Church and Main

On this episode, I talk with a Lutheran pastor about making space for tiny homes

for people experiencing homelessness, and they're doing this all on their church property.

This is Church and Main.

Music.

Hello and welcome to Church and Main, the podcast at the intersection of faith and modern life.

I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. Church and Main is a podcast that looks for God

in the midst of issues affecting church and the larger society.

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So about two years ago, uh, the congregation that I serve, uh,

was looking to sell its property.

Um, I looked in, we were actually, you know, meeting with a realtor and we were

looking into selling the property.

And one idea that came about was selling it to a housing non-profit,

one that would build affordable housing.

The church at the time still is located in a different suburb,

but was located in a suburb.

And the Twin Cities is in a need, a big need for affordable housing,

and especially in suburban areas.

We met, we talked a lot. It ended up never working out because it would take

some time for them to be able to purchase the property. and we actually needed

to sell the building quickly.

But deep down, I really wish that we could've made it possible,

because it's something that is needed.

And that is actually one solution to solving the affordable housing and the homelessness crisis.

That is, that churches.

Can actually do something about this.

And that is in some cases selling their property to provide space for housing.

There's another church that I'm aware of in Minneapolis that sold their property

to yet another housing nonprofit.

They are going to actually build affordable housing there.

And they will also, the nonprofit is also going to be creating worship space for this congregation.

So they will have a new worship space, one that's a little bit smaller and more

kind of right-sized to where the congregation is at this time,

but yet the rest of the property is being used to provide homes that are so needed at this time.

So, today I'm talking to a pastor of a Lutheran congregation,

and yes, if you're following, that's three Lutheran pastors I've been talking to in a row.

That is in Roseville, Minnesota, a Twin Cities suburb, and we're gonna talk

about how his congregation was able to provide homes for people experiencing

homelessness by using tiny homes.

And we've all seen those tiny homes, and if you've watched HGTV,

you know what a tiny home is. Peter Crist is the pastor of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Roseville.

He shares the story of how his congregation was able to create a small community

of tiny homes that is giving people a place to call home.

So here is my interview with Peter Crist.

Music.

Well, thank you for taking the time to chat with me today.

Of course. Well, I think that what I'd like to do is start off is to learn a

little bit about Prince of Peace and what the congregation is like,

and to share with our listeners a little bit about Roseville itself,

and then also a little bit about you and how long have you been at Roseville?

Sure, sure. Yeah, the congregation was founded in 1957, at a time when Roseville

was just sort of a first becoming a suburb of the Twin Cities.

We really are just a first ring suburb, just north of St. Paul.

And this was just farmland at the time.

And then, you know, these neighborhoods were developed and the congregation

was founded, the charter members,

many of them had just moved to the area to, you know, build homes.

Many of them were, you know, first occupants of the homes that they moved into,

raised their families in this community.

The founding pastor, literally just was dropped here by the ELC mission board

and he just had to go knocking on doors and say, hey I'm starting another Lutheran

church, you know, the Lutheran Church in the area.

And first Sunday they had 300 people there, you know.

And they began worshiping at the Roosevelt Area High School or at the time Alexander

Ramsey High School and then they,

Broke ground shortly thereafter on the property that we now occupy,

which is a beautiful little corner of rolesville that was agricultural land and and.

And ultimately surrounding us remained fairly open space in the city acquired

as city parkland and so we're, our property is bordered on two full sides by,

by the Roseville Central Park, and we're kind of in unique context in that way

and so over time some of our land that's been annexed by the city to create a lake.

And then on the north side of our property, the city realigned some of the roadways

and the railroad right away.

And so what we used to have about 24 acres, I guess, when we started,

now we're at eight and a half acres is our campus.

And we've been, all of this information is fresh to me just because we're in

the midst of a big campus planning process trying to reimagine how one of our resources,

for the church, our actual property, might be put to use to help us live out

our mission and vision a little bit more firmly.

But for many years, the congregation has just been planted here and served this community.

In multiple ways, always with a fair eye out to the community and thinking about

how it can support the work and the needs of its neighbors, and any number of expressions.

Congregation at its largest probably

was, you know, probably in the neighborhood of 12 to 1500 members,

during the boom days back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Today, it's just a shadow of that.

