There are instances when a piece of legislation just might open
the door to the miracle that someone is praying for.
Hey, and welcome back to Compass Finding Spirituality in the
Everyday My name is Ryan Dunn. In this episode I'm joined by
Reverend Ben Roberts, who is Director of Social Justice
Ministries at Foundry United Methodist church in
Washington, D.C. ben shares a behind the scenes
look at his unique role, balancing hands on outreach like
feeding programs and ID assistance with
community advocacy and city council engagement.
The conversation that we have dives into the intersecting worlds of
faith, justice and practical support,
especially for those experiencing homelessness.
Ben opens up about how spirituality fuels his work, the power
of community, and the importance of seeing and
serving those often overlooked in our cities. Along the way,
you're going to hear about the real challenges posed by recent policy
changes in dc, stories of hard fought victories,
and how every person can play a part in creating
meaningful change. Whether you're new to the world of social justice
or looking for hope and inspiration in tough times, this
episode should help us imagine what's possible
when we look at faithfully removing roadblocks
to answering someone's need based prayers.
If conversations like this are interesting or valuable to you,
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we've warranted. So thanks so much for that. Now
I've known Reverend Bed Roberts for several years. We were
ordained as deacons together a while back, but
I didn't know much about his backstory prior to our paths crossing as
adults. So thankfully he shares some of that with us and what
led him into his unique expression of ministry
in Washington, dc. So so let's get to know Ben a little bit better
and hear about how faith is moving from the sanctuary
to the streets here on Compass. Ben, first, thanks for joining us
on Compass. I'm guessing that not every church or every
church member is familiar with a Director of Social Justice Ministries.
And I know that's just one of the hats that you wear at Foundry
United Methodist Church. But can you paint a picture for us
what the role of the Director of Social Justice Ministries looks
like? Yes, certainly. Glad to be with you
Ryan. So my ministry here at
Foundry, I've been here now 12 years and I started as the
Director of Social justice ministries in
2013. Foundry's fortunate
to be able to have A full time position like that. But, but basically what
it looked like is caring for all of our direct service
efforts. And when I say direct service, you think about
feeding programs, clothing programs,
you know, going out cooking at different places, doing
our service, days out in the community, picking up trash, whatever it happens to be
anything that's going to meet an immediate physical need that somebody
has. But what it also encompasses is
being able to do some community organizing and
advocacy work with interfaith partners
and going out and being able to work directly with the
Washington D.C. city Council and the mayor's office
to try and direct the policies that we have here in
town. We have been particularly focused on chronic
homelessness over these years. And then ID policy,
which we can talk a little bit about because of one of our direct service
programs that does non driver's IDs and birth certificates.
And every once in a while we'll do something Federal
either with GBCs or if something
once in a while something else will pop up like an ID policy moving through
Congress or something. We'll go and we'll try and make sure that there's a voice
there as well. I don't know. So we've ever
had this conversation and I'm just kind of curious about it. You're ordained in the
United Methodist Church and I'm wondering like what kind of came first? What was the
horse and what was the wagon? Was it the ordination
that then brought along with it this pursuit of social
justice or was it you were really passionate about
the work in advocacy efficacy and then
that led you into the ordination?
Yeah, concurrent probably. All
right. But they were think
middle school age and luckily, and we're both from North
Carolina conference, the conference had a great youth
program when I was growing up. And one of the events was called
our annual conference session. And it was the chance for the
high school kids to get together and write little right resolutions, say,
pick up a topic, say here's what we feel about it, debate it
amongst each other, vote on it, pass it and send it off to
elected leaders. And that kind of laid a foundation
for me that we have a voice, we have something
important to say and the church cares about
things. The church isn't just about getting
us to do the right rituals. It's not about just getting us
to, I don't know, say Jesus 10 times.
