Last night was the first informational meeting to introduce the community to Imagine Whittier. For those not in the know, Imagine Whittier is a pilot program and the first offshoot of Imagine LA, a wildly successful mentoring program. Their tagline is ‘mentoring families out of homelessness’ and 100% of families that have graduated their program have remained housed. Imagine Whittier will partner with Whole Child families, surrounding them in support, aiming to stop the cycle of homelessness.
It is this relational model precisely that makes Imagine Whittier so exciting and well-suited for the community of Whittier. Whittier knows how to do relationships. I cannot linger at my front porch mailbox for more than 2 minutes in the evening without getting a beep and a wave from a passing friend. And forget mornings, when I take my Bible and coffee out to my rocking chair. I’ll have 2-3 conversations minimum, often with strangers wearing bike cleats.
There was a huge turnout at this event last night; reminiscent to me of the Homeless Symposium Greenleaf hosted 2 years ago. In the same way, the community came together to learn. At the 2015 Symposium, we needed to learn what had driven the huge spike in the homeless population. We heard from the heads of all major departments for our sector (drug and alcohol, mental health, our mayor, city council, etc.) and we learned that no matter how much money was thrown at the problem, no matter how many government programs were put in place the problem persisted, and thrived. Whittier’s people, whole families in fact, were living their lives on the streets.
I remember at one point a man in the back stood up. He asked a woman onstage if she knew who he was. She was the representative from a local church that has a daily feeding program for those experiencing homelessness; a woman fiercely dedicated to meeting the needs around her. “I live across the street from your church,” he began, “I told you that the homeless people you are feeding everyday congregate on my lawn after you shut down for the day. They deface my property. They defecate on my lawn. You know me because I complain to you about it all the time. So my question for you today is: Why do you open your doors to them, but shut your doors to me?”
You could have heard a pin drop in that room. I hope I was not the only one naïve enough to get the first dawning realization that our way of solving a problem has likely created many more. And in fact this man was right. The Church can and should do better. The data showed that homelessness in Whittier was up drastically compared to our surrounding cities. (That was 2015 data, 2017 data shows a drastic reduction). One of the officials on stage lamented, ‘the stats don’t lie. People are coming to Whittier because word has gotten out that Whittier takes care of its homeless.’
So much is made nowadays of ‘doing great things’ that even for Christians this has insidiously infiltrated our churches. There is much talk of ‘doing great things for God’, forgetting God never called us to ‘make a difference’ but instead to ‘make disciples’. Whittier, in my view, is a town that cares about little things. The people here are deeply invested in their community. We may not be helping perfectly but we are showing up for the job. We are willing to learn from our mistakes; we want to know better, we want to do better. We have learned so much just in 2 years of how to engage and serve in less damaging ways. And we continue in our commitment of learning as evidenced by last nights’ turn out.
My heart swelled when the Imagine LA representative, Brianna Mandel de-briefed afterward with the team. She said, ‘In all my time as Director of Training and Program Development, I’ve never seen a turn out like that. In LA, we hope for 8-10 people at an informational meeting. I counted here 47. And the questions! I’ve never heard such great ones. These people are already invested. There is something really special going on here in Whittier.”
I told her I couldn’t agree with her more.