Some people lament that, but that's just the reality for the church.

We continue to have people of all ages that are participating in our congregation,

but the numbers are just quite significantly less.

I have just a couple of remaining charter members,

they're in their 90s, and I have a few members who were children,

and so technically they're charter members, their parents joined the congregation,

and so they remain in our midst because they're just tied to this place and

tied to this community and continued to be fed by the church.

And so there's some history here, but it's 66 years of history.

And I myself came in 2016 and have been serving as a lead pastor here since then.

And it's just been a gift to kind of get to know this particular collection

of people. My children were already in the school district, and so it was a

really easy place for me to get plugged into.

At the time when I started here, my kids were in high school,

and now they've gone off and also gone through college, but they remain in the Twin Cities.

My wife works in the area. She's in funeral service,

and so this still is very much home for us, and it feels like a privilege be

able to kind of serve in the community that's home for me as well.

And so maybe that orientates me a bit more towards out to the community as well

and wondering how we as a church interact with our neighbors.

Not long after I started here,

we became aware of the fact that our parking lot here at the church,

given our kind of quiet setting in adjacent to Roseville Central Park,

that our parking lot would often serve as a place of refuge for people who don't

have anywhere to go, but have a vehicle.

And so they would park here and you typically, you know, arrive late in the

evening, find a quiet corner of a parking lot and spend the night there and

then leave usually at first light.

And early on, it was difficult to kind of really know how to interact with those

people other than to recognize why they were there,

to not bother them, you know, to if we did have a chance to interact with them,

to reassure them that we're happy that they're there.

Is there anything else we can do for them? Would they like to come inside and

use the bathroom or, you know, or something along those lines?

But that was sort of the extent of it. But that acknowledgement that our neighborhood

was becoming a place where people were seeking refuge in that way has led us

in some really amazing directions of late.

But I would say the important thing is, excuse me, recognizing that the,

congregation has always held a really important wondering and posture towards

its neighbors and wondering how we can be good neighbors in this context, in this setting,

while also practicing our faith, while also living out the callings that we

believe God has put before us.

And so that has created a number of really powerful relationships and partnerships

with other area ministry groups, other organizations.

And so we have, the congregation has some exercised muscles and muscle memory

around how to kind of tend to the community by,

by working with some dynamic partners in the area.

Um, we feed, feed kids and families in the Roseville school district with the

weekend, um, food program that, that, um, is pretty powerful.

We reach out in a variety of ways through a variety of ministry partners,

some traditional ones through Lutheran social service, through senior care,

through our partners at Ling Bloomston,

and then even more broadly, refugee services and resettlement.

We have some community gardens that were created on our property a few years

ago to help the Karen refugee population to have a place to grow vegetables

and to put their elders to kind of remain connected to their,

the life that they had in their home countries.

And so, yeah, so that's a bit about the congregation and, yeah.

So you kind of talked a little bit about the fact that you had people basically

who were kind of staying in your parking lot because they didn't have a place to go.

What was or what is kind of, how would you describe the situation of homelessness in Roseville? Yeah.

Yeah, we, as I became more and more aware of how regularly the parking lot was serving in that way,

I recognized that I needed to learn more and figure out like,

is there anything going on around these services?

Because I always imagine that that's a downtown problem.

That's a downtown St. Paul problem, a downtown Minneapolis problem,

and not so much a Roseville problem or a situation.

Well, I learned that Roseville actually does have a fairly significant homelessness issue.

And a few years back, the Roseville Police Department created a position for

a homeless liaison, housing navigator, they call it, and when I learned of that, I reached out to her.

Initially, I had an immediate need because surprisingly, one day, I pull up to the church,

and we're at the intersection, our church sits at the intersection of County

Road C and Victoria, which are a little bit busier, thoroughfares for our community.

And there's a stop sign at that corner. And at that stop sign,

there was a couple that was holding up cardboard signs, asking for help,

which the first time I'd ever seen that happening at that intersection.

I've seen it not too far away at some of the busier places around our community,

but it was the first time I'd seen that.

And so, of course, I stopped and went and interacted with them and gave them

some just small assistance initially and tried to learn more about their story,

invited them to come into the church when they had a moment to learn more and

see if there was something else we could help them with.

