The other evening, the Mission and Action Committee met @ Friendship Café to learn a little more about Amos House.
Most of us have known about Amos House–it’s a long term benevolence of Central Congregational Church–and a group of people travel to the soup kitchen every Tuesday to serve meals. Amos House currently serves about 800 meals a day in a tiny space!
Amos House has just announced a new chapter–they are building a new home right in the community they serve.
As I was thinking about the jobs created by this project (Amos House has insisted that the contractor hire Amos House’s own construction trainees), the urban blight that is erased by building new on an old site, and the many many improvements in how they serve their clients, I began to consider the impact that this little organization has had on the south side of Providence.
We asked Eileen Hayes, the Executive Director, about how many people had gone through their programs and were now in a stable place (jobs, homes, intact families, clean and sober, etc.) over the last 10 years or so. She said probably 2000.
That’s 2000.
Families together, clean and sober, their kids going to school and learning, good jobs and stable places to live. Ruined lives put back together, men formerly incarcerated and homeless, now reunited with their kids and rebuilding a future with hope, addicts clean and sober and rediscovering the joy of looking outward to hope rather than inward to despair.
And then there is the impact on the neighborhood. Some years ago Eileen told me that she took the job at Amos House never thinking that she would be doing economic development, but that is exactly what she has done. There are 14 buildings in the vicinity that Amos House has bought and rehabbed for housing (with their construction trainees again!) over the last 10 years. If you went to the area 10 years ago and then today, you will see transformation–it just looks better.
Matthew 25 tells the long and complicated story of judgment that makes sure we know JOB #1 is to house, clothe, feed and visit strangers–to love them. The lectionary has focused on these stories for the last several weeks. And on this stormy morning, I thank God for the living embodiment of JOB #1 in Amos House and am reminded to go and do likewise…