Theology in the Raw - How Can the Church Address Chronic Homelessness? Dr. Gabrielle Clowdus

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

Join the Theology in the Raw Patreon community! www.patreon.com/theologyintherawDr. Gabrielle Clowdus founded Settled, a movement of believers radically committed to life with the poor. Settled was birthed out of Gabrielle’s doctoral research on chronic homelessness and affordable housing, where she discovered the critical response is enduring relationships. Settled exists to guide the local church to cultivate home in a homeless world by planting intentional and permanent tiny home communities on their land.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As people of God, when we read scriptures like Isaiah 58, where God is like, hey, do you want to know the type of fast that I'm interested in? Do you really want to know how to get to my heart? Here's how you do it. Clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and invite the homeless poor into your home. Now, the church has done pretty well at the first two. We're good at food drives and coat drives. We've not done the third one at all.

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology and Around. My guest today is Dr. Gabriel Claudus, who, founded, Settled, a movement of believers radically committed to life with the poor. So settled, as you'll hear, was birth out of Gabriel's doctoral research on chronic homelessness and affordable housing, where she's discovered the critical response is enduring relationships. And that's something we talk a lot about. Really learned a ton of this episode. I had a lot of questions and I'm sure you will too. I didn't get all my questions asked, but she answered a lot the ones that were floating around in my mind and the questions that I was thinking about

what other people would ask. So I think you will really be challenged greatly as I was with this conversation. Gosh, I'm still just kind of really having just recorded with her about, yeah, what does it mean to follow the heart of Jesus into uncomfortable places? So settled is an organization. It exists to guide the local church to cultivate home at a homeless world by planting intentional and permanent tiny home communities on their land. If you were at the Exiles of Babylon Conference in Minneapolis, then you know that Church of the Open Door that hosts that conference has a settled community that they are establishing on their land.

And we talk about that towards in this episode. If you have been blessed, challenged, or angered by this podcast, and you would love to support it. Please go to Patreon.org or sorry, patreon.com forward slash theology and raw. You can support the show for as little as five bucks a month. We really need and appreciate all the support we have from our theology in the RA community. Best of all, you get access to other premium resources put out by my team and I. So again, patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw.

Okay, please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only, Dr. Gabrielle Cloutis. Gabriel, it's so good to talk with you. I have so many questions. and we've talked offline just right now and kind of gave you some maybe backstory of why I'm interested in this topic. But I want to know from you, how did you get interested in the work you're doing? Was this something as a child, teenager, young adult you were interested in? Or is it something more recent? Yeah.

My parents were divorced when I was 12 years old. And my life sort of, you know, felt like it was all crumbling. I was invited by my best friend to go to Guatemala on a mission trip. And it sort of seems like the unlikely thing to kind of come into my life in that moment. But it absolutely changed my life forever. I remember pulling up to the city dump. And the stench was so unbearable. I didn't want to get out of the bus.

And then I heard just like the laughter of children. children and sort of was lured out of the bus by what's happening here. Why are their children in the city dump? And turns out there's there was a whole community, several hundred people that lived in the landfill. And they made their homes out of the trash. They made their living out of scrapping. They fed themselves out of the food that they would find. And I was marked forever. You know, it's like I moved from feeling really sorry for myself about my life to coming back and saying, you know, actually have so much. Like maybe my parents aren't together, but I still have their love and I have a great sister and I have, you know, grandparents and aunts and uncles and friends and it's going to be okay. and what am I going to do with my life now that I've seen real poverty?

And so the following year, I was 13. I went to Russia. I saw girls my same age being drugged and prostituted. And it just, like, deeply reinforced that my life wasn't my life wasn't my own. Like, what's the difference between me being born in America or me being born in Russia? I think, I believe that we're all in this together and that we have a shared story, a shared humanity, and that my place in the world comes with responsibility. It comes with, you know, responding to the things that I've been exposed to, responding to the things

that I've seen. And so, yeah, that set the course for my life. I went to undergrad and grad school for architecture. I thought about international poverty, international housing. Then my husband and I moved to Minnesota for me to get a doctorate in housing and just kind of continue on that path. We thought we'd live here for a couple years and then be going overseas. Doctrine in housing? Is that how to build houses or how to help people that don't have houses?