And in encountering them, I realized, oh, this is a really good opportunity

to try and reach out to the Roseville housing, you know, the homeless advocate or homeless liaison.

And so I reached out and made a contact, and she was very helpful in helping

us come up with an understanding with this couple and what other resources might

be available, just how to attend to them.

And their particular story.

But that created a relationship between us and the police department with this position.

And that opened up a conversation. And I said, you know, hey,

I've been wondering about our parking lot and how it's being used.

And what do you think about that? And she was well aware that our parking lot

was being used in the way that it was.

And she was grateful to learn firsthand that,

you know, we were comfortable with it being used in that way and that we were

actually seeking to expand or just deepen the quality of care that we could extend to potential,

even just occasional visitors and occasional residents or occasional guests

of our parking lot to be trying to be helpful.

And so that just opened up a conversation with her. And then it wasn't too long after that,

that she reached, she called me and, and, and that put, and with a phone call

that put us on quite a pretty dramatic journey of, of, of,

as I described, stumbling into a ministry of serving the homeless.

And so I'm, should I launch into that story at this point?

Yeah. Yeah, so that was an occasion where Carrie is her name,

Carrie McCuller, she's the homeless liaison for the city of Roseville.

She called me and she just said, hey, I've got a woman who has been living out

of an old school bus and she's parked on some other city property right now

and she's been there for a little while and she has been really easy to have

and she hasn't been giving us any trouble.

And so we've just sort of been leaving her be.

But recently, other people have started to move into the same area.

So, you know, it's not unusual that homeless encampments unintentionally start

to form because they kind of find, you know, it's like, hey,

they've been there a while.

That must be an OK place to to set up, you know, camp.

And and the others that were being attracted to the area were not as.

Respectful and not and and and creating some trouble and so the police and the

city you know leaders decided that they needed to essentially disband that and

and that would require them also having the the woman who was living in a school

bus relocate and so kerry said is there any chance,

um this woman could could appear on your you know could park her school bus

in your in your parking lot for,

you know, for a little while, I'm working with her on trying to find another,

you know, a, you know, a permanent solution, uh, for, for housing.

And, you know, and so I, you know, I just knowing that she was working directly

with, with the, um, police department, she was being vouched for.

I said, of course, send her over. Absolutely.

You know, there's going to be other people in our parking lot tonight.

What's one more vehicle, you know?

And so the next day, here came school bus and just as described an old school

bus with nothing in it, all the seats had been taken out.

No other creature comforts added other than a mattress on the floor and and, you know,

a collection of things and a little bit of other furniture or whatever,

but nothing, you know, it's not tricked out like a big old, you know,

cooler school bus camper or an RV or whatever,

but, and the woman who brought it here and was living in it, her name is Valerie.

And Valerie was grateful to be welcomed.

And we just said, you know, Valerie, if you ever need to come inside,

you know, during the day when we've got our offices open and our staff are here,

you're welcome to come inside and use the bathroom.

And power up your phone and things like that.

And which, you know, gradually over the next few days, she started to kind of

come inside and get and learn little bits and pieces of her story.

But she was just very pleasant and very non-threatening and very easy to have around.

And clearly, you know, she's got a story and, you know, there's a reason that

she's been living the way that she has.

But she was very easy to have. And it was the middle of the summer,

and she was quite content.

And eventually, within about a week, we actually had her park in sort of a quieter

kind of corner of our property that had access and pavement,

but was really sort of isolated, a little more just away from the church and

very pleasant under a couple of big oak trees.

And she had just a beautiful spot. And and and I could see right away a transformation happening that

Um, sort of, I was surprised, you know, surprised by it, but Valerie,

just, you could see a weight being lifted off of her shoulders.

And I remember a conversation with her not long after she, she kind of settled

into that new location was greeting her one morning and just recognizing that

she was, you know, I could tell she was in a good mood and in a good place.

And I just said, wow, this has really

been trans, you know, I can see a transformation happening with you.

And we started talking and I realized that, you know,

for the time that she'd been with us, she's been able to wake up every morning

with the confidence to know that no one was going to come along that day and

say, you're going to have to move, you know, you need to go find another place to be, um, that just.

Just that simply that her, she and her vehicle could be there and not have to

leave and not have to go anywhere.

