I am not quite old enough to say this.  

But it occurs to me, as I crest the royal hill of 40, that the work I am doing now may not be actualized until I’m too old to do it anymore or long after I’m gone. 

Outside of what happened in the pandemic, I may never again get to experience Fredericksburg as a community where no one has to sleep outside.  But if my own story is any testament, it is the dreams  passed down from one generation to another that drives the response of those who follow.

That’s one reason I’m so inspired by the young people who have rallied in support of “The Coldest Night of the Year” Walk, a 5K (with one mile option) that Micah will host on February 25.  On this night, across the US and Canada, communities will walk to raise funds and awareness about hunger, hurt and homelessness. Participation can include walking, donating, volunteering or sponsoring the event.

Micah’s goal is to raise $59,000, a symbolic number that represents the approximate cost of a house in the planned Jeremiah Community–a supportive neighborhood of small homes that will eventually house the community’s street and chronic homeless. Jeremiah Community, we believe, is a dream that will set our community’s course toward the eventual day that no one has to sleep outside. 

With 30 days to go, Micah has engaged almost 200 walkers across 38 teams and raised nearly 75% of our goal. Leading the charge is nine-year-old Jane Murray, whose father Clay is on the Board for Micah and mom Jillian works at Fredericksburg United Methodist Church. By knocking on doors, asking for support from the church community that has watched her grow up, reaching out to friends and family and writing a letter to the family’s favorite basketball team, the Boston Celtics, Jane has raised almost $6,000 for Micah. Currently, she has raised more money than any other walker in the nation. 

Following her parents’ lead, Jane has been loving neighbors through both Micah and her church community since she was four. “People have seen her and her little self volunteering in numerous ways, at community dinners, the church food pantry, meals to hotels during Covid, and this is the first time that we’ve been able to actually give folks some way to support her,” said Jane’s father, Clay. “And they’ve come out in droves.”

Other teams have also used their involvement in the Coldest Night Walk to engage young people. Real Estate Agent Chip Taylor, leader of the Ray of Light team, has asked his clients to get their children to draw pictures of “What home means to them.” More than 15 kids have submitted drawings, featuring houses, families and words like safe, secure, love, happiness and family. He has shared their pictures on Facebook to encourage others to support him in the Coldest Night walk, which supports Micah in its efforts to make home possible for the unhoused. 

In addition, many other local churches, businesses and community groups have formed teams to walk in solidarity with Micah on “the Coldest Night of the Year.” Many churches are leveraging their congregational circles to collect walkers and supporters.  Italian Station’s Pay it Forward team is inviting customers to make a donation using a QR code in their store. 

On any given night in the Fredericksburg region, there are about 200-250 people who sleep in shelters, tents, abandoned buildings or cars. Roughly, 60 unhoused neighbors consistently live outdoors. The complexity of their needs (i.e. mental health, chronic illness, intellectual disability and/or addiction), combined with the limited options for affordable housing and support services leave many in that situation for a year or more. 

While the average American lives well into their 70s, a person who has spent time on the street is likely to live only until their mid-50s. Cold, harsh nights sleeping outside are often the biggest culprit in removing literal years from people’s lives.  For two years in a row, Micah has buried more than 30 people who spent time living outdoors. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports that up to 700 unsheltered individuals across the country die each year from cold-related illnesses. 

And so, we walk! 

We walk because no neighbor should have to sleep outside in the cold. 

We walk because Fredericksburg has the capacity to love our neighbors better. We are not a Los Angeles, a New York or a Richmond, which can count thousands outside on a given night. With one meaningful project, everyone we know who sleeps outside can be offered a home and the support that is needed. 

We walk because the compassion of a community is measured in how we care for our least. For 18 years now, the downtown churches have quietly come alongside our neighbors in places where many in our community had given up. Our work is not just a meal, a bed or a roof over someone’s head, it is care for the whole person. The more people who join us in that that work, the better we can be the community that our neighbors desperately need. 

There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, then go together.” Our walk through the city on February 25 means more than money for the work Micah is doing every day. It is an expression of our solidarity, an embrace of a dream that began a long time ago and continues on in the hearts of those inspired by our love for one another.

We walk because we are ALL neighbors.

We walk because it’s cold outside. 

And we walk together toward the dream of a community where no one sleeps outside. 

-Meghann Cotter

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Unhoused neighbors are more likely to heal from trauma, achieve stability and restore relationships when they have access to housing first. Micah helps by finding permanent housing, providing furniture, and offering financial assistance and case management. More than 160 people were supported in in Housing this year.