It's like a humanities degree. That's great. Question. Okay. Preston, I thought it was the first and it was the second. Yeah, I have a bachelor's and masters in architecture. I thought that I was getting a doctorate in housing sort of, you know, it was in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota. It turns out it was a total God trap. I don't know if you've had those in your life, but it sort of looks like God lures you into something. And then all of a sudden the door closes and there's no. way out. And all of my, though it was in the College of Design, it had nothing to do with design. All of my professors were sociologists and anthropologists and geographers. And I was like, I'm in the wrong place. Like, I am not a social scientist. And so, you know, I just kind of kicked and screamed the whole way. And then it got worse. Two years into my program, my, my PI that I was working for went on emergency medical leave. I was left with,

out any research or funding. And so all of a sudden, I was sort of on the hook for a lot of money. And so I needed to kind of switch over at this same time, I also sense that God was saying, Gabriel, it is time to look at poverty in your own backyard. And I'm like, oh, like, thank you. Thinking of me and offering me the job, but no, thank you. I don't I don't really want to do that. Like my whole life has been, you know, about the poor overseas, you know, the deserving poor, so to speak, right?

And not that I can't have empathy for our neighbors experiencing homelessness in America, but I had some real stereotypes. I had some real things to overcome. I'm like, gosh, if you're in America and you're poor, it sucks. but you're going to be okay. We've got government. We've got churches. We've got, you know, social services. Like, you're going to be fine.

I'm going to spend my life going overseas and helping people that don't have those. And I really remember God sort of wrestling me to the ground and saying, I, you know, hey, there's more to this story that I want to show you. Like, I mean it. I have, I want you to look at poverty in your own backyard. And so that wasn't hard. We lived in downtown St. Paul. I rode the train between St. Paul and Minneapolis every day.

It was just opening up my eyes to my neighbor that had just slept on that train the night before, bringing an extra granola bar, getting to know them by name, by face, by story, and recognizing, wow, yes, we've got government. We've got churches. We've got, you know, food drives and food shelves and social services. But this neighbor sitting in front of me is not just experiencing a poverty of, of things, but a poverty of relationship. And they are incredibly isolated and feeling like worthless, like stepped over, looked over, uncared for, completely lonely.

And so that really just started to shape sort of my understanding around homelessness in America. At the same time, when I needed to get, you know, sort of research funding, the only project that was available was looking at chronic homelessness in the Midwest using tiny homes as a potential solution. So it's literally hired by the university and by a large health care system to look at, to look at these three things together and see sort of, you know, kind of what can be done. And so that really, I mean, that was almost a decade ago. That sent me on this journey. I shifted all of my doctoral research over to chronic homelessness and affordable housing in America, knew almost nothing about either one. And so a decade later, that is the

business that we're in is really how to help the church step deeply into that poverty of relationship that exists for our neighbors on the streets. How can they be the primary actor in responding to homelessness rather than so many layers removed. Yeah. Can you give us an like you have a PhD of this stuff. So you're no more than anybody else listening. We all have assumptions about how people get on the streets and how to get them off the streets, what they need, what they don't need.

Can you give us like, can you educate us a little bit? like how do people, how do some people end up on the streets and not others? Is it laziness? Is it drugs? Is it bad family environment? I'm sure there's a list of other possibilities. Like, help us understand the homeless. Thank you so much for asking that question. Um, because, you know, I, I have, I had all the, like, wrong assumptions that sort of out there as just about anyone else. There's a prevailing narrative that homelessness, is the result of mental illness, substance use, lack of affordable housing, poverty, and lack of job opportunities.

Those all seem pretty reasonable. I'm curious what you get. Right? Yeah. And when you pull a group of people, whether in the church or outside the church, that's what you're going to hear. Mental illness, substance use, not enough affordable housing, no jobs, poverty. or and less friendly churches you might hear laziness, you know, like bad choices.

So we either, we tend, depending on your theology, we tend to either blame the person or blame the systems. Okay. We would love for the church to ask better questions and be more curious than just go to one of those knee-jerk reactions. when you start to unpeel that the layers of poverty and homelessness, like, yes, you're going to see mental illness. Absolutely. Yes, you're going to see substance use. Yeah, absolutely. They're coping with a tremendously tragic life.