We weren't going to hassle her or do anything to compromise that daze and for

the foreseeable future.

And that enabled her to start, one, to just feel better physically and to not

be carrying that burden, but to also start to do some of the basic things of

reconnecting with some of the social services that she'd plugged into,

reconnecting with some of her caregivers in, in some, in, in a variety of ways,

some of her, her broader network of people that she knew, um,

because she had the capacity to just do that now.

And she wasn't worried about the minutia of a day-to-day existence in that way.

And that was a gift. The other thing that happened shortly after her joining

us was she introduced us to some folks that were a part of and the kind of primary

visionaries for an organization called settled, which was actively.

Established to work with and find a housing solution for the chronically homeless.

And they had already been, for a number of years, working and doing a fair amount

of street outreach in St. Paul.

And it was in that regard that Valerie got connected with them.

And what we learned very quickly was that Settled was in the process of establishing

their first kind of prototype community of tiny homes in partnership with a faith community.

So they've established, and this is in the summer of 22,

they were finishing up the placement of six tiny homes,

on a one acre parcel of land that was adjacent to part of the campus of a small

church of the Nazarene called Mosaic Christian Community on Wheelock Parkway in St.

Paul. And those six tiny homes were going to be regulated by the city of St.

Paul temporarily as an RV campground.

That was the kind of body of codes and law that they found a pathway to kind of allow this thing.

And so the six tiny homes would sit on and each of them is licensed entitled

as an RV, and they meet some RV standards.

But they are just a little, you know, set apart from a church building that

the church houses what's called a common house.

And within the church, there's an area that has a communal kitchen,

dining area, living space, kind of a living, relaxing area.

And then there are bathroom and shower facilities and laundry facilities inside the church.

The tiny homes themselves are equipped with dry or compostable toilets.

And then they have a little bit of a kitchenette area, but they're not hooked

up to plumbing, water or sewer services. They just have electricity.

They're heated with electric heat.

They do have a sink and a little basin that, or a jug with water that you can

have water, and you could have a little hot plate and brew a cup of tea or a microwave.

Could do a little bit of food preparation in there, but most of the residents

do that in the common house and take advantage of those common space.

Big refrigerator in there to keep food and a pantry and dishes and all that

stuff that are inside the common house.

And and and so it was really exciting to see.

I was invited to go over and check out this this place. And Valerie,

you know, showed it off to me.

And she said, this is this is what I'm I'm on. This is what I'm waiting for.

And and she was not one of the first six residents I identified to live in this

prototype community. And they're they're space limited.

That was the most houses they could put on their property.

So she was sort of next on the list and waiting for another community to get

established somewhere.

And so she just sort of, that was kind of her vision for what she was waiting

for in her life. She wanted to live in this communal model.

One of the things that we've learned in our stumbling into this homeless ministry

is that people are homeless for lots of different reasons.

And they're not monolithic in any way, the homeless aren't,

but there is some commonality that is important to understand and that for the chronically homeless,

those who continually may get different resources and provided in different

kinds of housing solutions,

but they eventually always sort of fall back out of it and land back into homelessness

where they're on their own outside.

For those people, the real common thread is a historical and tragic loss of

the community of support in their lives. For most of us, that means our family, right?

That if you and I have difficulty, we would experience difficulty in our life,

we had a catastrophic illness, job loss, an addiction, a mental health crisis,

likely the support that we would need in that time would come from family.

Likely it would be around us. The chronically homeless are severed from that.

Now it might've been because of an addiction or it might be some of that mental

health stuff and they've just exhausted their natural support networks to a

point where they're disconnected for them,

or often is the case, those typical places of support, family,

close friend networks, those are also the source of trauma in their lives.

So maybe they're victims of abuse or neglect.

And so those sources of support are not in their lives.

And they don't have a community and relationships that can help them in these

times, or they've been severed.

So what Settled has created and has looked at and studied.

Is to how to build community using the resources of the church,

of faith communities that are so already oriented in relational ways and already

exist as community, to think about expanding,

our understanding of what that might be to also incorporate a residential component

to that for people who need community in their life.

We all do. I mean, we all need it.

We may not all benefit in the same way that the homeless might because of its

therapeutic qualities related to, because we have natural other communities

in our lives. I still have my family intact.