Fredericksburg’s downtown churches began their journey toward the vision for Micah Ecumenical Ministries almost 18 years ago. We’ve now been at this as many years as there are miles to the treacherous Jericho Road of the Good Samaritan story. Along the way, encounters with our neighbors’ suffering have taught us much about the home God envisions for humanity, and how we are called to take part.

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Remembering Wayne Payne

The Micah Community is sad to share that our dear friend Wayne Payne, 60, passed away Sunday, January 22 in his home. He was a quiet, gentle soul. For many years he worked for Labor Finders as a flagger, until retiring about a year ago. He loved football and his friends. Wayne would often go to great lengths to care for his friends. Although he had few words, he had a lot of heart. All of us will miss his random voicemails, which were often just to say “I love ya.”

A Micah Community Memorial will be held January 31 at 2:30pm at City Dock

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Shelter provided at 748 Kings Highway is one way we love our neighbor. The building, owned by Rappahannock Community Services Board, operates November through March when temperatures drop below freezing. Roughly 250 people pass through the shelter each season.

Fredericksburg’s downtown churches began their journey toward the vision for Micah Ecumenical Ministries almost 18 years ago. We’ve now been at this as many years as there are miles to the treacherous Jericho Road of the Good Samaritan story. Along the way, encounters with our neighbors’ suffering have taught us much about the home God envisions for humanity, and how we are called to take part.

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Other Ways to Love Your Neighbor through Micah

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The care provided from 1013 Princess Anne St. is one way Micah’s collaboration of churches loves neighbor. This year, 794 neighbors were welcomed for food, clothing, showers, connection to community resources and help overcoming homelessness.

Fredericksburg’s downtown churches began their journey toward the vision for Micah Ecumenical Ministries almost 18 years ago. We’ve now been at this as many years as there are miles to the treacherous Jericho Road of the Good Samaritan story. Along the way, encounters with our neighbors’ suffering have taught us much about the home God envisions for humanity, and how we are called to take part.

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Christian Kinsella, 21, left this life Dec. 7, 2022. He grew up in Spotsylvania, had three sisters and two brothers. He was a strong young man who endured hardship with a happy go lucky disposition. As a child, he liked to draw–specifically countries and places around the world. At eight, he was studying geography and teaching himself Chinese. Recently, he was trying to learn French. Even as a child Christian never hesitated to tell it how it was. The Micah community never wondered what he was thinking or what he thought of someone. Christian was fearless and creative in his travels around the state. He liked to walk long distances and find remore paths where he could clear his head. While petite in stature, his charm and charisma cast a giant shadow. He both smiled and cried with his eyes. He was quick with a laugh. He called everyone “friend.”

The Micah Community will host a memorial for Christian on Monday, Dec. 19 at 2:30pm at City Dock. All are Welcome.

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For several weeks, a couple of formerly unhoused ladies have worked to prepare a variety of apple concoctions. Apple sauce, apple pie, apple butter–you get it. Now that they have homes and kitchens, the recipes of their mothers and grandmothers have taken root in their own lives, and they seek to be a blessing to others.

The joy they have found turning literal fruit into gifts for friends and neighbors has gotten me thinking about the lifecycle of loving neighbor. We give love expecting nothing in return, or we receive it knowing we might never have means for repayment. When God is involved, return on investment is not always visible to the naked eye; but that does not leave the effort absent of miracles.

Who actually knows, for instance, how the battered man rescued by the Good Samaritan made use of his second chance at life? The story was never about the outcome; it was the action–the mercy–that mattered. When mercy leads, it isn’t just the man in the ditch that finds healing. Everyone is transformed.

Fredericksburg’s downtown churches began their journey toward the vision for Micah Ecumenical Ministries almost 18 years ago. We’ve now been at this as many years as there are miles to the treacherous Jericho Road of the Good Samaritan story. Along the way, encounters with our neighbors’ suffering have taught us much about the home God envisions for humanity, and how we are called to take part.

It is love of neighbor that calls us, again and again, to show up with mercy, to pursue a just response, and to create spaces where God can bring that kingdom vision to fruition right here in our own community. One life at a time. One ministry at a time. And it takes a LONG time for the small and simple ways of God to reveal the bigger picture.

Sometimes the result is as monumental as the chronically homeless couple who went from five years in a tent, to an apartment, to owning their own home. Sometimes it is as meaningful as the man who overcame a decade in prison to one day work in the same cold weather shelter where he once slept. Sometimes it is as special as the army veteran who lived 27 years on the street finally agreeing to move back indoors. Sometimes it is as profound as knowing the terminally ill woman, who lived out of a shopping cart most of her life, got to spend her final days in a home with a community who loved her.