Yes, you're going to see, you know, we don't have enough affordable housing in our nation. And we don't have gainful employment for people that have traumatic experiences and brain injuries. and PTSD, like, all of these things exist. But when you keep peeling back these layers, what you're going to find, almost 100% of the time, for our neighbors that are in chronic homelessness, so they're stuck there. This is the hardest the house,

the most expensive to the public, with the least amount of options available. So I'm not talking about someone that just sort of dips into homelessness. I'm talking about someone that gets stuck there. What you're going to find when you peel back almost 100% of the time is a childhood of extreme neglect, abuse, or violence. And that childhood has led to an adulthood of feeling unloved, unwanted, and pushed to the furthest fringes of society.

This is the group of society. This is the group of people in our society that we step over, that we look away from. It is our modern day lepers. We have no proper place for them in our society. And so we hide them away. We say, you know, go outside the city gates. We go into the emergency shelters. Go far away from the suburbs.

Do, you know, we say government, do whatever you can to keep them out of our lives. And how tragic. because I actually believe that as people of God, when we read the scripture, when we read scriptures like Isaiah 58, where God is like, hey, do you want to know the type of fast that I'm interested in? Do you really want to know how to get to my heart? Here's how you do it. Clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and invite the homeless poor into your home. Now, the church has done pretty well at the first two. We're good at food drives and coat drives. We've not done the third one at all. Invite the homeless poor into my home.

You must have written this incorrectly. There's no way that I can do that. That feels messy. That feels absurd. That feels like a, like, like irresponsible and risky. And like those people have real problems. And I am not, you know, trained to help them. Like the helping professionals, the professionals should do that. Government should do that. Anyone but me. And I think, yes, that's true on an individual level. I think it must be done thinking about the home that we're inviting them into as the church and the church as the primary actor for responding to a childhood of extreme neglect and abuse and violence, an adulthood of feeling unloved, unwanted push to the furthest fringes. What does that person need? Do they need just a housing unit? Do they need more

helping professionals? Do they need more services? No, they simply needs a group. of people that choose to be devoted to them no matter what. Choose to look at them in the eye again and again and again and say, you are of great value. Image bearer made in the image of God. You have incredible worth. And I am so glad to know you, brother. That's when the story changes. This episode is brought to you by Brooklyn Bedding. So over the years, I've learned the hard way that sleep is the foundation for so many things. My mood, my endurance, my focus. And that's why I love my plank, firm, lux mattress from Brooklyn Bedding.

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And the best part is somehow they get softer with age, just like me. Anyway, it's time to upgrade your bed and upgrade your sleep experience. Your body will thank you. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at bolingbranch.com slash t-I-T-R with code T-I-T-R. That's Bowling Branch, B-O-L-L-L-A-N-D, B-R-A-N-C-H.com slash T-I-T-R and use the code T-I-T-R to unlock 15% off. exclusions do apply. What are some ineffective ways of addressing chronic homelessness? I've,

I hear people talk about getting rid of the problem, you know, like here in Boise, we had a homeless community downtown and a lot of people in the streets years ago, and then they kind of, they cleaned it up and they, you know, and I don't know where they all went. And you see them here and there, you know, at street corners and stuff, but it's not, it's clean, it's nice and clean. We like our clean cities.

And you hear about the homeless problem, San Francisco and L.A. You know, I'm from L.A. And yeah, you go there and gosh, there's so many tent cities popping up. And I've been to, you know, Skid Row and it looks even worse to did without, you know, how do you, how are people, cities, organizations addressing homelessness? And what are some ineffective ways in which they're doing that? Yeah. I mean, I would say that there are three primary actors to, to, to, to, to,

eradicating homelessness in America. There's government. Our neighbors are on health benefits and food benefits and disability benefits. Like government has its role to play and should continue playing its role. There are helping professionals. There are counselors and therapists and caseworkers and they are playing their role and should continue to play their role. And then there's the relationship piece. And that is the role of the church and has always been the the role of the church. God has always called his people to care for the poor. And we have not stepped into that role. We have outsourced that to the government and to the helping professionals. And they're not, are they even doing that? Is the government and healthcare professionals putting a high

premium on relationships? Or is that not really, I mean, I think that there's some, there's, we're now seeing the research and it being very well documented that, that relationships are what heal. You know, I would say that that's starting to be kind of more of a newer narrative, but it's not the role of the government to give you a hug, to look you in mind with awe and delight and wonder. Like, that's the role of the church. The church can do relationship. Or if we can't, we certainly should learn how.

