Sonoma County churches step up to offer shelter for homeless residents

The dinner tables in the long church hallway were festooned with a St. Patrick’s Day flair, including green candy mints, shamrock decorations and vases whose greenery set off delicate Queen Anne’s lace and white wax flowers.

The March 17 preparations weren’t for a visiting choir or youth group. The members of Calvary Chapel Petaluma were about to share a meal with the homeless.

The church is one of 31 Protestant and Orthodox congregations around Sonoma County that take turns providing meals and offering a place to sleep on wintry nights for up to 40 clients of the Redwood Gospel Mission.

The “nomadic shelter” program first operated for four months in the winter of 2014-15. It was expanded this winter to six months and one day may go year round.

What makes it different, those involved say, is that the church members welcome the guests and eat with them. The interaction holds the potential to affect both parties.

“It really humanizes the whole face of homelessness,” said Christopher Huber, the Santa Rosa-based mission’s mobile ministry manager.

Steve Dawson, a man who has been homeless for four years, said the church members extend a kindness “that lasts for more than one night.”

“It re-dignifies me,” said Dawson, who said he worked 20 years in the tech sector. “It helps me remember what it’s like to be part of a family, part of a community.”

The program’s formal name is Entertaining Angels. Local pastors said it is another example of how the gospel mission gets church members involved in community outreach. The leaders credited Jeff Gilman, executive director of Redwood Gospel Mission, with helping churches find simple, practical ways to help those in need.

Gilman, 56, said homelessness has “exploded” here during his 22 years at the mission. The latest shelter effort, in addition to the regular housing and training programs, reflects the organization’s approach to helping others, he said.

“We really believe that it’s the role of neighbors to care for neighbors, not to subcontract it out to some agency … or the government,” Gilman said.

The involved churches stretch from Windsor to Petaluma and from Sebastopol to east Santa Rosa. Each congregation has an assigned day of the month on which to gather a group of volunteers, prepare a meal and share it with the guests.

The clients go through an intake process at the mission, which typically allows them to stay up to a month in the shelter program. Each evening a team of volunteers deliver a truck filled with bedding and up to four vans of clients to the participating church. Another volunteer team arrives for pickup in the morning.

On St. Patrick’s Day, about two dozen clients, including a mother and toddler daughter, received a welcome to Calvary Chapel from John Ower, the church’s junior high ministry leader.

Sleeping mats and mesh bags containing fresh bedding were placed around the walls of a large empty room. Two benches separated the men’s and women’s sleeping areas.

Two mission staff members would remain in shifts throughout the night, a practice followed at each church in the program, Huber said.

“We freely give because we freely received,” Ower told a gathering that included more than 20 church members.

At dinner, church member Matt Beatty stood near the serving tables, covered with casseroles, salads and other dishes. Beatty said he came that night with his wife and three children to welcome strangers and to remember the things that all people have in common.

“We’re all broken and we need a remedy,” he said. “And that remedy from my experience is Christ.”

Larry Tankersley, a client who has been in the county for five months, said he was on his second round in the shelter program. He stayed at each church once before in winter.

“All the churches we go to,” said Tankersley, “we are so welcome.”

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit.