Kelowna’s urban poor get their own church
KELOWNA, B.C.—After being absent from Kelowna's downtown core for about 20 years, there is once again a neighbourhood church that the homeless and the urban poor who live there can claim as their own.
Planted four years ago as one of the five campuses or worship hubs of Willow Park Church, Metro Community has been on its own officially since June 1.
"We realized rapidly that the street community needed their own church," says Metro pastor Laurence East. "They needed a church that they kind of felt was theirs, as opposed to a ministry that was parachuted in."
The marginalized make up only about half of the 250 people who attend Metro's Sunday service in a former restaurant. But at another location the church also oversees a midweek outreach called Metro Central, where street people themselves run a non-profit coffee shop, a free clothing outlet, an arts studio, a community kitchen and a community garden.
"They've really been a downtown church that embraces the people that are downtown," says Randy Benson, executive director of Kelowna's Gospel Mission. "It's good to have a church where the people we serve can go and feel that they're accepted."
Civic authorities have also welcomed Metro's presence in the downtown. "I've had so many public officials say, 'It's so refreshing to see the Church engage in this again. We thought that time had gone,'" East says.
Current estimates of Kelowna's homeless population vary between about 200 and 600 out of a total population of 120,000. The Mission's kitchen serves about 400 meals a day.
"With the coming Olympics in Vancouver, we noticed an increase in the amount of people drifting around in homelessness here," says Len Hjalmarson, a Metro member and director of spiritual formation with Forge Canada. "And every summer, we get a lot of fruit-pickers drifting through as well. Many wind up sleeping wherever they can."
Benson adds the typical homeless person is no longer the older, white male alcoholic, but is more likely to be a young man or woman with addictions and mental health issues.
Thanks to its ongoing close relationship with Willow Park, Metro has a ready supply of volunteers for its various ministries. But it also allows those who would be better off leaving the downtown the opportunity to attend church elsewhere and still feel welcome.
"What's nice about the association," East says, "is the freedom to be able to send them to another part of the city where they can get involved with a church that has the same values and the same DNA and a church family that would accept them and love them."
Down the road, East sees Metro partnering with and mentoring other Kelowna churches that are willing to become engaged in the downtown.
"I think there really is a lot more willingness than is generally perceived," says Hjalmarson. "But it really takes someone to just lead the way and say, 'It is possible to form community among the poor.' You need resources, you need commitment, you need vulnerability—and you need to be willing to be there."
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