And I wonder if, even, is the kindness of God to tell us in Isaiah 58 to invite those people, the people that we want to be furthest from to invite them into our home, like right to the center of home. And why would he do that? It comes with a promise. He says, then your light will shine like noonday. Then your healing won't come swiftly. Then you'll call on your God and I will answer you. And at the end of that chapter, he says, and then you will rebuild the ancient ruins. I don't think that we can have revival. I don't think we can build the body of Christ. I don't think we can be a strong, like radiant bride until we invite the homeless poor right into the center of our community. That's what's going to teach us how to do relationship.

When we learn how to love the most unloved, we will learn how to love ourselves. We will learn how to love each other. We will learn how to love God. But we have forgotten to how to deeply, unconditionally, with enduring devotion, love one another, forgive one another. her understand that like we're all just walking around with giant planks in our eyes. And I think, yeah, it's the kindness of God. That's how he's telling us.

You want me? You want more of me? Okay, here's how you do it. Invite the homeless poor into your home. And the beautiful thing is that the church, we have a lot of homes in America. Yeah, you know, there's about 360,000 churches across the land. And this land that the church owns is protected under very strong federal land use law. So now I'm geeking out on you a little bit.

Yeah, no, go for it. But essentially what that land use law says, I believe that it's like this golden ticket that God has given us. It says, hey, church, if you can use your land in conjunction with your mission and the way that you want to use your land is by, you know, loving your neighbor. as yourself, caring for the poor, then you can create intentional, affordable housing and community on your land, regardless of what the local zoning laws say. So we began testing that. In 2022, we opened up our first community. We tested the strength of that federal land use law. The church said, hey, we have the right to do this. We opened the first tiny home. community in our state on one acre of a small neighborhood church just outside of St. Paul.

Now, of course, because we are people of God, we're not interested in giving the middle finger to the neighborhood surrounding the church. We're not like, we can do this no matter what. It's love everyone, love every neighbor, right? And so like, how does the church become an institution that is trustworthy so that the neighborhood would say, oh, you're going to place an intentional and permanent tiny home community on your land for the formally, chronically homeless, like we trust you. We know you're going to do a good job because the church learns to be trustworthy. The church regains its reputation in society as relevant, as united, as empathetic,

and doing something like incredibly overcoming incredible challenges. Like we see the future of the church responding to two of the most wicked problems of our time of unaffordable housing and chronic homelessness. And we think that the church is so well positioned to develop the nation's most affordable housing for our society's most unloved. And what a wince of witness we would be to the world in order to do that. And like that's that, you know, coming back to Isaiah 58. and then when you do this,

and then your light will shine like noonday and your healing will come swiftly. Like, of course. People are attracted to the warmth and light of the church being relevant and doing something. You know, that just looks darkness in the face and just, you know, brings light to those places. So this is, you started the nonprofit, right?

It's settled. Yep. And so this is, you kind of explained, like, what you do. So can you unpack that a little more so people have a really concrete idea of what you're doing through settled? You're going to churches and seeing if you could like fund the building of small houses so that homeless people can come and live in these homes at the church property. Yeah. So we, we, um, you know, on like a sort of 50,000 foot view. we're calling the American church to care for their homeless neighbors in a deep and enduring way

and create homefulness with them. So on a practical level, what that looks like is settled the nonprofit. We guide local churches across the nation to use what they already have in their hands, their land, their building, and their relational and social capital to build intentional and permanent tiny home communities on their land in their building and to invite their neighbors off the streets permanently and into a supportive community. What we've found is that when churches do this, that they become more of who they've always wanted to be. They become a more intentional community. They understand community in a deeper way. The members of the

start to have their needs met in a new way because you're training the church to think about how do we carry each other's burdens? How do we use our own relational and social capital to meet the needs that are coming forward rather than going outside of just initially outside of the church? Like how can the church actually meet each other's needs in a really practical way. How many tiny homes? And when you say tiny homes, what are you thinking like 600, 800, square feet or 400 scrip? Smaller still. Like a, like a, like a studio apartment kind of. Yeah, like a studio apartment. So we at Settled, we're really laser focused on the chronically homeless. So the, if you are sort of deemed chronically homeless by the like kind of the federal government