Most times, it is as simple as a jar of apple butter made in the kitchen of a newly-housed neighbor, presented as a gift to others, a symbol of hope, and evidence of belonging that had previously seemed unattainable.

Be it 18 miles on the Jericho Road or 18 years of ministry with unhoused neighbors, we have 18 reasons to thank you, our travel companions, for making the journey possible. The path ahead looks promising, and it is better with you by our side. Keep your boots dusty! And consider the ways your love of neighbor might accompany us in the coming year.

Might our work together lead to fewer people in ditches, and a better road–a better community–for all of us.

Being Community: Hospitality

While Micah works toward Jeremiah Community, a place where neighbors can live affordably, have purpose and grow meaningful relationships, consider the many ways our collaboration of churches have already built a neighborhood of scattered parts.

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It was around this time two years ago, that it became blatantly obvious that the two-week plan cobbled together at the onset of the pandemic was not going to send us back to normal anytime soon. Stay-at-home orders weren’t going anywhere. The emphasis to get people off the street was increasingly dire. And let’s be honest, none of us knew what we truly did not know. 

         Micah could not stay home during the pandemic, because those we care for had no home in which to shelter in place. Were it not for the robust support available through our church meal network and Hospitality Center, it would have been impossible to pivot in a time of crisis.

         September 2020, however, marked an important milestone in who we would become during the pandemic and how we would accompany our neighbors to the other side.   Unprecedented emergency response resources made it possible to keep people safe in hotels for the better part of two years.

         The immediate goal was survival–literally. We never imagined it would make Fredericksburg, for a season, a community where no one had to sleep outside.

          It would be a significant omission not to mention the grief we felt when the hotel money ran out and we returned to distributing camping gear and planning for the November opening of a congregate cold weather shelter. It was really a blessing to be in a situation where shelter was available to all who needed it. But the journey does continue, and a little time in the wilderness often launches the next great movement of God’s people. 

         Flash forward to the Micah Hospitality Center of September 2022, we are picking up right where we left off. Many community partners, DMV, Social Services, Germanna Nursing, Probation and Parole, who co-located in our building are returning. Hours of operation have returned to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 10am to 2pm and Thursday 3pm to 5pm. New volunteers have found their way to our doorstep. And we have a whole new appreciation for the systems and supports that help people get back into housing. A stable shelter situation, for instance, became an opportunity for more comprehensive case management than is ever possible while people are living in tents, abandoned buildings or other places not meant for human habitation.

      Micah, as did many communities in the U.S., learned so much about the unique role that hotel-style shelter can offer to people who have been over institutionalized, have trauma history and struggle with social anxiety. Between March 2020 and August 2022, 645 people were provided hotel shelter for at least one night. Of the 39% who were sheltered more than 30 days, 66% exited to a permanent location. By comparison, the pre-pandemic rate of housing stabilization was 40%.

      Hospitality, in biblical terms, speaks of welcoming one another into our spaces and lives. It is meant to create the ultimate gift of connection. The pandemic has pushed us all to consider what life would be like without either. Thanks to a community of saints who wrapped around our unhoused these last several years, both hospitality and connection also continued to find our neighbors.

~Meghann Cotter

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Being Community: HealthBridge

While Micah works toward Jeremiah Community, a place where neighbors can live affordably, have purpose and grow meaningful relationships, consider the many ways our collaboration of churches have already built a neighborhood of scattered parts.

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Early one morning, I wandered into Market Square on a tip that some of our neighbors had been bedding down for the night.

With a backpack for a pillow, a couple of guys occupied the benches around the perimeter. I looked carefully and quietly, only to see who they were but not awaken them. Their blankets swaddled so tightly around their bodies and covered their heads that the only evidence of human life were the boots that emerged from the bottom.

In a nearby corner, a fellow that I knew was heating up his coffee on a campfire stove and chatting away with a young man who was already awake.

“Would you all happen to know who is sleeping there?” I asked. They proceeded to share the identifying information that I needed in order to connect with the sleepers at a later time.

“And how about you all?” I asked. “What can I do to help you get out of this situation?”

“I need a pair of shoes,” the young man replied. “I’m having a problem with my feet. They hurt so bad, it’s keeping me from working.”