It's about having an impact. Our Wesleyan tradition
calls us to have a social witness as
the church. And that's what I was brought up in. So
that is what kind of got me going. I Had a sense that
whole time of something about
ordination or church leadership. But it's also the case in,
probably in a lot of conferences. But in North Carolina, the sense
growing up was there are elders and there is Duke
University and there is not much else. Right.
And it took a while. It takes a long time to
figure out that those aren't the only options. The deacon order
as an ordained piece hasn't been around that long, you know, 96.
So people are still learning how to talk about it even at this point.
But as I got clarity that I wanted to do something about faith in
the public square, that's what kind of put my
attention on there being
a seminary in Washington, D.C. i was an undergrad. I pulled a
book off of the shelf in one of my classrooms that just happened to list
all of the Methodist schools. And I was just flipping through
that book and I found Wesley. And I was like, oh, well, if there's
a seminary in D.C. then that's probably a good place to
do some learning around faith in the public square. So
all along you were thinking a part of your
ministry, so to speak, was gonna be like
showing up to city council meetings, something.
I think I was a little more grandiose when I was coming up.
More like, more like organizing actions on the steps of the Capitol.
Probably. Probably, yeah. And because I was familiar with what
gbcs did. Right. And so if I, if I had known better, if, if I
had better questions to ask, maybe when I was younger, maybe I could have figured
it, but I had zero intention. This is, this
still cracks me up a little bit. But I had zero intention of
ever working in a local church. And
I have now been here in this local church for, for 12
years and, and basically my entire adult
ministry. Yeah. One of the ministries that
has been sponsored through the church you've already talked about is foundries
ID ministry. And I would love for you to paint
a picture for us about how that works and maybe even
naming why obtaining proper
identification is such a
crucial step for somebody that's in a vulnerable position
regarding like housing, health care, or employment.
Absolutely. So we do have the ID ministry.
Its main purpose is to help get you your birth certificate,
Social Security card, or non driver's id.
The reason we do it is, as you've kind of alluded to it, is a
barrier. You don't get housing without producing an id. You
do not get a job without producing an id,
and you're not going to be able to apply for public benefits if you need
them. You can't even Enroll your kid in school if you don't
have some form of ID for them as well. So birth certificates are usually
the first thing that people are getting for their kids is they're hitting pre K3
or, or kindergarten. So what we've
found over the years, this ministry has been going close to 26,
27 years at this point. I came in in 2013.
In 2014, the Real ID act passed through
Congress and that changed the way that we do.
Well, excuse me, it passed back in the early 2000s. It came into
effect in Washington D.C. in 2014 and now
everybody has seen it over the last like eight
to 10 months because it's becoming into effect nationwide
and you can't get on a plane anymore without a real ID. Well, what happened
for us in 2014 is we went overnight from being able
to help people apply for their IDs with not too
much friction. You still had a lot of proving to do.
But we had these additions of things like two proofs of address
and you must produce like multiple proofs of identity
plus legal, legal status in the, in the
country. We dropped from having around an
83% success rate to a 39%
success rate overnight. And it was actually,
it went into effect on a Thursday. We had our ID ministry on
a Friday morning and pretty much everybody that met with us that day
was doomed for failure. And we had no idea.
We got a lot more professional with our work at
that point. We had to get really good at like fitting the puzzle pieces together,
the kind of nonsense that when you're in an emergency situation, you
got evicted or you're in survival mode because you're outside,
if you're in a domestic violence situation, any of those things, you're not thinking
about how to put all these little pieces together and it can delay you for
forever. So that's the kind of work that the volunteers do, is, is to help
you navigate the process and then we'll help you pay for the
credential if you need that help to pay for it.
Yeah, in those situations, you're not thinking about grabbing the birth
certificate before you go or. No. And a lot of times
in like a domestic violence situation, credentials and IDs are one of the
things that the abusive partner usually holds
over the rest of the family, basically. So we have
to work really hard to help people replace that. Well, we're recording
this in mid September of 2025.