definition. It means that you've been on the streets for a while. And it's very unlikely that you're getting off the streets unless there's a significant intervention. And so this is, this population is almost always individuals and couples. Okay. You know, family homelessness looks really different. So we build homes for, you know, one and two people. A one person home is about 200 square feet, two-person homes about 300 square feet. And then because we, we know from scripture that compassion means to suffer with, like that we can't just create this housing for those people over there, but we actually need to implicate our lives in the tragedy, in the trauma,

in the hardship of our neighbors. we in these developments we call sacred settlements and a third of the tiny homes we set aside for neighbors that we call intentional neighbors and this is resource people that come from relatively healthy happy backgrounds have not experienced homelessness themselves are choosing to live life alongside the poor so they live in the same type of housing pay the same rent wait on the same property management etc etc etc and it becomes this great equalizer. So here's where we're saying, you know, here's some substandard housing for you, the poor. No, we're building something beautiful together. We're, you know, a handful of

people from the church also live there and the neighbors coming off the streets live there. And then the larger body of the church is supporting the whole thing. Okay. I'm going to try to funnel all the questions I'm sure people have. Any questions that I have? But what about? Okay, so first of all, and I'm going to ask you a few questions. You can pick which one you want. How do you screen? Like, does somebody have to demonstrate some kind of desire to get out of chronic homelessness? Like, what if they're, they are addicted to drugs and aren't really trying to get out of that? Or what if they're doing? Yeah. What if they're doing? Yeah. What if they're, They're doing bad things.

But what if they're, yeah, I mean, sexually engaging in sexual abuse? I know this is, I don't want to feed stereotypes, but I mean, humans are humans. And I'm sure there's things that chronic homeless people are doing that we would say, we would to help you not do that any more. So that'd be one question. And so are you screening people? Is there also like help alongside? Like somebody is just totally addicted to meth?

did they have to be in a recovery program or having gone through recovery before they can qualify to enter into a sacred settlement or yeah anyway so give you a big picture on all that okay sure um maybe press in i'll i'll give you a question okay um is anyone too far gone to be loved 100% no no so what do we do with those people that that that appear so far gone. I love them. A plus. Yes, Preston. But I like I wouldn't, if somebody was totally addicted to meth, um, is not stopping. I would have a hard time and correct me if I'm wrong. You know, I've got four kids. Let's just say my kids are little. Like having just, hey, all right, just come live with me. Like I would, um, I would want to, I would want to love them,

but I wouldn't want to enable them either. I'd want to do whatever I can to help them get out of the pit, the sin, the, you know, traumatic things are engaging in. Yeah. They won't be able to get out of that pit without your love. Right. And your support. It's impossible to ask people to climb out of this, like, deep, dark pit by themselves

and say like, hey, I know it looks really shitty down there. But like, hey, once you get up here to the light, then I'd love to help you. Yeah. And that's kind of what we do with folks. And instead, why don't we just climb down to the deep dark pit with them and sit with them and be like, this sucks. Do you still want to be here? Hey, I can help you take like the next step. And we just get a little higher and it'd feel like a little warmer and a little less stinky.

Or should we just sit here for a while? you want to just sit we can just sit where do they have to be what stage in that to qualify for I don't know if that's right term to be able to live at a sacred set of it home like do they have to have I do desire

to get help I'm I just snorted a line of crack last night I'm probably going to do again tonight but I don't want to get out of this like do they have to be taking steps or just a desire to yeah I mean like all I think that even though we are people of God and we believe in the grace of God and we believe that he like found us when we were still his enemy. Like we believe that.

