In California, there is a homelessness crisis that is going on that has become out of control. There are over 66,000 homeless people of the streets of Los Angeles alone which is hard to imagine. One thing to really let this sit in is to think of what being homeless means. Everything that you have on is what you own, you have no access to clean water, no comfortable bed or shelter to sleep in and you have to live outside and are subject to nasty weather or other homeless people trying to rob you of your possessions. Not to mention the massive amounts of drug abuse that goes on within these communities. The problem of homelessness has been one thats been around for a while, but no one would have ever thought that it could get to this extreme.
Instead of turning a blind eye to this chaos, one way that the church in California is trying to combat this problem is building homes on property that the church owns for the homeless. Apparently the idea of this is for churches that are doing poorly and declining in revenue to sell and be have their building be developed to help fight the homeless crisis.
For me personally, i do not know if this is the right thing to do about this situation. It seems that the church is giving up their mission of preaching the gospel. This seems to be a temporary solution that only attacks that aftermath of homelessness whereas we need to get at the root of why homelessness is happening at such a high rate. I believe it is because of the democratic structure in LA and the restrictions on business and the economy.
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Interesting to hear! This is such an unfortunate situation in California, but I thank you for bringing it up. I agree that in this case, getting revenue might be a barrier to the actual mission of the church, which is to preach the gospel and spread the gospel. In the article that you linked, the Rev. John Cager said that the coalition’s goal is for this to be about housing and development as a ministry, so I hear where he is coming from. Nonetheless, you are completely right that this doesn’t get to the root of the problem, in homelessness. And it doesn’t help us figure out why homelessness is such a big issue. Unfortunate stuff, but God works in ways beyond our greatest expectations, so let’s place our hope in that. Altogether, thank you for bringing up this very relevant issue. Thanks for sharing!