Christian Community Development
As a Christian Community Development Agency, we understand that alleviating social displacement is a community-based effort that requires strong commitment and risky actions. We believe that the most creative long-term solutions to the problem of social displacement come from grassroots faith-based movements willing to collaborate with other nonprofits and social services agencies. We call on people of the Christian faith to organize around courageous initiatives, from the neighborhood to the public square to the marketplace, for the good of the city. With a firm commitment to restorative justice principles, trauma-informed practice, and a Christian theology of hospitality, we will carry out our mission in the hope that our vision will become a reality.
Our Mission
Equip and Encourage the community to Empower neighbors living through social displacement toward holistic sufficiency.
Our Vision
Breaking the cycle of homelessness and social displacement through trauma-responsive hospitality and systemic change.
Our Guiding Values
We understand hospitality–philoxenia in the Greek language, meaning a kinship love for strangers–to be the posture and practice of solidarity with strangers. It is a mutual relationship of faithful presence, compassion, and generosity, where we come together in the struggle for dignity, worth, and empowerment. Hospitality is at the heart of Christian faith because we believe in a triune God (God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit). In God’s Self, God demonstrates faithful and hospitable community. In the gospel we see God making room for us to share in God’s life through Jesus Christ. Therefore, it informs all we do. By practicing gracious hospitality, we break down cultural and social barriers and find surprising friendships as we “welcome one another just as Christ has welcomed us” (Romans 15:7).
To us, people are not problems to solve, projects to fix, or prospects to save; rather, they are persons to be embraced just as they are and not as we think they should be. We believe that all persons are made in God’s image and because Jesus is the “image of the invisible God,” He is our divine model of friendship (Col. 1:15). From Jesus we learn that extending God’s gracious hospitality to all people can lead to surprising friendships. Some of our friends are in a greater season of need than others, and so we share in the burden. In doing so, shared experiences are created, love is formed, and all of us are transformed.
Hope is more than a wish; it is a conviction that there is something better and is deeply rooted in the expectation that God is making all things new. We choose to be prisoners of hope because we believe that if the Christian understanding of the Incarnation (God becoming human in Jesus Christ) teaches us anything, it is that no one deserves to be abandoned, even if their struggles are of their own making. God did not give up on us, so we do not give up on others because we refuse to give up on Him. With relentless hope, we move forward.
We understand restorative justice as a framework of social action built upon three pillars: identifying harms and needs created by injustice, uncovering the obligations, and organizing communal participation to meet the obligations in a restorative way with reparative actions. As a theology, we believe that God is restoring all of creation and making right all that has been made wrong due to violence, greed, and fear. As we live and bear witness to God’s love and presence in the world we find ourselves amid ugly powers, systems of greed, and self-serving posturing. A life of faith, love, and gracious hospitality doesn’t always align with these powers. Therefore, to promote peace and restorative justice sometimes we must–with reparative action in mind–humbly confront these broken systems, uncover the harms they create, and set ourselves to make right what has been wrong.
The old Saxon word for care is kara. The Latin of kara is compassio, meaning to suffer with. Compassion means to lament, mourn, or share in another person’s pain–entering into suffering, not taking it away. It has been said that compassion is an emotional upheaval in our gut that reminds us that what we see in the brokenness of humanity is not right. Poverty. Homelessness. Abandonment. It’s just not right. Tangible acts of compassion are what occur when our eyes are opened and our hearts are awakened to the reality that something must change and, because of King Jesus, something can change.
Listening is grounded in a commitment to hospitality and becomes a practice that promotes security, support, voice, and choice. If we are to embrace our values we must learn to listen to God and one another, to our neighborhoods and our cities. If we are to join God in what He is doing and bear witness to His love with our lips and lives, we must turn one ear up to God and one ear out to others. When we listen, we learn one another’s stories; when we learn another’s story, compassion and love become possible.
In our society, love can mean a lot of things. For us, love is pictured perfectly in the Divine love as revealed in the Christian Scripture. In the Person of Jesus, God came to humanity to show us what it looks like to be fully human. To love freely and sacrificially. Love propels us forward as we move closer to others in radical embrace. Love compels us to forgive and work toward reconciliation. According to the teachings of Jesus, every good action taken and kind word spoken should rest upon the love of God and neighbor. So, in love, we aim to give freely and serve sacrificially.