We received that for ourselves. But yet we sort of place something else onto the poor and we're like, you'll kind of have to deserve my love. Which is just like not the gospel. And so like if someone takes a step towards us, we'll take a mile. like for them like we like we we're the ones with the strength and the margin like we should be doing the heavy lifting um you know like my neighbor is struggling from a childhood where mom began drugging her at the age of two and pimping her out like what am I asking of her like all she needs is love like maybe I just like hold her maybe I just try to become a trusted friend in order

that she would allow me to even hold her and just, just, just rock her. Like, maybe we're just starting there. But, but to ask this woman that has, you know, the abuse started at two and it's well, started in utero and it's just continued her entire life. And now I meet her when she's 50. And I, because my time is so valuable, my resources are so valuable, I need her to show me that she's worthy of my love. I don't think so. I think that I'm just supposed to, love her and she's likely going to push me away and push me away and push me away because she doesn't trust humans because no Truman has been trustworthy but how do I become that person that is trustworthy? And like I get the question because we get that question always like how are you going to

screen for people? People want to feel like hey if this is in my own backyard, it's safe. My kids are safe. You know like Preston and I have four four kids too. I have four daughters. They're three, six, nine, twelve. They have grown up in this. Like I would never, ever, ever put them in a situation that was dangerous, ever. Like we are the helicopter parents, okay?

We're like, you know, like don't even like them going to, you know, whatever. But I think we have to also recognize that like the responsibility is actually on us. Yeah. Like this is my brother, this is my sister who is deeply suffering and I have turned, I have turned my face from them. And to correct that, I'm going to just like keep my face on them. And I am going to pour into them that they are of great value. I'm going to hold hope for them. I'm going to hold worthiness for them until they can hold it for themselves. Because without that, they won't be able to do that. You and I have gotten to where we are. You don't, you don't just go get a PhD without a time. to people like supporting you and picking up the slack, right? I know my husband did lots of dishes and lots of laundry when I was in school and I'm sure your wife was a champion. Our neighbors need that. They need that maybe more than anyone because they've never had it. And so like how does the church come in without judgment, without expectation, but we're like, we're just going to sit with you.

We're going to love you. We're going to want you. That changes everything. And then our neighbors will start to believe it for themselves. They'll start to believe that they are lovable. And then the things that are holding them in darkness and oppression and poverty, they'll start to feel a little lighter. And those things will start to fade away. There's actually like tremendous research that shows that, you know, about 80% of the work done in like rehab centers is just completely, like, not helpful. Really? And, and, and, and, and what changes if someone actually gets sober or not is the strength of, of natural support system that they have in their life. Do they feel like they have people around them that are, that are lifting them up, that are

holding them because they can't hold themselves? So that makes sense. So, so sacred settlement is not wait until you get sober and then you can kind of live with us is this is, this is, could be a primary means by which you can even get sober because you have a network around you. Well, why not? You know, we aren't trying to build, you know, affordable housing complexes of 200 units of all people that are like, you know, struggling. That'd be like going to the swimming pool filled with, you know, filled to the brim with folks that don't know how to swim. Ah, I would not want to be in that swimming pool. It sounds terrible. But how about I instead bring you to, um, you know, a nice lake with fresh water without the chlorine stinging your eyes and a beautiful,

like kind of landscape around you and a picnic and laughing and some music and everyone there knows how to swim except for like you and maybe like two other people. Now you're surrounded by a community that like knows you, loves you, wants you. And they're like, hey, when you're ready to start swimming, like we could just start with, you know, the basics. Like let's just start by like floating on your back. The average community, the average church body out there is about 200 people, the average American church, about 200 people. Take a community, train them up to access, organize, and invest their relational and social capital, turn their hearts toward the poor, then invite a handful of people off the streets. And those 300 people that are relatively healthy, happy,

trained and deeply connected can absorb the unhealth of a handful of people. That's the ratio. But we have to turn that ratio around. It will never work. The emergency shelters, then transitional housing, the warehousing people that is never going to work. That makes so much sense. That makes so much sense. So is there, so I've used a term screen, I don't know the right term. I probably said lots of terms that are not the right term. But like how do you, yeah, how do you choose, which if you have 10 houses, three of which are going to be occupied by people in the church is. How do you select the seven? Is it people you're already in relationship with? That's exactly it. Yeah, it's relationship, relationship.

So when we come, a church, you know, has gone through a discernment process, has kind of like decided, yes, we're going to plant a sacred settlement on our land with our people and our community, then we, among many things that we're guiding them on, we're guiding them on the relationship with their city, with their neighborhood, with each other. Like, you know, we're there in the background just guiding the church to be as healthy as possible and in right relationship with every one of these, like different, like, entities and institutions and groups in the community. and one of those is the neighbors on the streets, helping them build relationships with people on the street.