The events leading up to this time in history
around Washington D.C. has been that the National Guard has been
sent in, in what's been proclaimed as an emergency situation.
You know, we can get into all of that,
but my, my first question regarding that is, has. Has
this presence disrupted your
ministry in that regard? Yeah.
So the biggest disruption, again, we do a lot of work on
chronic homelessness. And when
you're working with a. With an unhoused population at all,
one of the hardest things to do is stay in contact with people.
So even if you. If you've got somebody who's really well put
together, they're not suffering from like compounded stress and trauma. And I have a. Mental
health issues, whatever. Even in the best case scenario,
keeping in contact with somebody is the thing that delays people
probably the most. You lose your phone, your
stuff gets thrown out, you have to move from site to site.
So anytime that's in play, it makes it harder. So what we
saw immediately as they kind
of made it a priority to what they call.
They call it clearing encampments. And this is something that the city
does. The city of Washington, D.C.
does this. The White House just kind of said they want to make
it even more of a priority because
there were tents near like the Kennedy center or down
near the State Department. The reason people go
to those places is because, you know, shelters can't take. They, they
will not take everyone. Um, if you're married,
there's not really shelters for you. We have, we have one and it
just came online this year, and there's not enough space.
If you have a pet, shelters will not, will
not take you. And then shelters are frequently
overcrowded. They're not the cleanest places in the world. They're not the safest
places in the world. You're basically tossed into a room with at least
four other people that you've probably never met, some of whom may be
experiencing really serious mental health issues.
Others might just not like you. We see it a lot across
race and ethnic lines where folks don't get along
or they get targeted because of that. We see people have
their belongings stolen. And then the shelter process, especially the low
barrier shelter process, is kind of lined up
around 4pm to get into
a shelter that doesn't open until like 7pm and then you have
to pack up all your stuff the next morning at 7am and be out of
there and then find something to do with yourself all day.
They're not centrally located. Some of them have
services, some of them don't. So when we see this
disruption come of like encampment clearing, people lose
belongings, they lose really critical elements like cell phones,
and they get moved Away from the places where we know to find them.
Yeah, so we have street outreach teams, we have caseworkers.
We generally know where somebody is until they get pushed off the
spot. And one of the big problems, and this
is pre the emergency declaration, one of the biggest
problems is people may not get full
notice that a clearing is coming.
The city had usually been good about giving multiple days worth of
notice. But what we found out in this emergency
is the city came around. Washington Circle is the area that I'm
thinking of. This is in Foggy Bottom near George Washington
University Hospital. And like a hospital
is a great resource to have if you. If you need it. But. So
Washington Circle was given notice.
They were basically told it was on a Thursday. They were told, hey, this coming
Monday will be back to clear you out. This is Friday
night, excuse me, Monday, we're coming to clear you guys out. So that's
notice at least. But what they did was actually came
back about eight hours later on Saturday morning. And there
was only one person still in their tent at that time. Because what you
do during the day is you go find food, you go meet with your
caseworker, you go get a shower, you take care of
yourself. So there was only one person actually present in
their tent. That person was allowed to kind of pack up their belongings.
Anybody else's stuff was just tossed in the garbage truck
and drove off. So there's no telling
right away from that who lost what. But. But
I. I've seen it plenty of times, like critical documents,
phones, things that you need get tossed and it just delays you
further and further. So that in that way we're massively
disrupted. The other piece is we don't know where those folks go next.
So we used to find you here. Now where are you? We don't know if
you went to shelter. We don't know if you slipped over into Virginia or
Maryland. We don't know if you just kind of got pushed up
north into the residential neighborhoods, which is what we've seen
a lot here. Like at the church, we kind of had an aberration
there prior to the emergency where we didn't have people
sleeping on our steps for multiple weeks.
It's rarely like that here. But we didn't have people sleeping on
our own steps for a really long time until the emergency was
declared. Now I've got new people out there that I'm meeting for the
first time that, you know, fine,
we have rules around it, but we try not to run people away.