They're still prepared to give them joy and love and acceptance in ways that

the chronically homeless just don't have in that regular way in their life.

So it's a, it's a really powerful model.

Uh, we, we believe that we got excited about it and decided to listen deeply too.

So I set up a meeting with the, the, the team from settled with the hopes of,

um, talking to them about, well, maybe this is something we should look more

closely at is becoming the site of an, uh, and do what mosaic has done in St.

Paul and, um, Gabriel Cloutis, the founder of settled was eager to meet with

me, but it turns out not to necessarily talk to me about becoming the site of

a sacred settlement, but she just wanted to talk about Valerie.

She wanted, um, because she cared about Valerie too.

She already had a relationship with her and, um, and, and winter was coming.

And we all knew that that school bus was not going to be an appropriate place

for her to live in the winter.

Especially, you know, just outside a church that's heated, uh,

you know, 24, seven, it's not a residence, but it's, you know,

it's better than a school bus, right? A school bus in a cold Minnesota winter.

Exactly. And so, um, so she said, but I've got an idea for you.

The, the, when Willowsville called you and said, can this woman with her RV

come and park into your property?

And you said yes, you kind of got permission to have an RV on your property

with someone living in it, right? Like, that was sort of the,

you know, understanding.

How about we give you a better RV? How about we give you a tiny house for Valerie

to live in for the winter?

And I thought, well, duh, that seems like a no-brainer, said,

yes, yeah, absolutely. And then Gabriel said, actually.

We want to give you two homes, because there's more to this story,

and I was aware of this, but the model of the tiny homes is that some portion

of the homes are actually occupied, not all of them are occupied by people who

were formerly chronically homeless,

but a portion of them are occupied by people who are intentionally choosing

to live in community alongside formerly homeless neighbors.

And at Mosaic, two of the six homes are occupied by what are called intentional

neighbors or missional neighbors who aren't coming out of homelessness,

but are making a conscious decision to sort of simplify their lives and make

a commitment to live in community with the homeless.

And so Gabriel, and that made sense to me in a big way.

And Gabriel said, we'd like to give you a home for Valerie, but we want to give

you a second home because we also have some intentional neighbors that are prepared

to take this step as well.

Would you host two homes on your property?

And I thought, I would like to say yes, however, this is getting to be a bit bigger deal.

Maybe not just the pastor should be making this decision.

You know, let me bring this to a broader base of things.

The leadership of the church and just check in and make sure we're not getting too far.

And so we did. And I brought it to my executive committee who were eager to

support, but they also said, let's broaden this conversation and let's invite

some other stakeholders into this.

Ultimately, we had a variety of community conversations around it, and our council,

which is elected by our congregation to lead and make the decisions of the business of the church,

they agreed to commit to what we called at the time an interim sacred settlement,

meaning we were going to host these two homes, accept these two homes,

and Valerie and an intentional, what proved to be a family of three,

husband and wife and their 10-year-old daughter at the time,

to live in community with us.

We would renovate a small unused classroom to become the common house that was

convenient to one of the entrances of our building.

And there would be bathroom access. And then we have showers already here at

the church. And so we had that piece.

We didn't have the laundry part figured out, but there's a laundromat real close

by. And so we've kind of sorted that out as well.

And our commitment to doing this as an interim would be that we would also do

the deeper discernment as a whole congregation on if we would want to do this

permanently over the course of the coming months over this past year.

And so just over a year ago, those two homes were delivered to the church and we prepared them.

For occupancy and got our common house ready to go.

The two homes we received, one of them was built by Trinity Lutheran Church

in Stillwater and the other was built by Lord of Life Lutheran up in Maple Grove.

And some teams of people from both of those churches came and helped us prepare

our common house and prepare the sites and get them ready to welcome Valerie

and the Berry family to occupy our interim sacred settlement.

But one quick question about the homes themselves, just is that they aren't

what we would think of as homes,

or I mean, they are, but they're, you talked about RVs and so can you kind of

describe what kind of tiny homes they are?

Yeah, so the homes are truly built like a home. I mean, they're,

you know, two by six wall construction.

They're over insulated for a good Minnesota winters.

They have solid roofing on them. They're built with home building materials.