Some months later, after three or four different kinds of shoes of varied sizes, the friend I met that morning in market square had the opportunity to check out his foot problem with a local doctor who had started medical outreach at the Micah Hospitality Center. It turned out a lot more than shoes were available to treat the condition that was keeping him out of work.

Connection to adaptive equipment, referrals for lab work, physical therapy, x-rays or home health, and addressing immediate medication needs are just some of the supports that have come available through Micah’s newest initiative called HealthBridge.

“Many of our neighbors have no primary care,” said Teresa Bowers, program coordinator. “This leads them to chronic use of the emergency room or urgent care; and sometimes they don’t even address what can be a serious health condition.”

HealthBridge aims to recruit local medical and mental health service providers who are willing to provide assistance to unhoused neighbors at the Micah Hospitality Center or, in some cases, in their home. Providers may be volunteer or contracted for service. The project was funded earlier this year by an innovation grant from the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, aimed at building up capacity to support vulnerable people in housing.

Even though many are now covered by Medicaid or Medicare, unhoused neighbors are easily frustrated by long waits and complicated processes required to access care. They are poor self-advocates and often mistrust organized systems. Years of rough-living on the street catches up with people, even in housing. As health declines, neighbors who have experienced homelessness often lack family supports that most frequently supplement obvious health solutions.

Streamlining partnerships with the health community, therefore, encourages medical and mental health providers to meet people where they are in their health journey, understand their needs, provide resources and help them figure out an effective plan of care.

Dr Theron Stinar, from Fredericksburg Christian Health Center, has been the inaugural partner for the HealthBridge initiative. He sees patients at the hospitality center or in their home every other week for about four hours.

He comes alongside a long-standing partnership with the Germanna Nursing Students, who provide health screenings and education from the hospitality center once a week during the school year. Several other local doctors will engage with the program in the fall; and we continue to seek other innovative ways to meet the healthcare needs of our neighbors.

Assistance is provided from a central location. It often focuses on immediate needs, answering questions and building trusting relationships. HealthBridge is not an effort to provide community-based primary care, rather it is a “bridge” for people who are accustomed to addressing needs on a survival basis to engage with more comprehensive systems of care.

“We are helping neighbors who don’t already have an established health care provider,” Bowers said.

HealthBridge is currently following approximately 25 people, and is gaining 4-5 new patients every couple of weeks. Most have been utilizing the emergency room an average of nine times a year. Over time, the program hopes to demonstrate that HealthBridge patients make less use of the emergency room and engage more fully with coordinated care systems, which also provide a cost savings for the community.

Some of the major wins, thus far, have included patients who gained immediate referrals to X-rays and been able to come back to the Hospitality Center for results and care coordination. HealthBridge is currently facilitating a hernia repair, cancer screening and Hepatitis C treatment for some of our neighbors. People who have been off medication for some time have been able to get started again after seeing a doctor at the day center. The program has also allowed neighbors with mental health needs to start medication and begin the journey to stability. Based on relationships formed through HealthBridge, many neighbors have chosen to schedule follow ups at a provider’s office and kept their appointments.

In the coming months, Micah hopes to expand upon connections to psychiatric and counseling services, as well as home health supports, medication management and nurse case management.

~Meghann Cotter

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Any Help Appreciated

On a recent trip to a major city, I walked to city center from my Airbnb. As I crossed under an overpass, where the public train passed overhead, I was struck by the number of tents lined up along the path. What caught my eye, however, was a large piece of cardboard draped over one of the nylon tents. Engraved in sharpie were the words “Any help appreciated.”

I was so distracted that I almost missed the two grown man’s feet emerging from one of the tents as he slept.

As I walked on, the words “any help appreciated” rolled over in my mind; and I wondered what has happened to our cities that we have landed in a place of acceptance for fellow human beings living with their backs against the ground? We run to people displaced by storms, fire and other catastrophe. And yet, we walk past our neighbors on the street who have been displaced by a catastrophic loss of family, as if there is no urgency.

In our logical minds, homelessness is such a complex issue that we have enveloped our own lives with a cardboard tent that consoles us when we don’t know what to do. We pass people a $20 bill, hand them a bag of food, pack them into an over-crowded shelter or sweep them into an apartment, and we are satisfied because “any help” is appreciated.

But there is a lot more to it than that. And the longer our society sends the message to our unhoused neighbors—that we are content with their circumstances–the more they also believe there is nothing more for them. Therefore, “any help” is appreciated.

Although Fredericksburg hasn’t always had the visible homelessness that major metropolitan areas have faced, the same groans of larger urban centers HAVE lived quietly in the underbelly of our historic heritage and riverfront pride for decades.

In that same underbelly, however, there have also been nine churches diligently partnering with God for seventeen years—learning the names, hearing the stories and forming relationships with those who have found the streets to be their home.

I have often leaned on the 1 Corinthians 12 passage as a reminder that our neighbors are one of the many parts of the body. If one part suffers, the whole body suffers. Just as care for the body cannot mean attention to the eye, while ignoring the leg or tending the hand, while overlooking the heart; we cannot treat homelessness as if it is just a symptom of joblessness or mental health or even just housing. It is a matter of the whole person and the whole body of this community saying “we see you,” and as my brother, my sister, my neighbor, “any help,” when you’re living in a tent, is not enough for us.

I am excited to share that the 17-year journey of Micah Ecumenical Ministries has now brought together a group of partners who are ready to stake that claim—to build a community where the very least among us can live affordably, have purpose, and grow the meaningful relationships.

Micah’s board of directors, Mary Washington Hospital, Virginia Supportive Housing and the City of Fredericksburg have all agreed to sign a Memorandum of Understanding. It is our intention to find a site where both Micah’s vision for Jeremiah Community, 30-50 small homes, and a traditional Virginia Supportive Housing apartment building, 60-80 units, can be realized.

Virginia Supportive Housing and Micah have already visited a couple of sites across the region. There are two in Spotsylvania, one off of Lafayette Blvd and the other on Courthouse Rd. There is a site in the city of Fredericksburg. And there is one is in southern Stafford off of U.S. 17.

It is important in our site selection that we identify a place that is accessible by public transportation and offers walkable access to a grocery store. Not to mention, both Virginia Supportive Housing and Micah are non-profits, so cost of the land and development issues—topography, environmental, noise issues and neighborhood concerns—are also vital to keeping the project manageable.

The body of many parts that is forming around this vision already extends well beyond the MOU. SDI Engineering has invested hundreds of hours of pro bono work developing draft site plans. A local developer who is passionate about affordable housing is consulting with us. HKS, a national architectural and design firm, has donated thousands to help us with a master plan and floor plan for the small homes. In addition, Micah already has commitments for nine homes, which we believe can be purchased for $60K or less; and all nine of our core churches are working to gain approval in their respective processes to build a house.

Who knows who else might join in when four critical partners can join together and say we are a compassionate community; And we measure our hope and our welfare in how we take care of the least among us. “Any help” for some of our most vulnerable neighbors is simply not enough for us.

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Late one night at a homeless camp in Fredericksburg, two women began to discuss the safety concerns of living outdoors. One had spent most of her adult life sleeping in a tent. The other was a graduate of the University of Alabama, who ran four intensive care units during her nursing career. She had only been living outside for a few weeks, following a rocky breakdown in her family situation. “Come on,” the experienced homeless woman said to the other. “Take your shoes off. I’ll show you what you need to know.” For a few hours that night, both of them barefoot, they practiced walking a path in and out of the woods. “That way,” she said. “You’ll always know how to make it out safely if something happens in the middle of the night, you can’t find your shoes and you have to find your way out of the woods.” The novice homeless woman, would spend another five years on the street. She survived, largely because the others who lived outside with her became a community that not only kept her safe, but offered hope during one of the darkest, loneliest times in her life. It is easy to get caught up in the suffering of unhoused neighbors. But in doing so, we often miss the asset of community that has always existed among them. It causes me to wonder, what would it be for us to embrace that asset, give people their own space and key to it, and pair it with our own resources to help keep that community going? The Jeremiah Community—a neighborhood of small homes, purposeful activity and meaningful relationships—proposed by the downtown churches is imagined as such a place. It comes not just from a need to house people and get them off the street; but it claims our homeless community as an exiled people who already know a thing or two about caring for one another. Too often, we forget that the foundation of humanity is built upon a God who created us with a home and a purpose. That purpose being to cultivate and care for creation (Genesis 2:15). After all these years, I just don’t think it is possible for a person to lose that reason for existence just because they are exiled into homelessness. None of us are unlike the people of the bible who often find themselves getting evicted from their dwelling places, wandering in a wilderness, putting up tents and, by all means possible, trying to find their way home again. And no matter how long we spend in our displacement, God relentlessly promises the same end of the story for us all—everybody goes home. The problem is, especially in church world, we are too accepting of that home being something we are working for, even earning, in a distant future usually following our death. But Jesus says, thy kingdom come, thy will be done… on earth as it is in heaven. In Jeremiah 29, the prophet tells the exiles that God still wants a hope and future for them, even though they are now homeless. The displaced people long to return to the place from where they came, but it isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Home, however, is not just a matter of a physical place. As Jeremiah explains, it is a people, a purpose and an identity. By building houses, planting gardens and celebrating life together, even when the circumstances are the last place they want to be, the exiles can normalize and even find joy in the here and now. They don’t have to wait for something to be realized when they get their act together or even in an afterlife. In seeking the welfare of the community in which they find themselves, Jeremiah says, they can find their own welfare. Like an exiled people of Jeremiah’s time, the Micah community is often written off as a group of people who cannot be helped. At times, they have even been vilified for their perceived social struggles. When, in fact, they are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters of our community whose catastrophic loss of family has often caused them to lose housing, community, identity and purpose. And the only way to truly end their homelessness is to claim our home and our purpose as brothers and sisters of the same creation in which God planted us. Housing will never solve a homelessness caused by catastrophic losses of family, but community will. We may not have any influence over heaven. But God tasked us as caretakers of creation from the very beginning. That means it is our job to recognize how God is already moving among us and to follow the holy spirit in the opportunities that present themselves for heaven to become increasingly apparent here on earth. We can get caught up in the tragedy and suffering that consumes this community and look away because it is so very overwhelming. Or we can open our eyes to the wound that is the world and admit that there is no place else that God would rather be. If thy kingdom is to come on earth as it is in heaven, that’s where we should be too. “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. “ ~Jeremiah 29:5-7~

