Timothy and Debbie (last names withheld on request) enjoy a cup of hot coffee Friday at Unity Lutheran Church as others are served dinner. Unity and Tippecanoe Presbyterian Church offer assistance through a south side ministry for the homeless. Credit: Rick Wood

SHARE

By of the

In past years, Christine might have spent the days before Christmas buying gifts and baking. But things are different this year.

At 57, she is out of work, having lost her export shipping job, she says, to the exodus of U.S. manufacturing plants in search of cheaper labor overseas.

This year, Christine has spent the nights before Christmas in a south side church, grateful for a meal prepared by strangers and a warm room in which to sleep. This is a new kind of holiday for her, one filled with a mix of gratitude and fear and sadness.

"I just want it to pass so quick," said Christine, who, like many of the people in this story, asked not to be identified by last name.

"I know God has a reason for everything," she said, her voice breaking. "But, please, God, show me the reason."

Christine spent the night Thursday with 19 other men and women at Unity Lutheran Church in Bay View. They were welcomed as guests of Divine Intervention, a homeless ministry founded last year by nearby Tippecanoe Presbyterian Church and supported by an interfaith coalition of south-side congregations and the generous outpouring of donations from the public.

This year, Unity joined Tippe, as it's called, to offer evening meals and overnight warming rooms for those who would otherwise be on the streets, and the program is now rotating between the two churches on a monthly basis.

It was a natural fit for a congregation that has long served the poor and homeless of Milwaukee's south side through its weekly meal program - it served a record 200 people last week - and the Open Door Clinic, which provides medical services at no charge.

"This is so much a part of what Unity does, how can you say no?" said Unity's pastor, the Rev. Kevan Penvose. "It's bare bones," he says of the church's modest accommodations. "But it does the trick."

Thursday's gathering was a disparate collection of souls, from those well accustomed to sleeping under bridges to the newly homeless. Some work, but don't earn enough to cover housing. Many said they had been laid off from jobs in the last year.

They struggle with a host of burdens: physical and mental health problems; limited educations; aging out of the job market; and, yes, bad choices.

But all were welcomed.

Sense of community

There is a sense of community here, an empathy born of knowing. And, every once in awhile, a fleeting glimpse of joy. You see it, in the eyes of Ken, who is prone to hugging, his face blushing afterward. In the voice of Katie Traxel, when she talks about the newborn son she leaves with her mother rather than take him out into the cold of the street.

Penvose and Tippe's pastor, the Rev. Karen Hagen, saw it Thursday as they passed out modest Christmas gifts - a bus pass and Culver's and Target gift cards - to each guest, many of whom responded with a handshake or embrace.

"I thought this was going to be the worst Christmas ever," one man told Hagen. "Thank you."

It was a humbling moment, but no one here appears that they're in it for the gratitude.

"These people are us," said Hagen. "Ultimately, we are church, and church is supposed to be the place where people who know they are broken gather."

Hagan's small congregation launched the program last winter after efforts to start a rotating shelter at churches on the south shore hit a bureaucratic snag - and hateful rhetoric - in Cudahy.

In response, Tippe opened its doors for all-night "prayer vigils" - with more than one pastor quipping that it wouldn't be the first time people fell asleep in church. Area congregations and the public at large stepped up with offers of food, supplies, volunteers and cash donations to keep the heat and lights on.

It filled quickly, and by the time it closed in spring, it had hosted an average of five people a night for 110 consecutive nights.

Though donations are down this year, the program is running at full capacity, with 20 guests, and on Thursday one man had to be turned away with a meal and a bus ticket.

"That's extremely difficult. There's no getting used to that," said Jim Liedke, who lived on the streets for years until he joined Unity a few years ago and now helps staff the warming room.

Hagen counts the program's successes not just in the faces gathered Thursday, but in those who are no longer there. Depending on how you count them, seven to nine of last year's guests are in homes this year, a direct link, she says, to their being indoors last winter, where they could access resources, have a mailing address and save enough cash to get back on their feet.

From it, she has come to draw a Christmas lesson of her own.

"At Tippe, we talk about Christmas as something being born in us that we never could have conceived of on our own," she said." Without the inspiration of our faith, which is beyond us, we would have never been positioned to try such a thing."