This past Friday night, Wilshire Baptist Church held another successful Room in the Inn. You are probably familiar with the phrase, but you might be asking yourself, what exactly does the previous sentence mean? What is this Room in the Inn all about?
Place setting from Friday’s Room in the Inn at Wilshire Bapstist Church
The concept is rather simple: A house of worship “provides safe shelter, warm meals, and fellowship for our neighbors struggling with homelessness,” at regular intervals, such as once a week, once every two weeks or once a month. The Room in the Inn concept was born out of the experience of Father Charles Strobel, founder of Nashville’s Room in the Inn program.
Years ago, one cold Nashville evening, Father Strobel, “opened the doors of his parish to individuals seeking sanctuary in the church parking lot.” Today the Nashville area boasts, “nearly 200 congregations from a wide variety of traditions and over 7,000 volunteers who shelter almost 1,500 men and women from November 1 through March 31 each season.” Not only that, “The concept has become a model for programs in 36 other cities, from Calgary, Canada, to Charlotte, North Carolina.”
Father Charles Strobel (left; courtesy of Bellevue Home Page)
How does it work in Dallas? The house of worship defines the criteria of those they would like to host, and Austin Street Center, our Room in the Inn shelter partner, selects a group of guests that fit those criteria. Volunteers from the house of worship pick up the group at the appointed time, and take them back to their facility. Everyone, guests and hosts sit down, as equals to a communal dinner. The house of worship will usually provide some type of post meal activity. However, guess what most guests’ favorite activity is that evening? That’s right, sleeping peacefully! The next morning, once again, everyone, guests and hosts, sit down to a communal breakfast. The volunteers then drop the guests off, back at Austin Street Center.
What does Room in the Inn accomplish? It helps guests, hosts and even the shelter:
- Guests are able to experience much needed fellowship, and begin to build a relationship with a community. This is tremendously important. Our goal is to house each and every one of our homeless friends, and research shows that almost anyone can be housed. That said, moving from a communal setting in the shelter to a non-communal setting in housing has its challenges. Creating robust connections with a community will make help our homeless friends be more successful in remaining housed, as well as in living a rich and meaningful life.
- Welcoming those experiencing homelessness into their house of worship, enables hosts to normalize the presence of and interaction with the homeless and formerly homeless. This can have important positive implications for communal support for housing and services for those experiencing homelessness in our community, at large.
- Austin Street Center is able to accommodate more guests that night, with the beds that would otherwise be occupied by Room in the Inn participants.
As a reader of this blog, you may remember that we recently partnered with Faith Forward Dallas at Thanks-Giving Square (FFD@TGS), to create a shared faith community homelessness initiative, within FFD@TGS’s Civic Engagement Committee. One of the components of that initiative is Room in the Inn. Wilshire Baptist Church has invited other FFD@TGS clergy to help staff their August Room in the Inn on August 24-25, 2018. That way, they can see what it is like, and bring the program to their houses of worship. (Please email Rev. Heather Mustain, hmustain@wilshirebc.org, if you would like to volunteer that Friday night.) Our goal is to have, at least, as many participating sites, as there are in Fort Worth (20), so let’s get to it!
