A prophetic moment... will the church respond?

Kingdom Causes and Our Place Housing Solutions have been working together for the past two years to administer a $3.1 million effort called the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Rehousing Program.  This program has allowed us to help our neighbors who are facing homelessness due to job loss or temporary crisis by providing coaching and care (a.k.a. case management), and just-in-time rental assistance so that families won't have to go homeless.

This effort has been extremely successful.

We've already helped over 200 families all while utilizing only 1/2 of the amount of funding (twice as many as the State and HUD were expecting for the whole 3 years). Not only have we helped hundreds of families, we have been able to leverage support from local Christians who have shared their home furnishings and their time and labor to move families into more stable and affordable living situations.

I truly believe God is honored by our co-laboring to care for the hurting in our community.

That said, we are facing an incredible challenge related to this program that I believe is an opportunity for God's people to step up and to fight injustice and lay down our lives for our hurting neighbors.  Let me explain.

Since 2009, we had been receiving quarterly advances for the program from the State of California allowing us to administer $1.2 million to serve these needy families.  In July, the State surprised us by changing the contract, informing us that it would be changing the way that the program is funded, changing its regulations effectively requiring us to identify a monthly “line of credit” of at least $150,000 in order to keep the program running and assisting families.

Without this line of credit, the program will end and 200 families will end up homeless and potentially on the doorsteps of our churches.  

This is a prophetic moment, a moment for the churches of God, some of whom have "surplus" funds,  to “invest the talents” he has entrusted us with for over 10-fold kingdom return on investment, loving our neighbors, the least amongst us by preventing them from reaching homelessness.  

Pray with me that God opens the hearts of his people and that we respond with a generosity that demonstrates our faith in God.