I meet with them, I have outreach come and Meet with
them. It's a predictable, safe spot for folks who don't
feel like they can be safe in the shelter. Lots of folks who are
Hispanic tend to stay out there and all of that. You know,
we've got some parameters around it and people are good neighbors with us,
but we weren't having that for a little while until the
emergency was declared. And what we see now in our
neighborhood is individuals on little corners,
which just adds weight, and individuals over
in parks where we had never actually seen people before. And it adds
weight onto the outreach workers because now they're spread out
geographically and you have to, you're doing a lot
more literal legwork to try and go find and keep
track of people. And there's no guarantee they're going to be there more than one
night. So it just, it makes everything harder. In a best
case scenario, how long does it take for
somebody to get the
identification that they need? Yeah, best
case scenario is about a month. So if you, if you come to me and
you've got, you've got nothing on hand
but say you were born here in D.C. and you've
got at least some kind of document ready, it's going to, you can
go and do your birth certificate in person, you can
apply in person for your Social Security card, but it'll get mailed and that's up
to 14 days. And then once you have those items, plus your
proofs of address, you go to the DMV, you'll get a temporary
30 day paper ID. And this is probably pretty uniform
across the country at this point. You get this temporary
paper ID, but then your hard ID,
plastic card is going to be another 10 to 14 days to get
mailed. So, yeah, month at best.
But we've seen all kinds. Yeah, yeah.
And so this kind of clearing out can be a disruption
then that just prolongs this sense of keeping people
where, where they are in these vulnerable positions. Is
that kind of what you see happening? Quite a bit. You see that? Yeah, I
mean, ID is always a barrier. So. So when the city,
and in this case when the federal government is kind of trying to direct the
city to do more of it, when, when we have
those pieces go away, you're automatically going
to get stuck out there for a longer period of time. And
what's already a pretty long process because of the amount of resources
and. Housing available, I'm guessing
that you've been able to reconnect with some of the people who may
have been displaced through this whole process. Have
you gotten a sense of the kind of emotional toll that it takes
on people to go through something like that. I have not had success
getting reconnected with quite a few of the people that we actually followed.
This is part of the problem. So what we've been doing
in the wake of the different clearings is I'm reaching out to the
caseworkers and case managers that I know, and I'm like, hey, I see
somebody at 17th and Q. Can you send somebody over? Hey, I
see somebody in this park. Can you send somebody over?
But the people. I've only reconnected with one person
who used to stay on our steps and just recently popped up again
just in this last week. And so I can
tell, you know, it just
pushes people further and further back. And what it does is it also makes people
withdraw, because if, you know you're being
targeted, and in this case they are being targeted,
they'll. They'll withdraw further and further, and they'll try and have less and less
contact. So they'll try and be as invisible as possible,
which, of course, makes you hard to find. And so I'm
witnessing some of my people who now they'll kind of.
They'll completely hunker down to the point of, like, covering themselves
in blankets and kind of hide and sleeping in ways that none of us
would want to sleep, tucking themselves in behind,
like, little carts or plants or something like that, just to try and stay
hidden enough so that they're not going to get messed with. The gap
of trust that exists when we pursue policies like this
is just enormous, and it takes a lot to overcome it. And again,
this is something that we've seen both by the city. Other cities
do it, too. In this case, it was being directed
and sped up with little notice so that you
couldn't even kind of get to your people beforehand.
You talked about going to city council meetings. You're
there as a pastoral presence. I mean, you're there to
be an advocate, but also as a pastoral presence. And with
that, then comes this sense of spiritual direction.