Many thanks to those who joined the Micah family of faith on June 1 at Hurkamp Park to look back on the stories that have shaped the space God is calling us next. If you missed the Prayer Gathering, you can still view it on Facebook Live or use the links below to learn more about the vision and how you can get involved.

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An Invitation to the Room

The very first Homeless Person’s Memorial Day in Fredericksburg piggybacked on the death of a legendary member of the street community who passed away just a few days before Christmas in 2008.

He was a Vietnam veteran who spent more than 20 years bouncing between a tent, a jail cell and a hospital room. But to the homeless community, he was a grandfatherly figure and caretaker on whom many of those living outdoors depended.

Lonnie Coe was his name, and he was easily the first person you wanted to meet if you found yourself without a home and needing a place to set up your tent. He would teach you how to sell your food stamps for cash and fly a sign without getting a ticket from the police. You’d never go hungry when Lonnie was around. And on a cold, soggy night, he would round up the crew and put the day’s change together so that literally everyone could pile into a run-down hotel room

People felt safe, loved and cared for in Lonnie’s presence, long before the downtown churches even decided to work together to care for street neighbors in a more coordinated way.

But as much as the street community loved Lonnie Coe, their resources to alleviate his suffering when his body began to fail were limited. For a while, they pushed him around town in a wheelchair. They fetched meals when he could only crawl out of the woods. Then, he had a stroke and ended up on life support for three months because there wasn’t a next of kin to make the decision or even claim his body for burial.

A funeral was the least we could do.

On a cold December 21, which is a nationally recognized day of remembrance for those who have died while homeless, our church and street communities gathered to remember Lonnie and five others who had died that year without a home, memorial and questionably a final resting place.

Lonnie’s notoriety earned him a story in the paper, which encouraged the public to join. And unbeknownst to us, a uniformed detail from a local veteran’s corps read the story, and showed up to play “Taps” in Lonnie’s honor.

We left that night feeling so invigorated by the holy moment established on behalf of our friends. So much so, that we have returned year after year on that same longest, coldest night to remember other unhoused neighbors who have passed away.

The service has grown bigger and more elaborate. A few years ago, we began setting up a tent in each neighbor’s honor and turning on a light inside to symbolize their lasting memory.  We’ve moved locations in order to handle the growing crowd; and we’ve kept better track of the names and pictures of those who have been lost during the year.

On December 21, 2021, we set up 31 tents in Hurkamp Park and hosted more than 150 people who came to remember our current and formerly unhoused neighbors.

Admittedly, I have felt a certain nostalgia over the years in the community’s willingness to show up on behalf of our neighbors, to know their names, hear their stories, and remember their lives. It is as important to me as attendees would be at a funeral on behalf of my own family members.

In recent years, however, I have left the event with a growing emptiness—a wandering and wondering question of how these gatherings might be compelling us to write a different end to the story.

It was questions much like this that originally compelled our downtown Fredericksburg churches to enter relationship with our homeless community in 2005. In seventeen years, these questions have moved us from being a basic needs organization that helps people survive on the street to a beloved community of holistic love and support.

