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Posted by evanoff (Member # 4176) on :

Homeless Church 'Opens Its Arms' to Down-And-Out in San Francisco

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Homeless people in San Francisco know where to find a good meal and a warm bed. They look for the bus with their name on it -- which also happens to be a church.
The Homeless Church (THC), which is affiliated with the Assemblies of God, meets in the bus six nights a week for Bible study and worship. It's an unconventional church, born from a vision God gave Evan Prosser 10 years ago when he was pastoring a "normal" church in Northern California's farm country.

"I was driving along I-5 when I heard God's voice," Prosser, 62, told "Charisma" magazine in the December issue, out now. The full story on THC can be found in the magazine.

"God said: 'I want you to start a church for the homeless in San Francisco -- not a missions project but their own church, a church they can call their own and take ownership of,'" he added.

In 1994, Prosser and his wife, April, also 62, resigned from the church and headed south for the "Golden Gateway" city, where in their pre-Jesus days of the 1960s they had lived as hippies.

The Prossers were convinced that God did not want them to put their efforts into a shelter or a counseling program, the ministry models favored by many homeless missions.

Instead, He was calling them to live among the destitute, to fully identify themselves with the lowest of the low, to actually become "part of their world." And they have.

Today, Evan and April live in a decrepit 1964 GMC school bus, parked among the homeless in their community. With threadbare sheets pegged up across the windows for curtains, the Prossers' cramped home contains virtually nothing in the way of material comforts.

"We have cast in our lot with them," Prosser said. Like those around them, the Prossers are being "moved on" regularly by police. In this way, too, they are identified with the estimated 14,000 homeless people who roam the city streets on any given night.

Despondency and discouragement surround the Prossers, but they do not see their neighbors as worthless, human "trash," as many other people do. The Prossers see the addicts, the prostitutes and the hopeless through the eyes of Jesus, the one who had "no place to lay His head," according to Matthew 8:20.

"Yes, I see people who are beaten up, dissed and defeated," Prosser said. "Beneath the brokenness, we're finding nuggets of gold right here on the streets, people coming to faith in Jesus and being healed by the power of the Holy Spirit."

Continue story here:
http://www.charismanews.com/a.php?ArticleID=10292