And can. Can you talk a little bit about how you are
applying that spiritual direction as
you're addressing people in the sort of. That administrative
complex? Yeah. So I was
mentioning this to the. To our. To our conference, the North Carolina annual
conference, this. This past summer. I feel like
one barrier that maybe people in the church in
general, laity or clergy alike, is that you
might think you need to go and be the expert on policy,
for example, or on statistics to be able to go and
have a voice in that type of setting, and it's just not. It's not the
case. And constantly, when
coalition partners ask me to come and talk about chronic
homelessness and solutions, they
usually frame it, and they'll say to me, ben, can you come and do the
moral argument? Okay. Which for a long
time set me on a path of, like, trying to find the. The exact
sort of mathematic equation of what a moral
argument is. And so I. How'd that go?
Yeah, if I had to try. And I was like, well, what exactly is a
moral argument? I was like, so I've tried to piece these
things together in such a way that
I. That I'm speaking, you know, clarity from. From our.
From our perspective as Christians and from my perspective
as a pastor who works with people on these issues. And so what
I've been trying to encourage people to realize is you don't
need to be the policy expert. Let the experts be the
experts. We need to go and be the church.
That's our role in this. And so what that looks like is,
for me, especially early on, I would think about.
If you think about a healing narrative in the gospel, so many
of our healing narratives in the gospel will have a place
where they're going to have
Jesus first speaking to a crowd of people that
are in the way of the healing that needs to
take place. So there's one
healing narrative. There's two blind
individuals off the side of the road, and they're walking along, and the crowd is
kind of telling them to shut up and stop yelling over for Jesus.
And Jesus has to overcome that first. The woman who crawls her
way through the crowd to try and get to Jesus just to touch the cloak
and be healed again. The crowd is in the way,
the crowd that surrounds the house, such that the friends
need to pick up their paralytic friend, navigate through the crowd,
rip the roof off of the house, and lower him down to be able to
get to Jesus again. The crowd is a barrier. And so when
I go and I. And we hear things like we're trying to put resources in
place around homelessness or affordable housing, there's
usually a crowd. There's usually a crowd who's out
there saying, no, I don't want that built near
me or in my neighborhood. Yeah, not in my backyard.
Mindset. Okay, some of that mindset. Exactly. And so. So then what am
I there to do? Well, I'm. Now I'm here to tell you a gospel story
about what it takes to get healing in place.
Even in the case of Jesus, who can do all the stuff. There's usually still
a crowd in the way. And so what. What needs to be said to the
crowd in this moment as the theological witness, as
the Christian witness, as the church witness. And so that's. That's the
kind of mindset I go in with. I have told the stories of healing
there. I've literally sat in my testimony to city council and said,
you know, you're in a position more than most
people to be able to say to somebody, basically,
okay, the resources in place now roll up your mat,
take it, and go to what is now going to be your home.
Which is how Jesus spoke to the. To one person who was healed. He said,
roll up your mat and go home. You're. You're. You're. You're free and
clear. You're ready to go. So, so that's kind of the. That's what
I take in there. So it's a teaching
moment. And I. And I've been able to do that with
integrity because they wanted to build a shelter right
right beside my house. I live in a complex in
Southwest D.C. they wanted to put in a family
shelter and my own neighborhood. And so it's not just the
city council like my own. My own kind of condo
board met. And I had just moved in. I hadn't
even lived there two weeks. But they. My condo board met. This was my
introduction to my condo board and my neighbors, they were meeting to
figure out how to torpedo the family homeless shelter. And
I showed up at that meeting and I listened to them all talk about, what
can we do to stop this thing? And then I just. I had to be
the voice in the room to say, I love it.
I love this idea. It should be built here. I
work in the shelters where we're warehousing families. I know the conditions that
they're dealing with. We had had an individual
disappear from the D.C. general Shelter,
which was an abandoned hospital. And we needed a change.