And yet, our question remains: Are God’s people going to settle for the work of walking unhoused neighbors to the grave? Is life only available in eternity? Or does thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven?

In Acts 9, Peter enters a room with a similar predicament following the death the beloved disciple Tabitha in Joppa. Her mourners had begged him to come to her. Although the request for Peter’s presence has been made in order to restore her life, the mourners are quick to fill the room with ceremonial grief—showing off the garments and tapestries that Tabitha had made for them.

We are often like these mourners in our efforts to love neighbor and be the church. We enter hopeless situations to feed, to house, to clothe and to care for those who have lost something. Yet, we are quick to accept the suffering with which we have interacted, and show off the tapestries we took from the experience when the story is not ready to be closed.

Tabitha is going to have life either way when Peter enters the room, eternally in heaven or continuing on earth. So why not ask? Why not believe that life and/or heaven might be made available to her on earth, instead?

In bringing Tabitha back to life, Peter shows us how God calls us to be life in the world, to interrupt death, to disturb mourning and to enter into situations that others think are hopeless and to write a new story.

When we bring the holy spirit into every room we are in, sickness and death do not get the last word. And the great God of reversals becomes real and relevant, even today.

Many of our unhoused neighbors cannot see past their own suffering. And the hardest thing for them to overcome is often not what you would expect.

With the network of care our churches have built, accessing food, finding a house, establishing an income, even getting engaged in medical and mental health care are “easy” in comparison to what it used to be. It is something deeper that lingers in that lasting question these days.

It’s that people don’t become homeless when they run out of money; People become homeless when they run out of relationships. 

The blind do not see, the deaf do not hear and the dead do not rise either without a relationship with the holy spirt. And somebody has to open the door and hang out long enough to invite her in.

The post-Easter story is all about resurrecting things. Tabitha comes back from the dead. The murderous Saul transformed into apostle Paul by way of symbolic blindness. The lamb of God led to slaughter becomes the Shepherd, guiding us to a particular kind of life.

As we look ahead toward Pentecost, these resurrections in our Christian story beckon us to be a Peter in the room of death and despair.

How many of God’s stories don’t get the endings God wants because we shut them down?  Because we are too quick to join the mourning, when God desperately wants to dance?

Christ came into our lives, moved all the furniture around and left. But he left behind an example of what it meant to fulfill the ultimate commandments of loving God and loving neighbor.  We love neighbor when we acknowledge God is already working in our neighbors’ lives and join God in that work, even when they cannot see it for themselves.

Many know by now that the question of this moment has compelled our churches to cast a vision for what we are calling a Jeremiah Community—a supportive neighborhood of small homes, where our neighbors might have a chance at hope, healing and life beyond the displacement and disconnection they have experienced.

On June 1 at 6:30pm we are going to gather again at Hurkamp Park to look back on where we have been and dream ahead toward a new vision for loving God and loving neighbor, being the church in Fredericksburg.

This is your invitation to be Peter in the room with Tabitha.

In John 10, Jesus enters a room where people doubt that he is the Messiah. He’s told them who he was, he’s shown them who he is and they are still asking how they can be sure.

“My sheep hear my voice,” he says. “I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

Can we hear our Shepherd’s voice in our own community in the way that Peter did in the room that day with Tabitha?

Sometimes the sheep will die. Sometimes the shepherd will beat back the wolves.

Sometimes the one that has been lost, finds its way back to the flock.

And when it arrives, the Shepherd always calls it by name.

 “Tabitha…..Lonnie…..Fredericksburg…..Get up!”

“Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive.”