Now, that can be done through partner organizations. This isn't all on the church. It's just that the church needs to be the primary actor in relationship, and they haven't been. But there are faithful, beautiful, you know, professionals out there building relationships with people on the streets. Like those street outreach workers, those case workers, those social workers, they know. and they can start to send you to the right places for you to start building a relationship with Bob, with Sue, with Larry, and you start to build those relationships one at a time with folks in an organized way. So we train the church on actually how to build, you know, enduring relationship,

how to cross the enormous chasm between someone that is resourced and someone that is in extreme poverty and trauma. Like, in general, the church doesn't naturally know how to build a relationship with someone that's on the streets. Yeah. And so we help them do that. And then it's through relationship. And then, you know, the word tells us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. So, you know, to be wise as a serpent in this situation would say, I'm going to do really thorough background checks. Not to disqualify my neighbor on the street.

the church is going after the hardest to house the most expensive to the public with the least downline of options. Because if we don't, they will just die on the streets. Like this is where we can put, this is where we can make the most impact. And so, you know, so not to disqualify them, but to be eyes wide open with what does my neighbor struggle with? What is in that background? And then the church can, you know, decide, hey, this is, this is too much for us. So for instance, every one of our churches so far has said that, you know, people with a recent violent criminal background or folks with any type of like sex offense on their record is sort of too far for them. So the church itself can kind of set the parameters of what they feel called to and what they feel prepared for.

And then it's also just building the support, you know, eyes wide open to what the neighbors are struggling with. and how we're going to support that. I was on a webinar last month and said that after the webinar, I got an email from a gentleman that was on it from a church plant in Hawaii. And he said, we feel called to the sex offenders. Like, I'm so grateful that you said that nobody is too far gone to be loved. And that it's just a matter of setting the parameters in place. So in a community like that, it likely should be a church that's not families with children, right?

Like it should either be sort of like singles or young adults or retired, et cetera. Like we can be wise about this. But we also can go into the deepest, darkest places because those brothers and sisters that are being held captive there are image bearers. They are loved by God. They are worth the incredible, like, trek to get there. Like if our very own shepherd tells us that he leaves the 99 to come after us, then in walking in the way of Jesus, we do the same. Let's go to the darkest places and rescue our neighbors that are like,

like, tormented every day. And it's possible, right? Because we believe in the sorrow-conquering love of Jesus. Without that, like, this is impossible. This is stupid. Like, I would never tell the government to, like, go and do this or helping professionals, paid professionals. Like, it's too much.

Like, you will burn out. There's not enough money. There's not enough time. But equipped with the sorrow-conquering love of Jesus, like, and the mission from our rabbi, from our master, absolutely. We can do this. And the church strengthens in this way. And then the church, you know, works out these muscles of love in a way that will be a winsome witness to the world.

I'm curious. So some of the churches you work with, I would imagine, are, you know, in the suburbs, upper middle class neighborhoods, nice, clean. And you mentioned earlier, I really appreciated that, you know, we need to love all, not just our chronic homeless neighborhoods. but also are their neighbors. And I can imagine a huge freak out in the neighborhood of an upper middle class suburb when all of a sudden you're building homes for a bunch of homeless people off the streets. They're going to move into their neighborhood.

Like is that a common pushback, fear, concern? And how does a Turk work through that with non-Christian neighbors around that are like, I'm not cool with this, you know? Like, yeah, so nimbism, not in my backyard. What do we do with those neighbors? Well, a great case for this. So the first sacred settlement we built was in a working class neighborhood. The church itself, like they were on mission to love their neighborhood well. So the neighborhood trusted the church. They were like, ah, we don't know about this. We've never seen this done. You know, like, we don't know, but we trust you. And so they said yes to this. The second sacred settlement we planted. there was no neighborhood around it. You know, like it was, it was sort of distance from the neighborhood. Third sacred settlement, megachurch, on 30 acres, 350,000 square foot building, surrounding neighborhood white affluent.

They were like, oh, hell no. I can imagine. You didn't put it in our neighborhood. No, you're going to, like, number one is that our property values are going to go down, right? Right. Yeah. Number two, you're going to bring crime to our neighborhood. And number three, this is going to be unsightly and there might be people of color.

