By Shirley Cox
Illustration by Heidi Younger
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NAMB missionaries work under three broad categories: career, limited term and Mission Service Corps (MSC). All categories of service require an application with specific eligibility criteria depending on the category and service. All applicants must be NAMB-approved. Visit www.answerthecall.net for specific opportunities.
Ongoing support for missionaries comes through financial support, including the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering® (AAEO) and the Cooperative Program, and prayer support from Southern Baptists. MSC missionaries primarily receive their salary and benefits support through personal resources, from family, friends and related churches who are ministry partners, or from marketplace employment. MSC personnel typically serve in areas where traditional funding is unavailable but where NAMB strategies or state strategies are in place. Go to pages 43-51 to read about this year's Week of Prayer missionaries.
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Among the essentials necessary to sustain life are food, water and shelter from the cold. Yet, in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, hundreds of people, many intoxicated or mentally unstable, wander the streets every night. But amid the heartache and loneliness, hope lives. Every day, an average of 141 homeless men and women slip inside Jefferson Street Baptist Center's Day Shelter for the care they need.
"Homelessness is dangerous," says North American Mission Board missionary Rick Brenny, executive director of the Jefferson Street Baptist Center. "One man fell asleep in the cold and had to have his legs amputated. People should not freeze on the streets. Imagine just having the flu without the comforts of home and a warm place to recuperate. Sometimes an emergency center will take homeless persons when they're sick, sometimes not."
Rick is one of more than 5,000 North American missionaries who are changing the world by impacting the lives of others with the transforming power of the gospel. Rick is constantly reminded of the urgency to share the gospel with his clients. He keeps a litany of names of people who've died on the streets and how they died: "Jack-brick to head; Rankins-stabbed; Rory-drunk, run over; Roger-froze to death in a dumpster; Debbie with walker-suicide, OD; another client-froze under a bridge."
Rick's call to missions started on the streets of New Orleans where he and his wife, Kelda, handed out sandwiches to the homeless in the early 1990s. He'd been called out of architecture into ministry a few years earlier but enrolled at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary a bit "directionless."
"I knew I was being called into ministry but knew I wasn't called to pastor," he recalls. Then the Brennys heard about the US/C2 program through the, then, Home Mission Board. The couple was appointed as missionaries and assigned to Arizona where they served with an inner city church among the marginalized folk there for two years.
 "It was there that God confirmed that this was the kind of work we were supposed to be a part of," he says.
Through the gifts of Southern Baptists to the Cooperative Program and Annie Armstrong Easter Offering®, Rick and Kelda were able to fulfill God's call on their lives.
Rick began serving as an intern at Jefferson Street Baptist Center in 1995 while earning a master's degree in social work from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This was during a time when the center's ministry ranged from providing children's and youth programs to assisting low-income families with financial emergencies. Since 1997 the non-profit corporation has "directed its efforts solely at showing God's unconditional love to homeless people in tangible ways." The center is staffed 24 hours a day by 13 full- and part-time employees. During the day shift the center only has three to five people on duty. "Barely enough to get by," Rick says.
In 2005, the Jefferson Street Baptist Center provided services to 55,812 homeless guests-77 of them accepted Christ through the ministry.
 The Day Shelter, open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., provides a drug-free safe environment, access to a laundry room and showers, storage for personal belongings, mail and phone service, and a hot meal. "We provide basic but vital services that ought to be a right for all people," Rick says. "We meet physical needs unconditionally. Most of our guests don't know what agape unconditional love is."
Mary, 42, and Chris, 39, married and homeless, walk four miles every morning for laundry and showers at the Day Shelter. At night, she and Chris sleep in a tent set up on private property. Besides four bags in storage at the Day Shelter, their only possessions are blankets.
Chris is applying for disability. His deteriorating joint disease and other injuries could cause paralysis if he works. Mary cared for her mother until she died in 2001. That same year she was raped in her motel room trying to escape the December cold. A professional counselor is treating her for depression. Mary carries photos of her three children and a granddaughter. Mary and Chris have accepted Christ since coming to the center.
