Scrappy Flock of Sheep

By David Libby and Derek Beaudoin

In early 2019, a small church in north Portland decided to provide housing to its homeless neighbors. Over the next two years, the church and its leaders faced potential lawsuits, hate mail, and disapproval from many in their city.
In these pages, David Libby explores what it took (and what it cost) for a small but scrappy church to walk in the way of Jesus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781716809576

Book preview

houseless

¹ people in our community. The project would be funded through the Joint Office of Homeless Services in Multnomah County, while local nonprofit Do Good Multnomah would run the program and connect residents with services and housing.

There are thousands of people in Portland without homes, without safety nets, and without a support network of any kind. Housing prices are astronomical here. Single-person studio apartments rent for $1500/mo., while thousands of folks sleep in the cold. It's wrong that people are, and will forever be, unable to have a place to live. It's unjust that people have to live with the crippling mental illness that comes from living on the street.

Suddenly, we were presented with an opportunity to provide this land, and the program and security will be run by a nonprofit with a good track record, and for whom a few of my good and trusted friends work. Our part of the project was simply to offer the land. If we allowed others to use the land that was currently sitting dormant, people could move from homelessness to housed and safe with a new lease on life.

This was a no brainer.

Doing something about homelessness in Portland would require us to offer some of our land.

That’s it.

That’s all.

We made a pitch to the church, our church members voted, and the project was publicly announced.

The reaction from the community was intense.

Explosive.

Nuclear might be a better word.

We had no idea what we signed up for, or how aggressive the reaction would be.

We had no clue of the battles we would fight to make this Village a reality.

This is the story of a project.

More than that, it is the story of a naive group of ordinary Christians struggling to bring light and goodness into the lives of some of Portland’s most vulnerable population.

We failed often.

Sometimes it was difficult to figure out the right or wrong way to do something.

The thing about failing is that you learn a lot.

This is the story of a project.

This is the story of a success, and tons of failure.

This is the story of a compassionate church, who was often bad at compassion.

PART I: PLANNING

You want to close your eyes

You want to make believe this tangled web you weave

Is nowhere near the place you sleep

While other people’s lives are cheap

And all of this is someone else’s problem

-Five Iron Frenzy, Someone Else’s Problem

In early 2019, my friend Andy approached me with an idea about using my church’s property to build temporary homes for houseless folks in Portland. This was not the first time that I had considered using our property for housing. When I arrived at our church in 2015, I was immediately struck with how large our property was, and how little of it was used on a regular basis.

Our church is over a hundred years old, and has been through a few iterations. Over the last century-plus, a small building became a large building. A second wing was built onto our building. We acquired a large field across the street, as well as two separate parking lots.

Our little church owns a lot of property.

It occurred to me one week while writing a devotion for our church’s offering time, that we regularly ask our congregation to practice good stewardship of their money and resources. Meanwhile, we own one enormous church building, another three-story building with dozens of classrooms, two parking lots, and an enormous field. We run one church service per week, a handful of small group gatherings, and we loan out our space to various community events. We don’t hold close to enough gatherings during the week to warrant the amount of space that we own.

I realized that we own what is easily one of the largest properties in our neighborhood, and we were not using it as best we could.

I dreamed about what could be done with our property. We discussed the possibility of turning our third floor into a preschool, but quickly learned how much money it would cost to remodel the building for that purpose. Plus, at the time we did not have any leads on a preschool that was needing space, and we had nobody in our congregation who wanted to lead a preschool.

We discussed turning the field into a community park. This idea actually went pretty far. We discussed play equipment, benches, and tables to beautify the community. However, we also considered the potential downsides. The field would be considerably harder to mow with benches and play equipment constantly in use. Our insurance would be much higher due to the potential of children getting injured on the property. Most concerning, however, was the thought that a kid might step on a dirty needle. Houseless folks regularly sleep in this grassy field. We do periodic sweeps of the field where we find needles and broken glass. Kids often walk through this field, and many more would do so if a playground was present. Plus, there is already a large community park three blocks from the church. We found it redundant to build another, considering the risks involved, and the proximity of another park.

The most compelling idea to me, however, was housing. We have a second parking lot that we never use for anything, ever. We also have a large field that functions as a glorified dog park most days. There is a ton of space that could potentially be used for affordable housing. When I showed up at St. Johns Christian Church in 2015, I had no interest in housing justice. Housing would not have been in the top 100 issues in which I was concerned. Sure, I was aware that homelessness was an issue especially in Portland. However, my concern for houseless folks only stretched to offering them food and clothing. Housing as a justice issue was nowhere near the top of my list.

It didn’t take long for it to become my main focus.

Behind our church is an alleyway in which houseless people often sleep. There is an overhang in the alley which people use to