I won’t forget the first time I volunteered for a Nashville, Tennessee, homeless ministry called Room in the Inn. It was decades ago, in 1990, on a cold night in the dead of winter. I drove to my church, walked into the kitchen and immediately started cooking more food than I’d ever made in my life. We were making lasagna for roughly 20 men who were due to arrive at the church at any moment.
The model for the ministry was simple. In the late afternoon, homeless and vulnerable people would arrive at a central location in downtown Nashville, and dozens of church buses, vans and other vehicles would take them in small groups to a participating church in the city. Once our guests arrived, we’d make them a good meal and we’d hang out while they washed their clothes or showered or just relaxed.
My first night at Room in the Inn I played basketball with a small group of Guatemalan migrants. Another night, I listened while a young Mexican immigrant gave a practice sermon in English. He wanted to be a pastor and he was trying to work his way off the streets. On still another night, I ached for a trucker who described a life of indescribable loss.
We’d sleep in cots next to our guests, rise before the sun came up, fix a hot breakfast, provide a snack lunch — and then our guests would head back into the world, rested and nourished.
No one claimed in those days that Room in the Inn was fixing homelessness. It was, however, doing more than meeting immediate needs. Night after night, over meal after meal, those of us who volunteered also learned. The model for the ministry created relationships, and those relationships meant that we had a better and deeper understanding of the men and women we served.
Room in the Inn began with a “simple act of kindness.” In 1985, the Rev. Charles Strobel, a Catholic priest, began serving food to homeless individuals who were seeking help outside his church. From this small beginning, the ministry grew until more than 200 congregations participated. They shelter around 1,500 people every winter in the greater Nashville area.
Shelter is important, but our most vulnerable neighbors need more than temporary relief. In 2010, the ministry opened a 45,000-square-foot facility that provides comprehensive services for the homeless, and now Room in the Inn provides transitional housing for men and women who are rebuilding their lives.
We live in an age of declining religious affiliation and terrible religious scandal. But there is much good still in the church, and in Nashville every winter, more than 7,000 volunteers, in churches from every corner of American Christianity, provide both food and hope for people in desperate need of both.
Decades have passed since those first cold nights in my church, but Room in the Inn has remained. Strobel died last year, leaving a legacy of service to the city and people he loved.
But Room in the Inn isn’t just Strobel’s legacy, it’s a vision of what the church can be — a place that answers the call of Christ in Matthew 25: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
That’s what Room in the Inn does. That’s what faith looks like at its best, and that’s why I can think of few better places to give to than to an organization that declares by word and deed that no person should be left behind.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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