~Acts 9: 40-41~

I had to get to know myself #loveyourneighbor By Jordan “I come from an abusive home, where adults didn’t really listen to me; So, I have problems with authority. [Micah] has given me opportunities to believe in myself. I guess, I just grew up in the system. It was like CPS in and out of my house all the time and my mom being manipulative enough to get around the system. People look down on me. People tell me that because I’m mixed race that that’s the reason is why I had autism–because black and white doesn’t mix and that’s my mom’s fault. Virginia really gave me a chance. I’ve been normal the whole time. My situation was circumstantial at best. I had like the ideal foster situation. I grew up in Pennsylvania. As a kid, I liked to skateboard. I actually was a really avid skateboarder. I’ve been to the Boom Boom Huck Jam, which is like the X games for skateboarding. And I’ve been to Tony Hawk’s skateboarding summer camp. I’ve been there like three times. I met some pretty influential people like Bob Burnquist. Even though my mom was abusive, she always used to take me and my sister and museums in Pennsylvania. But my situation just stayed bad the whole time. It wasn’t until I came to Virginia when I was like 13, having made full grown decisions that most kids don’t have to face, that things got better. I came to Virginia because my mom used to change boyfriends like socks. One of her boyfriends led us here. We moved to Woodbridge. He was a military guy who worked at the Naval base. I was still in Woodbridge when they put me in foster care. I was in foster care from about 12 to 18, so six years. I’ve had to survive from a very young age. I’ve always felt like people are literally playing against me and I didn’t have any control. It has put me in a position now where I have learned how to make money. I have learned how to have opportunity for myself, but I am terrified of investing in myself and shooting for more than what it takes to get by. And that’s really irritating and debilitating. I feel like a child in an adult’s body. I want to have success that you always look over and pay attention to people who are struggling and need assistance–people that need someone else’s lived experience so that they can get through what they are doing. I aspire to be in the moving business. I do a lot of that work on the side. I’d like to focus this year on making it an actual brand, an insurance-able business with an organizational structure rather than a hustle. I’ve struggled with traditional employment, but I’ve also managed to survive with all these things on the side. Traditional employment frustrated me because I work hard, I show up and I’m often overlooked for raises. I’ve never, ever, ever had a raise in a job. Because of some of the trauma in my story, I struggle with authority. I’m not a worker who is going to sit there and not say anything. That gets me in trouble, but I’m not a person who is going to stand there and let others depreciate me and just bite my tongue. That’s why I don’t work in the regular corporate world. I became homeless when I split up with my baby mama. I should have ended the relationship. I kept trying to force the notion that I could fix her, or at least get her in the right mental state to be loved. I did that right out of high school for four years. When I had to leave, I went to my sister’s in downtown, but that was her first place and I didn’t want to mess that up. I stayed there for like a month. I didn’t have enough credit to get into a place by myself. I was staying in the hotel so I’m spending all this money in the hotels. I just had no time for savings to get back into a regular place. I stayed at the cold weather shelter. I’ve slept on the streets a couple of times. I’ve tented for a couple of months with groups of friends. It wasn’t the greatest, but I strived not to be on the streets–even if it was an elevator at the train station, something to get out of the immediate elements when it was colder. When you have Micah involved, I was able to eat and things like that. So, I wasn’t starving. I was able to shower at the day center. But otherwise, if you had to sleep outside you tried to wake up as early as you could so that you could get to the breakfast and get warm. I’ve seen God in my story a few times where I didn’t have money. I would be sitting at the Marriott downtown and somebody would ask me “what’s going on?” or “what do you need?” I kind of have those moments regardless of my poverty level. It’s like something in me brings to the surface people’s truest intentions. I’ve been back in housing for three years. I’m 26 this year and trying to find ways to invest in myself. Just remember you can learn from everybody. We all go through the same situations, it is just how we ended up there and how we extrapolate those focus points. It’s the situational understanding, the diversity that allows you to perceive a situation and respond instead of just observing and still not understanding. [Micah’s] vision for a Jeremiah Community gives an opportunity for people who could never get back to a traditional housing situation because they struggle to take care of themselves. Those people need housing too. And then other people who have had some misfortune could go there and gain the skills to where they can eventually leave the community and assimilate back into regular life. A lot of people have to get to know themselves and love themselves first. It took me time to get to a place where I really cared about myself to really want to try to sustain something. Even though I’m not that great at sustaining bills, I want to at least try. I want to at least not suck, I guess. To regular people that look down on the homeless it looks like you are lesser, and when you are talking about changing the image of homelessness that matters. Just because someone is having a bad situation doesn’t mean that they are a crappy person. When those people start to get that image of homelessness and they automatically render that person useless, or a loser, that stifles that person from a connection that they could have. You might not know what you could learn from that person. We are people. We are a regular community that have established things. Don’t just look over that person. So, what plans do we draw up for a person that can never go back to regular life. We create places that work for people.” We hope you will receive Jordan’s story with loving kindness and meet him virtually using the button below. As you join us in thanking God for Jordan’s perseverance, we ask you to prayerfully consider how you might honor him and others in the Micah community with a gift of time or monetary offering. Jordan is one of many neighbors that our collaboration of churches has learned from as we have followed God to build the many parts of a “house” where “all are welcome.” Commit generously to Micah this year, and help us bring more neighbors home. VIDEO: A conversation with Jordan