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2009-02-17 issue:

Man follows call to work with homeless

Lee Penner wanted to do something more than hand out tracts at Wal-mart.

by Laurie Oswald Robinson

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Lee Penner, Newton, Kan., was restless and felt like a man without a spiritual home. Though his former church focused on sharing how Jesus saves hearts, there seemed less interest in sharing how Jesus’ way of life called believers to meet the social needs of their neighbors.

Penner’s search for how to better integrate his faith led to his volunteer work with homeless people in Harvey County—a ministry supported and encouraged by his current congregation, First Mennonite Church in Newton.

“I wanted something beyond the idea of sharing Jesus with people by handing out spiritual tracts at Wal-Mart or on street corners,” says Penner, now First Mennonite’s representative to the Harvey County Homeless Shelter. “For me to continue to be spiritually healthy, I needed to better connect Sunday worship with real needs of real people. I needed to integrate my heart with my hands.”

Penner’s call began when he went on a DOOR program mission trip to Denver as a sponsor with his former congregation’s youth.

Penner returned and thought, Why are we always sending our young people to other countries or other communities to do mission? Why do we always have to go to other places to do this stuff?

That question led Penner to realize he must practice his faith locally if he expected the wider church to do the same. So he began volunteering with the homeless shelter a couple blocks from his home.

“I became a team leader at the shelter, which means that one week each quarter I engage people from my own congregation,” says Penner, a shelter board member. “Various classes at the church are each responsible for one night of that week to bring meals and take shifts to connect with the residents and stay overnight.”

A warning label comes with involvement, he says. It takes energy and sacrifice of time and resources when one begins to do a hands-on ministry in one’s backyard.

For Penner it has meant following up with the shelter residents when they leave. He became friends with someone who later took his own life, received 3 a.m. phone calls from folks in crisis and worked with addicts who had no food or rides to the hospital.

“There is a Vietnam vet in our community who has done some informal polling in Newton,” Penner says. “He has found at least 20 families who don’t have any utilities. They have no water, no gas, no electricity and are afraid they will end up with no children, too, if the system finds out what dire straits they are in.

Their needs stay hush-hush, covered up a lot in communities like ours. But the needs are still here, even when you can’t see them.”

Though there is much need in communities, ministries such as the shelter do stabilize lives and help people again become contributing members of their communities, he says. For example, after a year of independent living, former residents may volunteer at the shelter. After three and half years in operation, the shelter has a number of former residents who are now valuable volunteer staff.

Penner and First Mennonite—along with other volunteers who are part of a broad ecumenical circle that engages the shelter—are learning what it means to be wide-eyed and compassionate.

Today’s economic meltdowns impact more than just what is traditionally thought of as the down-and-out, he says. God’s people understand they share a common humanity with those who have scant resources to cope with tough times.

“At our homeless shelter, we see a lot of women and families with kids who go to school in Newton,” Penner says. “When you are eating supper with these families, all of a sudden stereotypes fall away. These are golden moments that put this all into perspective.”

One of those moments came when the New Disciples Sunday school class from First Mennonite showed up with a meal, and the kids of class members began to play with kids of the homeless mothers.

“That’s about as good as it gets,” he says.