They're just one hundred and ninety square feet on a on a trailer,

on a well, you know, firmly planted on a trailer.

That trailer then is anchored to the ground.

It's not on a foundation, but it's on kind of four pews that are drilled down

into the earth and then sitting on some metal I-beams that are attached to the home.

So there's, and that meets a particular code requirement.

But, so you walk into the homes and you're, you know, when I say RV,

I'm thinking of a thin-walled vehicle.

And these are, it's like walking into a small house. It has a full-sized,

you know, residential door on it. The windows are just like you'd find in your house.

The finishes inside are very home-like.

There's, it's a drywall interior, painted drywall, and there's a loft there on either end.

And there's, you know, the homes themselves are primarily bedroom and personal space.

There is a small little seating area. You could entertain one or two guests

in your little home for a period of time.

And then there's closet and storage space.

And then there is a space that you could imagine being like a little bathroom,

but our homes only just have a little dryer composting toilet in them.

Because our residents primarily come inside to the church for that.

And that's really just an emergency middle of the night. It's cold.

I don't want to run into the church.

And it's the kind of thing that the next day that then they would wrap up and

refresh their little commode to be used in the next time kind of a thing.

And that meets the standards of the codes.

However, it didn't quite meet the standards for Roseville city codes.

And so not long after our homes were in sight and our residents had moved in,

we were notified by the city of Roseville that they wanted to talk to us about what we were up to.

And the good news is that also active at that same time was,

and settled had previously been working towards this,

getting some legislation at the state level to move through the state legislature

that specifically codifies the elements of a sacred settlement,

that tiny homes in this way, partnered on land that is owned by churches,

in partnership with those churches and those worshiping faith communities.

That that this is an allowable exercise and that supersedes any municipal code

as long as it meets the standards of the legislation which spells out.

What what safety standards need

to be met what other kind of specific things which

are arguably yes more relaxed than what the city would allow typically but i'm

driven that were the whole purpose of this is to work with a population that's

chronically homeless that you can't do this unless you're serving the chronically homeless.

And there's a standard in the definition of what that means.

And so it's not like every church can just now have a bunch of tiny houses and

rent them to whoever they want.

No, it has to be a service directed to the chronically homeless.

Remembering that a portion of the homes up to no more than 30%,

no less than 30% of the homes have to be occupied by intentional neighbors.

And so people who are prepared to live alongside the chronically homeless and

be that first ring of support and care within that community,

just be good neighbors to them in the community.

And so we've spent a year with our two homes.

Now the legislation was adopted last spring, and we are anticipating,

and it will become a law, or it's already law, but it becomes active on January 1st.

And in order for us to be in compliance with the law, we actually have to add

a third home, because right now we have 50% of our homes occupied by intentional

neighbors, and only 50% occupied by formerly homeless persons.

So by adding a third home, we now will have two thirds homeless and formerly

homeless and one-third intentional neighbor, which is exciting for us because we're,

We're now developing the process, like how do we decide and find the right person

to move into this community with us?

And then what we're doing now is helping to set the stage for potential future

growth and development.

We certainly, it's in our imagination that some point down the road,

we would have additional homes as well.

We believe that our current infrastructure, the common house space that we've

renovated, and the interior work that we've done here inside the church will

accommodate this third home pretty easily.

Future growth would probably require us to do some additional renovation and

think about expanding some of that common house space to just to make it feasible

as the community would grow.

And so, and, you know, lots of wondering about what's the right size and how

many, you know, we're just sort of taking it one step at a time at this point.

And doing things like this, telling this story to as many people as we can,

because we know there are other churches out there that have land,

the resource of land and maybe corners of unused facility that could be accommodating

this very, very same thing.

And giving us as a community faith a chance to live out our callings,

to love and serve our neighbors, to welcome the homeless, to welcome the stranger,

to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, just as God has called us to do.

We feel blessed that we have a really tangible way of living out that command,

and God's charge for us in this way.

So what has it meant for the congregation as they got involved and I'm assuming got to know Valerie?

What how has it impacted the congregation and even spurred them to?

To continue to continue to welcome others,

Yeah, it, I continue to say this is just transformational.

Um, I mentioned earlier that it was really easy to see the transformation happening in Valerie.