And so I was there with my neighbors and then with my council members
to be able to say, you know, no, the thing that needs to happen,
and it can happen right here in my own backyard, please,
is better, safer shelters that people aren't going to be
impacted the way that they're being now. So this is what I
take in there. The other piece that we know that other groups just don't know
and they can't bring, the experts can't bring this, is that when
I'm meeting with people through our feeding ministries, through our
clothing ministries, through our ID ministry, I'm Hearing their
stories, I'm asking about what they're praying for. This is
the pastoral and not the theological end. I know that
they're praying for jobs. I know that they're praying
for housing. These are the prayers they are sending up to God. These are
the prayers they're asking me to hold with them. I walk into a city
council member's office and I'm talking with their staff or I'm talking directly with them.
I can directly say to you, you have the
power in this moment more than me
and more than any of these experts and caseworkers to help
answer somebody's prayer. God puts tools. Jesus
encourages us to be the hands and feet. You
have that power right in this moment with your vote, with your policy,
to help answer somebody's prayer. The
other groups can't say that. We can say that as the
church, because those are the stories that we get. So. So that's what
it looks. That's what it looks like for me when I'm going into these
settings. I try my best to stay on top of the policy and
on the stats and the statistics and the need and everything
else and best practice. But what we're best positioned
to do is to be the pastoral presence in that way,
and the theological and Christian witness
in a way that really moves the ball forward for people's
prayers, for their safety, for their practical needs, for
meeting those. Those mercy and
justice needs that our communities have. Sounds a little bit like you were in
the minority in terms of that. That shelter
going in near your house. Is that project moving forward?
Yeah. Oh, no, it got built great. Okay. It went
back to the drawing board, what ended up happening.
And people should take. Take encouragement here. It doesn't take that many
voices to go and be positive on this.
Usually when a project like that comes up. Well, it doesn't matter if
it's a project like that. Usually on any policy proposal, council
members, elected leaders, they usually only hear from angry people
who don't want it to happen.
People who are in favor of something don't tend to show up,
and that's a problem. So don't let it
be. Don't think it's a foregone conclusion that, hey, just because this is a.
It's a moral thing to do, it's a. It's the right thing to do, that
that's going to go through. Like people still need to hear support for something,
not just the negative voices. So what ended up happening in
that case is I didn't. I didn't sit there and Slay
Goliath or something. What ended up happening was
that our community, both my condo community
and there, my wider neighborhood said, let's take
one more look at this and find a better and find a solution.
And what ended up happening is it moved not even one block. Not even
one block. It moved half a block
south of its original proposed site.
That's it. You can find ways
forward if you're willing to talk to each other. People aren't always willing, especially
right now, they're not willing to talk to each other. You can find a way
forward. So all, all we needed to do was move it a
half a block south. We were good to go and the, and the space got
built and it's been up and running probably close to eight, eight, nine
years now. Oh, all right. All right. So wonderful. Well
established. Cool. I, I was asking about that because
there can be. There's those moments of success
and you need to hang on to those there. There's plenty of fit of. Not
failure, but setbacks, disappointments that, that come along
with work like this as well. In any profession,
people are always encouraged to keep some kind of affirmation file, right?
Like, oh, you keep that email that congratulates on something or you tuck away
that story where you really hit the mark and had
success. And I'm wondering if there is a story
that you kind of keep tucked in the mental library that
you can go back to when you feel like,
man, today's gonna not be good. I need this motivation
and I'm glad you asked that. So
once in a while I gotta, you know, we all have pastor friends.
We do stuff for each other. I've had a pastor friend who once in
a while he'll. He'll need to use my office for something. Actually, I'm
gonna call him out. His. Reverend Scott Bostick. He's a member of the Baltimore Washington
Annual Conference. He serves a church in Baltimore right now. Every once in a while,
he would need to use my office for something or he's covered. He covered a
wedding for me when my second child was born. It just
happened to fall that way. But when he uses my office,
he'll do stuff like this. He'll walk around in my office and he'll put little.
Can you see that? He'll put little post it notes.
