“In my Father’s house there are many rooms.” John 14:2
Suffering is the great equalizer. Everyone hits bottom at one point in life or another, in one way or another. “The devil is an equal opportunity destroyer,” says Pastor Jack Desroches, founder of the nonprofit homeless men’s recovery center, My Father’s House. “There is an equality in homelessness. There’s an equality in addiction. It doesn’t know a certain neighborhood.” If suffering is part of being human, then suffering can bring us together and reveal our shared humanity. “It hits home when it’s your husband or your sister in the street,” says Pastor Jack. “So I think we have to look at people and determine that we help them because they are probably one of ours.” With the right guidance, suffering can be transformative, opening the door to genuine spiritual change. Sometimes we need to hit bottom before we can begin climbing toward the light.
Spiritual change is the mission of My Father’s House, an offshoot of Milestone Ministries in Thorndike, Massachusetts. “For men who want to get off the street?” Pastor Jack asks. “No. The mission is for men who want to change their lives. And if they want to change their lives, I’ll give them everything I’ve got.” What started as a weekly bible study and prayer group in 2003 has since evolved and expanded into an outpost of Christendom in the secular world. “Our first goal is to keep them alive physically. Our second goal is to get them alive spiritually.”
The concept for My Father’s House emerged one freezing winter when Pastor Jack was overseeing an emergency relief shelter in Springfield and discovered an overflow of homelessness in the city. “Men had literally died at city hall underneath essentially the mayor’s window,” he recalls. Pastor Jack felt called upon by God to do more, and so My Father’s House was born in 2009 when he used donations to the ministry to purchase and restore a run-down mansion.
My Father’s House employs Christian principles in a modern context, offering round-the-clock ministry along with an array of social services, from courses on money management and employment readiness to health education and family formation. The goal is to get residents back on their feet in every way. All residents are required to work either in the local community or around the house, and all are likewise encouraged to volunteer in the surrounding area. Everyone must contribute. The group does regular community outreach, offering religious ceremonies as well as providing manual labor to help anyone in need. The residents and staff are all held accountable — both to God and to each other — and the supportive structure of My Father’s House facilitates this mutual accountability.
My Father’s House is funded entirely by private donations. “We receive checks from people we’ve never met.” Residents are typically referred by concerned family members or local institutions including churches and more conventional shelters. Sometimes the police will just drop someone off at the bottom of the driveway and tell them, “You need to be here.”
There is something undeniable about the power of religious surrender in times of personal crisis. In the video, more than one resident describes a moment of hitting bottom and being faced with a choice between faith and death. Jeffrey, now a staff member at My Father’s House with a boyish glow that casts him eternally between youth and middle age, describes his own dark night of the soul. “I was done. Everybody stopped trying. And then I lost hope and I stopped trying.. I said, ‘God, I’m done. It’s either you change my life or you take me home.”
Whatever one’s religious beliefs, faith is entirely human. Faith in something beyond ourselves can keep us going through suffering and adversity. Suffering that has no meaning is intolerable to the human spirit, while suffering that has meaning -- becoming closer to God, becoming a better person, helping others – is much more bearable. The image of Jesus on the cross is the ultimate symbol of meaningful suffering, going through the most excruciating agony for the salvation of humanity. “I wouldn’t even be alive and breathing if it wasn’t for Him,” Jeffrey remarks. “I wouldn’t know how to persevere, to deal with the pain. But He showed me because of what He did on that cross.” When we commit ourselves to a larger purpose, that commitment can ignite our own personal sense of meaning. There is now an urgency to Jeffrey’s life that wasn’t there before. “There’s a fire now. There’s something I have to do.” This includes being a better father and son and helping other people who are suffering. Once you feel the love of God, the tendency is to want to share it with others, with everyone.
Hector, a 20-something resident of My father’s House with tattoos across his face and the gentle wisdom of a much older man, relates a moment of despair similar to Jeffrey’s. “A few months ago, I hit rock bottom...I was driving and it was a full moon, and that day I felt it. I called on His name and He was there.” Through tears, Hector repeats the mantra, “God is good, God is good. He won’t give up on you. Only you can give up.”
Over the past few years, My Father’s House has become even more deeply interwoven into the local community. The barn was made into a chapel that is now open to the public. Recently, residents and family members were baptized at a nearby lakefront contributed by a private donor, their heads submerged in the fresh summer water only to be raised back up into a new life. Water has deep resonance in the Christian faith. It symbolizes transformation and the cleansing of the spirit. The word “water” is mentioned 722 times in the Bible, more than “faith,” “hope,” “prayer” or “worship.” The prevalence of this metaphor communicates just how central the concept of transformation is in Christianity. ”Whoever drinks of the water I shall give him will never thirst,” Jesus says in John 4:14. “But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” It’s the perfect metaphor for the work of My Father’s House: Whoever drinks of those waters shall never again thirst.
My Father’s House is a small beacon of light in a world at a loss for meaning. Church attendance and religious faith has been decreasing in the United States for decades. Americans are getting married and starting families far less than once was common. Community has broken down across the country, as well as in the larger American community itself. Technology and social media have fixed our gaze inward, throwing us back on the self and sowing distrust.
Against these trends is the Christian humanism of My Father’s House, whose staff and residents are doing the real work of changing the lives of real people and in turn being changed by them. The organization is a model for a more humane society and a better world. The most we can do to counteract the dehumanizing forces of modern life is model the ethos and example of My Father’s House within our own communities. It starts small, in the spirit of fearless love. “In my fathers house there are many rooms,” reads the Bible. Let’s cultivate the generosity of spirit and the moral courage to leave the door open.
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