Living Out Our Faith

December 30, 2001

by John F. Schmidt

In Palm Beach County, Florida, a small church ministry has been steeply fined for offering shelter to the homeless.

Westgate Tabernacle opened its doors to homeless people in the late 1990s. Shortly afterward, county building code enforcement officers cited them for operating a homeless shelter without a permit.

The Reverend Avis Hill thought he had all the permits he needed when he read Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:43-45 “I was a stranger and you did not invite me in. I needed clothes and you did not clothe me. Whatever you did not do to the least of these, you did not do it to me.” The officials cited another authority.

As always, there are two sides to the story. Business leaders, who reported the church ministry to the county, have struggled for years to clean up the area and upgrade roads and services to make it a better place to live and work. Formerly Westgate was a breeding ground for racial tensions, crack heads, and prostitution. Much of that is gone today, but community leaders are afraid that the church’s activities will again make their town a magnet for the homeless.

The pastor is doing something that is needed in this otherwise affluent county in South Florida. “I woke up one morning and saw people sleeping everywhere - the lawn, my back porch, the picnic table. They needed something to eat, maybe a shower, and somewhere to go,” Hill said. “How in good conscience could I say no? Where else could they stay?”

According to the article in the Palm Beach Post of December 23, 2001, by Marc Caputo, titled: “Westgate Church owes $22,700 in fines for offering shelter to area homeless,” the county has little to offer in the way of help for the estimated 3,000 homeless. Only 410 emergency beds exist and it is estimated that 1,527 more are needed.

Various agencies, including the Veteran’s Administration and a Catholic church, have donated supplies and equipment to Westgate Tabernacle. Sheriff’s deputies and police from as far away as Boca Raton and Jupiter have dropped people off needing help. But Westgate’s Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) has staunchly opposed the church’s work with the homeless.

To accommodate the county code to operate a homeless shelter would cost the poor congregation at least $15,000 in renovations to their church facility. Besides, CRA’s animosity toward the church’s homeless work bodes ill for any attempt to actually create an approved homeless shelter. This is a community strenuously trying to distance itself from such a clientele. The homeless are simply persona non grata in Westgate.

Westgate Tabernacle is providing services that the county desperately needs, at a price that is very competitive. But cost is not the issue. Prior to this, the Salvation Army was virtually run out of town for serving the same need. They relocated, and now offer a number of more permanent beds, but they no longer provide emergency housing services for the overnight needs of some homeless, as the Tabernacle church has done.

This is an all-too-familiar scene: affluence marginalizing the poor and needy. Even the scriptures rebuke church leaders who treat the poor rudely while welcoming the rich (James 2:1-4). Such an attitude is called ‘respect of persons.’ Hopefully that is not the view of the Westgate community.

The church must continue to do what the Lord calls them to do, but they must also try to live peaceably with the city. Housing ordinances are legitimate, but if they are being used to persecute a church or its ministries, then perhaps legal action is needed.

Beyond simply helping people with immediate needs, the church has an obligation to operate according to God’s principles in ministering charity. The Bible obligates both giver and receiver. Are the homeless being required to act as good neighbors to the people in the community? Is aid given without any requirement for work to be performed, when it is feasible? A homeless mission can rightfully be regarded as a nuisance if it blights the community it purports to serve. No ministry should bring a bad name on the Lord’s work.

Westgate also has an opportunity to show its compassionate side. Property values, and the efforts of community leaders over the years to clean up the area, are valid issues. But in their quest to build a better place to live, is it possible they could produce the very opposite result: a place where people don’t care about one another, and won’t lift a finger to help one another? It that the kind of neighborhood they want? Is that the attitude they now display?

The only thing worse than a closed and gated community is a closed and gated heart.

We are made in God’s image. And that image is love. If we lose that vision as we strive to improve our lot, we also lose what is perhaps the most noble thing in our nature: loving and caring for one another. Without that, we are like animals.

There are many things we won’t countenance because we know they are wrong: we don’t dump granny when she becomes a burden; we don’t dump a baby girl in the trash can when her mom gives birth at a high school prom; we don’t drown our kids so we can have a new boyfriend, we don’t refuse medical care for people because they don’t have any money, we don’t leave the poor and the homeless in the cold, and we don’t run them out of town because we don’t want them around.

We all have to live out our faith. Or we create a world where we can’t live at all.

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John F. Schmidt has written numerous articles over the last decade. Politically, he is an Alan Keyes-type Republican. Along with his wife, he has organized voter drives in Pennsylvania, and been active politically since the 1990 elections. His livelihood, until recently, was spent in automation engineering for a large global equipment manufacturing company, specializing in coal mining. WANB in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania hosted Schmidt's weekly talk radio program "Issues and Answers." His writing is intended to relate the headlines of today to the foundation of eternal truth - the Scriptures. He currently resides in Palm Beach County, Florida. Visit his website at: Inalienable-Rights.org

Send the author an E mail at Schmidt@ConservativeTruth.org.

For more of John's articles, visit his archives.