No Altar, No Pews, Not Even a Roof, but Very Much a Church

[BlaznFattyz]

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 — Homeless off and on since 1991, Rickey Robinson figures he needs to get close to God as often as he can. So on an especially icy Tuesday afternoon, as on many Tuesday afternoons, he bundled himself in a long black coat and joined a small group gathered in a corner of Franklin Square Park, where they prayed, sang a hymn and recited the 23rd Psalm.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” the men and few women standing in a circle said. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters.”

Some men could not bring themselves to look up from the grass. Others could not stand still. Most are homeless. They sleep at a nearby shelter and spend the daytime, when the shelter is closed, looking for warmth and food. They are the parishioners of Street Church, an outdoor worship service held on Tuesdays by the Church of the Epiphany, a downtown Episcopal parish...

Cont'd

[InLove]

Thanks for the link, BlaznFattyz.

I ride the train fairly regularly these days. On one of the routes I often travel, the train slows in a certain town that looks to have had a pretty tough go of it over the years. Near the tracks, there is a little shack that looks as if it may have survived since the Depression era. I guess it gets a new coat of paint and windows replaced whenever someone can, but it looks to me as if it is still in use for the original purpose. On the front is a wooden sign that reads "Chapel by the Tracks".

InPeace,
InLove

[Thomas]

One of the factors in the early growth of Christianity was the value it extended to the marginalised.

During the height of the persecutions, the Diocese of Rome had somewhere around 1,500 in its care – the young, the old, the sick, the widowed, the dispossessed. Such was the state of things that a Roman Senator exclaimed furiously, when berrating the Senate for the non-existance of policy on care for the community – "Even the Christians take better care of their people than we do!"

2,000 years later, a government 'solution' in the UK was to criminalise the dispossessed, so that good citizens might no longer suffer the offence of being asked to look on, let alone support, those who are not so gifted, able or lucky.

We have come far ... and abandoned much along the way ...

Thomas

[lunamoth]

"“Our theology is to love and not try to fix them and just to be present where they are,” Ms. Wyman said of the outdoor congregants. “We’re not trying to sell any one theology or denomination.”

Very nice Blazn...thank you for the uplifting article.