Um, and especially as she sort of has hit each of the milestones,

that early milestone of just being here with us, knowing she didn't have to

leave and move her tiny, her, her bus, uh, somewhere else. I could see transformation.

Then when we made the commitment to say, yeah, we're going to welcome you into

it. we're going to bring a home here for you to live in this winter.

Another point of transformation.

And then every step of the way, it's just been phenomenal to watch that and very joyful.

And then welcoming our intentional neighbors to see that family being able to

live out a calling that they felt deeply about.

And to see them to get to live into that promise and to live their faith in

that way, wow, it's wonderful. But it doesn't stop there.

The transformation that's been happening at the church on the other,

you know, on our side of the equation is, is, you know, unbelievable personally.

Wow. You know, I, if you asked me, um, five years ago that I'd be in a homeless

ministry, I would have thought, you know, that's crazy.

I, I don't feel gifted and served to serve in that way.

Um, you know, I, I, I'm pastor to a, you know, fairly strongly middle-class

not all that unaffluent.

You know, community of believers here, very solid,

you know, it's a blessing to be in this call because it's stable and the church

is healthy and all of these things and I don't have a background in social service

and I don't have any any beyond just my own personal faith and,

you know, love of others didn't feel particularly called to serve the homeless

in our in our midst, but that's who was here.

That's who God kept sending to our parking lot.

And that was the ministry that needed to happen.

And so I was very open to seeing where God was going to lead us through all of this.

And here we are. So I've experienced transformation, without a doubt.

But the congregation, individuals as a collective, we're being transformed in this process.

Without a doubt, there are people in our community who are still very much at

the edges, sort of looking, you know, still a little trepidatious,

you know, still a little fearful, not certain that this is what we should be doing.

But many people have taken a few steps forward and have leaned into this opportunity.

And some have really jumped in with me and with our leadership team to really

embrace this. And I'll tell you, those who have taken the bigger steps,

they're being transformed.

I mean, just to see their hearts opening up and to see the way that,

that they're viewing this, this, this opportunity and, and the beauty that's,

that's developing as a result.

It's just powerful. And, and consequently, the people, you know,

the, those who are further back, they kind of get drawn in along too,

because they, they see what's happening and they just, they get more curious.

Just this.

Interest in what we're doing to come alongside and take in and just come and

do some share a meal and do some storytelling once a month.

And then if people are curious and want to learn more, it's been a great place

for just outsiders to just say, I want to learn more. And it's like,

well, come to our community dinner.

You meet some of the key people and you'll hear some of the stories and you'll

learn more and you'll see and interact.

And that's just been that grows every month. There's just been more and more

people showing up for that, which has been wonderful.

And again, we're getting a chance to tell this story. And things are exciting

right now, because we have a third home on site.

It arrived a couple of weeks ago, and we're preparing it to be occupied.

Our commitment is to wait until January 1st, when the law specifically,

and we or a temporary permit from the city that only allows us the occupancy of two homes right now.

And that expires at the on the 31st. And so the legislation takes place,

assuming we have all of our ducks in a row, we can we can take occupancy and

can certify that we meet all of the standards that the law requires,

we can come on a new resident or couple to our community.

And we're eager to identify who that is soon just so we can start making specific

plans and that kind of thing. So yeah.

And what third home that we just received was actually gifted to us and to settled by.

They were, it was gifted by a company called Abtech and,

uh, and they just built this home as sort of a staff project and then looked

for a place to donate it and, and they connected with settled and ultimately it landed here with us.

And because it's just slightly larger than the two existing homes we have,

and it has a little more height, interior height, and so the loft part is a

little bit taller and a little bit more comfortable,

we're going to move the, our family of three intentional neighbors into the

little bit larger house and then quickly rehab the home that they've been living in to welcome.

And so, but we've got this little, little community and the homes just sit about,

oh, 30 yards from the door to the church and their common house.

And just across our parking lot, and they have a beautiful view of the lake

and, and the beautiful green spaces that surround us and in this setting on

the, on the hill in this corner of Roseville Central Park.

Here's this emerging community for folks who have been previously homeless.

The property values in this area would never allow for someone with no means

to be able to live here, right?

