It is not easy to work with hard living people, anyone who begins such a ministry needs to understand what one is starting. I have found their opinions and concerns unusually helpful and on the mark.
"You can't do this with gimmicks. You can't gimmick people in. You got to deal with survival and with everyday life. Worship is not disassociated from living., It grows out of it, out of survival. You have to deal with the authenticity of their everyday life. These are not people we seek to become the church. They are the church. They are Jesus. They are the least of these. They are just what Matthew 25 says. "
You build quality relationships on involvement and being. The church must deal with the issues of food, clothing, jobs, medical care, transportation, housing, etc. The church "either has to do it or refer people" to agencies that can. Discipleship means meeting people where they are and being with them all the way, it's a process. It's the building of a life-long relationship. The key is the people in the congregation who embrace them and care about them both inside and outside the church.
So, at each service we focus on a theme, like forgiveness, then people in the congregation share what it felt like to be or not be forgiven, to forgive or not to forgive. This is then followed with a prayer time, when people ask for very specific prayers. They are now sharing the word and "having church" themselves. This establishes trust. They're doing worship for each other and devoping a sense of community.
THREE STREET PRACTICES
The hard living especially attempt to Protect and Share with newcomers. You can't underestimate the power of sharing bread. I had never understood fully how powerful food is. To watch people who have no power share food. Or, to see how important cigarettes and quarters are and how they get shared. Such practices are forms of protection that get worked out between people. They provide information, help people make it on the street, and tell them were the shelters are. A lot of 'street action' is teaching and training.
There is related to a third street practice of Listening. Hard living people "know how to listen without having to fix it." They will listen to the same story over and over again because they know the person needs to be heard, and they know that there are no answers to some things...
Most churches only want to celebrate success. Respectibility is so powerful in those churches that people will not talk about their failures, their weaknesses, their emptiness and loneliness, their inadequacies, and the sheer ragged edges of their lives. But on the street it is different. One cannot hide some things, and the failure and the bad times come with the territory. So, it is simply not possible to argue credibly that one has it made and that one's life is going swimmingly when you are poor and without a residence, a job, or food.