And now they wouldn't say any of these things, right? They would say like the safety and security or the homeless don't want to live here. Like they want to live in downtown. This would be like taking them out of like, really? No, it's taking them out of that pool of chlorine where they're drowning and bringing them to this very pleasant. lake in the suburbs. Like, who, what? There's no contest of which one any of us would want to live in.

But the neighborhood in general, we can't assume that they are people of faith. And we can't assume that they see things the way we see them. And so we also believe that we can't step over the neighborhood in order to serve our neighbor in poverty. And I absolutely love how our third church. Church of the open door, big megachurch. Actually, just big church. They don't like megachurch as a term, which I totally get.

But large church with a deep conviction to not say a single negative word against that neighborhood. Now, the neighborhood rose up in a, you know, collaborative way against the church and said, no, thank you. We do not want this in our neighborhood. actually went to their senator and had a bill authored to not only dismantle that sacred settlement, but to dismantle all of our sacred settlements in our state. And the church, we just called, you know, kind of the churches that are partnered in this work with us to seven weeks of prayer and fasting. And we said that there's some spiritual barrier here that cannot be overcome.

come without without that. And then we held three gatherings of repentance, worship, and rejoicing. You know, I love that scripture says to rejoice when we're persecuted. And this happened January of 2025, we learned that there was about 200 very angry neighbors that were trying to dismantle all the work of settled. And Church of the Open Door, the partnering church walked through this so faithfully. They just, they spoke with grace, with kindness, with mercy on that, on that neighborhood. And then we gathered together in an ecumenical movement and started the gatherings off in repentance. God, we're sorry that we haven't done what you said to do. We're sorry that we have rejected our responsibility to care for the poor and that we have just leaned on the government

and helping professionals. And then moving into a time of worship and prayer and then moving into a time of rejoicing. And I remember, and, you know, this went on for, from January to May, when the bill was put on the floor. And those days were really challenging. And I would come home from long days, long meetings, and my husband would be like, you just got to go outside and rejoice. Like, you need to just, like, leap, like, just, just leap, you know? And it felt sort of silly and sort of like kind of made up. Like I'm making myself rejoice. Like I don't feel like rejoicing.

But I also feel like there's something so powerful to that. Like when we choose, when we choose to do that, we're bringing like such glory to his name. And so that bill died on the floor. Wow. Never to be resurrected again. Church of the Open Door has now. found favor with their neighborhood. That coalition has dismantled.

The leaders of it have become friends of the church and advocates for the movement. It is a testimony to, to like, you know, the method is the witness. Like the way that you walk through, the hardship is the witness. And I'm so grateful for that church. Like they've walked, they've walked well and they've now gained a neighborhood. Yeah. That's where we have our conference, our exiles of Babylon conference every year at Church of Lipador, which by the time this comes out, will have happened just like a couple weeks ago, I think. Wow. Amazing. Yeah, they're amazing. I've walked with Bricky off and on through that whole process, and that's, gosh, so amazing. Where can people find settled, hear more about it? And is this something that's only in Minneapolis or something with somebody in Seattle is listening and saying, I want to do this with my church? Like, how can they go about that?

Yeah, we're working with the church in Seattle right. All right. Yeah. So birthed here in the Twin Cities, but always meant to be a national movement. So we have codified our model. We call it full community. And it exists to overcome the major barriers that would prevent a community from doing this. So we believe that this can scale everywhere.

Okay. Anywhere, regardless of theology, regardless of politics, regardless of geography or socioeconomic, factors because we're seeing it. Our first four churches are distinctly different. And what we're seeing is that this works anywhere where God's people say yes to radical hospitality. Awesome. Well, thanks, Gabriel. I feel like I just got slapped in the face of the gospel. So I appreciate that. Thank you for your heart. You know, it sounds, on the one hand, everything you're doing sounds really radical. On the other hand, it seems to just be a base reading of the New Testament and that's where the tension comes, I think, right?

I mean, it sounds, oh, that seems so extreme. It's like Jesus said all kinds of extreme things and it's just kind of part of the following Jesus. So anyway, thank you for what I'm sure is a challenge to many, but most of all for your heart and embodying the way of Jesus. Really thank you. Yeah. I hope I brought a little theology in the raw today. Absolutely. Have a good book.