But because we're a church, because this is our land and we can use this resource

in this way, It's just a beautiful example of how God's kingdom can come to fruition.

We deeply believe that God's vision for the world is being lived out in this

way, and it feels like such a blessing that we get to be participants in that

and see it happening in real time.

Tom P. Davis So if you, I were, or someone is the pastor or a member of a church

that's listening to this, and they hear this and they think,

this is really cool, we have a kind of a large property that we're not using all of it like we used to.

How would you suggest they get involved or do something either maybe a similar

or something to help in some way with dealing with homelessness?

Yeah, great question, and obviously I don't know that any other church would

quite get into it quite the same way we did, just sort of stumbling.

But if there are churches out there that do already do serve a homeless population,

this might be a way to kind of build on any existing ministry that you might have.

You may not have considered that the land itself around your church might be

an appropriate place to place a tiny home, because we don't think of housing

in this context in this way typically.

This is not an apartment building that we have to build and maintain.

This is just some fairly simple, well-built homes, but then leveraging the interior

spaces of the church as well.

For churches that maybe don't have an experience with homelessness,

I encourage you to reach out to our partners at Settled,

and their website's really beautiful and tells the story really well, settled.org.

Or you can go on our website, which is poproseville.org, and we've got that,

our story, and pretty well chronicled there, and there are some videos to watch

and a variety of things to learn about.

Reach out to me or the church here at Prince of Peace in Roseville,

and again, you can find my contact information on our website, poproseville.org.

And I'd be happy to visit with anybody, or if somebody wants to,

if you want to come and visit us, just call and schedule a time.

We're eager to show off what we've done. So are our partners over at Mosaic,

at the Mosaic Christian Community.

They actually have gone so far as they schedule, I think, one or two times a

where they kind of have open to the community, the interested community,

they do kind of a tour open house kind of thing. And we haven't gotten that organized.

We just sort of handle it one request at a time. And they have kind of consolidated

those requests into these open houses.

And so they'd be also a great resource to reach out to.

So what is the future for the community as it is right now?

So you have three homes. you see any more coming up in the near future?

Yep. So...

Yeah, you froze there for a moment, but the future for our settlement,

we're going to just live into this reality with these three homes.

This process is also inspired within our church, a broader visioning process,

and we're actually in the midst of a big campus planning initiative,

which is sort of like a strategic planning process,

thinking how we are using our ministries, in addition to our desire to continue

working with the homeless population.

We have some other housing-related ideas of needs in our community,

but also we for a long time hosted a daycare and child development center here in our church,

and recently that operator, um, shut in that operation, but the need is still there in our community.

And so we're wondering if we can still, um, do something along those lines.

Uh, and so there's a bigger planning process underway. And as that develops,

we're, we're keeping our imagination open as to about how the sacred settlement

might continue to grow and expand over time.

And so we can't just make full firm commitments that, Oh yeah,

we're ready to go to 12 houses tomorrow. Yeah. We want to get some of these

other initiatives sort of thought through and think about how they all will

interrelate over the long term.

Tom Hanks All right. Well thank you, Peter, for this really great interview,

and I'm hoping that this is a help for people in other churches,

both here in Minnesota but across the country, that might see this as an idea

and to start to think about it.

Peter Taylor Well, it's a pleasure to be able to tell this story.

You can hopefully tell that I'm pretty passionate about it.

I'm really pleased that, and again, I feel blessed that God has led us in this

direction, and I'm eager to continue seeing if we can invite others along on this journey, too.

So… Tom P. All right. Well, Peter Christ, thank you so much for taking the time.

Peter C. You bet! My pleasure. Tom P. All right. Take care. Peter C. Yeah! We'll see ya!

Music.

But I hope you enjoyed the interview. As usual, there are links of interest

related to this episode with Peter, and that will include information on the

nonprofit that he talked about, which is Settled,

which is based in St. Paul.

And thank you, again, for listening to this episode, and that is it for this

episode of Church in Maine.

Remember, again, to rate and review the episode on your favorite podcast app

so that others can find the podcast and consider donating so that we can continue

to produce more episodes.

I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. Again, thank you so much for listening.

Please share this podcast with family and friends.

Take care, everyone. I'm hoping that you're having a good Advent.

Godspeed, everyone, and see you soon.

Music.