Friends,
My Contact message this week begins with a recommendation: if you subscribe to Netflix, or use iTunes or Amazon, please consider watching a documentary film called The Overnighters. The Overnighters chronicles a the ministry of a Missouri Synod (which is to say conservative) Lutheran pastor in North Dakota, who opened his church’s facilities to house itinerate and homeless men looking for work in the booming tar sands oil industry. Neither the church’s neighbors nor it’s members appreciated the pastor’s generous hospitality, which makes the film a lesson in the pitfalls of ministry, and an achingly accurate portrayal of how good people can suffer for living out the good news of the Kingdom of God. And the film is more than that. I’ll not spoil it’s surprising ending, because I hope you will take time to watch it. (Click here to watch the film’s trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT3JAEodt9I)
As I was watching The Overnighters I found myself wrestling with some seriously uncomfortable questions around what I would do if a wave of homeless people came to me and asked for shelter in the church. I like to think that I would not turn the sprinklers on them as they slept (as did the Roman Catholic cathedral in San Francisco), but I also doubt I could not offer to house people in the church—both because we have a preschool tenant whose licensing would disallow it and because I’m not a very good social worker. So what would I do? What would you do if folks in need of shelter asked to sleep in the church?
This question probably isn’t as theoretical as we might like it to be. The homeless population is growing and is increasingly visible. How will the larger Montclair community respond when the first encampment is established? And what will be the church’s role in that discussion?
These are all important question about which we need to have serious conversation, and The Overnighters is a good place to start.
God’s Peace,
Ben