About a year ago, former Mercury reporter Sarah Fleener wrote a three-part series on the homeless of the area. Fleener delved into the issue locally, interviewing social service workers and others who provide programs for the homeless, and spent time in shelters to hear and recount the stories of the homeless themselves.
The series, "Without a Roof," was poignant and moving, and Fleener received many positive comments on its comprehensive local look at a subject that more often garners attention in big cities. The series has already won one reporting award and is in the running for several others.
At the time the series was written, Pottstown's homeless were being helped by Ministries at Main Street, a project started and sustained through the efforts of the Rev. Kork Moyer, pastor of a small church that meets in South Pottstown. Moyer was singlehandedly coordinating transport of the homeless from Pottstown and the surrounding area to what he hoped would be a corps of host churches offering their facilities one month at a time. Only two churches, St. John's United Church of Christ in Pottstown and St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church in North Coventry, participated.
We hoped our series would change that, and more congregations would become involved.
That didn't happen.
Fast-forward six months. Ministries at Main Street refurbished with the help of volunteers the basement of a parish building at St. John's Lutheran in South Pottstown to serve as nightly quarters for the homeless.
But when the word "shelter" appeared in photo captions and an Opinion piece in The Mercury, neighbors became concerned.
They petitioned North Coventry Township supervisors to deny zoning for the space. To make matters worse, the same township board told Shenkel United Church of Christ that they would need sprinklers and other upgrades to provide a nightly shelter for the homeless in their church buildings.
Ministries at Main Street was back to a roving one-month-at-a-time shelter system. St. John's UCC was again the only church offering help.
Then, an interesting thing happened. Two congregations -- St. Paul's United Church of Christ and Zion's United Church of Christ, both in Pottstown -- volunteered to offer space for shelter, one for the month of February and the other in March. The churches are collecting food and money to buy toiletries and food items from parishioners, who are also staying overnight with the homeless to help Moyer and his Ministries volunteers.
The offers were at least in part inspired by the refusals in North Coventry to accommodate "the least among us." The news reports a year ago of a compelling need for shelter did not elicit the response that a township denial of shelter did.
It is easy for all of us to believe a problem is being taken care of, and to turn aside, but it is more difficult to ignore a blatant act of forbidding a church from helping its neighbors.
In letters to the editor and in a press release, the members of St. Paul's and Zion's express their pride at following Christ's example in welcoming those less fortunate into their halls of fellowship.
These are small congregations that struggle with their own issues of declining church membership within mainstream congregations. Yet, these are the ones that recognize the need to support the poor and honor the weak.
Moyer has been tireless in his endeavors to help, and he has borne much of the burden alone.
The help from these two congregations stepping forward is a positive demonstration of caring. There's an example here that our neighbors across the river could learn from.