as they have been known have been intentionally moving from the
disaster-relief model to the
personal-development model of ministry. In the former, the greatest amount of attention is paid to perpetually feeding, clothing, and sheltering people often the same people, over and over again who eventually view the local mission as their kitchen, closet, and bedroom. Speaking candidly, a strong argument can be made that operating the