 Rick's goal is to provide assistance with employment, housing and health needs. "We want our guests to become more employable and to gain permanent housing," adds Rick. "We don't want to make it easy to be homeless, but we want to make it easier for them to get off the streets. Our desire is to build real and trusting relationships with those whom we serve so when the opportunity to present the gospel arises, our guests will be honest with us and with God in their responses."
The center also operates Fresh Start, a transitional housing program for 26 dually diagnosed homeless men. Dually diagnosed means they suffer from severe mental illness and one or more substance addictions. Residents of the program are provided a small private room, three meals a day, clothing, recreation and many support services. "Each resident is engaged in intensive case management to help ensure their success," Rick says. "This program provides a safe, quiet place for these men to work on goals in order for them to get back on their feet." When you are able to get someone off the streets, their world is definitely changed.
The center began operating a permanent supportive housing facility in 2004 for formerly homeless men with a dual diagnosis. This ministry provides 11 efficiency apartments, a community room, laundry facilities and support services to men who have demonstrated a lasting commitment to maintaining stability and sobriety. Permanent residents pay rent and a nominal fee for meals.
"These men are able to use services that are easy to access and that meet their needs, including case management and treatment," says Rick. The average stay in transitional housing is 9 to 12 months and the average stay in the permanent housing facility is 17 months.
"The stereotype of a homeless person is a dirty rough alcoholic, but they're some of the best people I've ever met," says Rick.
In 2005, the Center began a unique partnership with Sojourn Community Church in Louisville to respond to a variety of needs at the shelter. "Here is an opportunity to be faithful in your own city," pastor Daniel Montgomery told his church members. "Our goal is to provide a mercy ministry here, not a disconnect like a mission trip, but ministry connected with the local church."
Church members worked several months to renovate a vacant apartment on the top floor of the center for live-in missionaries. After months of prayerful planning, Rick, Daniel and Jesse Eubanks, a member of Sojourn Community Church, launched HOPE, a one-year live-in program for four missionaries, ages 18-29.
"These men live and serve among the homeless, giving approximately 20-25 hours a week in practical service," says Jesse, volunteer director of HOPE. "They eat with the residents and work alongside them." Duties assigned to HOPE missionaries include serving in the Day Shelter, custodial work, coordinating volunteers, writing grants and speaking to churches. Plans are in place to increase the number of participants in the program to six.
"Homelessness is a very humbling place to be," says HOPE missionary Luke Groce who is a student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. "It's a dangerous, difficult and sad place with very psychologically adverse effects. These people are jaded and broken. Homelessness is definitely not a choice for the overwhelming majority. Some of their choices may have led them here, but that doesn't change their needs. None of us has it all together, outside of Christ."
Despite the challenges at the Center, HOPE missionaries witness changes in the residents as they receive help. "The reward is when you see hope arising in a person's eyes, when you find someone you know is stuck and their need is met or you see relationships grow and see folks grow in their interest in Christ," Luke says.
Rick has great plans for expanding the programs at Jefferson Street Baptist Center to include job readiness, ESL, GED, literacy, additional Bible studies and discipleship classes. He's hoping to one day have a fleet of vans to transport homeless clients to and from work. "Sometimes I'm tempted to worry about finances, but God reminds me He is the one who provides."
And He does provide using the gifts Southern Baptists give to the Cooperative Program and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering®. Southern Baptists support 80 centers like the Jefferson Street Baptist Center across North America. The AAEO supports missionaries like Rick who work day-in and day-out to transform the lives of those who visit their centers. Missionaries like Rick are called by God to move out of their comfort zones to live as witnesses for Christ. While one may work with homeless, another works with surfers, another with Asian Indians and another with migrant workers. God uniquely gifts each missionary to serve in a particular area and with a specific people group or population segment.
Of course, the amazing work done by missionaries wouldn't be possible without the support of Southern Baptists. Through the hands and feet of missionaries, Southern Baptists are going to all the peoples of North America.
For more about NAMB missionaries, go to www.namb.net or www.anniearmstrong.com.
Shirley Cox is a writer and Mission Service Corps missionary living in Mount Vernon, Kentucky.
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