There we go. Stick them all over the place. So say people like
you. People like you right
as annoying. And I mean, he'll put way too many of them. So I get
rid of most of them. But I'll leave a Couple just to give me a
little smile. Yeah, I'll do that. But I'm glad you asked because this
weekend, actually, I had to preach this weekend at Foundry
and I had to preach on Serve Joyfully, which we're. I'm not in a joyful
mood right now. It's not really. It's not fun
right now. Like military occupation, all this other stuff, my homeless people getting
bounced around. It's not. I'm not happy, as it
were, mood wise. And I was trying to. And I was wrestling with that in
the sermon and telling the congregation this. And one of the stories I
brought up for them and for myself was
I was on a walk a couple of weeks ago with somebody who used to
sleep on the Foundry steps. And this person,
they, they had a lot of trust issues. I'm just going to leave it at
that because, you know, we're on a podcast. I don't want to talk too much
about it. Well, I helped that person move
literally from our steps into their apartment. And this is after
he. They had lived there for months. We had worked
together for months. He, that person trusted me.
I had introduced them to a caseworker. We slowly
ID process all of that stuff, got that person into
housing, and then I had the opportunity because they
trusted me, to pick them up in the car with
another person from our church. We cleaned out their
storage unit, we took them to their apartment,
and they slept in there for the first time indoors in years.
And I was on this walk with them a couple of weeks ago
and reminding them about this and kind
of nudging them a little bit because one item that they had in the storage
locker were just these dumbbells,
like just a couple of shirts and some shorts and then literal
weights. Okay.
And I was like, you realize you were just having us move around. Dead weight
for you, right? All right. When we moved you into your
apartment, and they were like, yeah, I've still
got the weight at the apartment, but I've been housed now
for. For eight years. It's been eight years since we did
that. That makes. That is
a space where I am quite joyful in my
service and one that I do hold on
to, especially right now when,
you know, both at our city level in the district, but also at the federal
level, massive cuts are happening to the types of
things that were in place to help get this person housed. And it worked.
And if they didn't have that, they never would have been housed and they wouldn't
have been able to stay housed if it wasn't Permanent supportive housing. They
would have been back on the street immediately. It would have cost us more to
have them on the street. It would have cost them more physically,
mentally, spiritually to be on the street. You know, I
keep that. I keep stories like that around because
when the talking points are all, housing first doesn't work,
Housing doesn't work. And those are the talking points that are out there right now.
And the cuts that we're seeing, I'm like, one, it does work.
Two, I've seen it work, and I've seen it make real
transformative difference in people's lives.
And they can testify to it. And I can testify to it.
You know, I remember you telling me at some point
over our conversations over the years, it's such a.
Maybe it was even flippant. You were being flippant. But I was asking
about how do we deal with
homelessness? And your response was like,
well, the only people that are. The only way to overcome homelessness is to get
people into housing, which is
so simplistic. And yet the matter of.
Well, it's the heart of the matter, right? Yeah.
I think one thing that maybe people wonder about is
we've tried. We've tried to be careful with our language.
So because it makes a difference, like, words have power. It's just true.
So we've worked really hard not to call people
homeless. They're just. Because that.
It in your brain, you know, suddenly
you're thinking, oh, well, that person's homeless. Like, it's sort of permanent label
on somebody, and it makes it seem like it can't move.
It's not true. Like, it's just a person. They're experiencing
homelessness. Like, right now, they do not live indoors.
That's. That's what's true. If you put them
indoors, they're just your neighbor.
Okay. Yeah. This is amazing how the whole identity changes. Yeah.
They were your neighbor before experiencing homelessness. Now they're just a neighbor
who's also indoors. So, yes,
as the simplistic. The math is always the same on this one.
If you are housed, you are not homeless.
That that's all there is to it. And if you. So
the complexity comes with, like, how many. You know, how much housing is available,
is it affordable? What types of barriers exist to getting into the
housing. That's where the
complexity comes in. And are we allocating the types of resources
necessary to get people in, or are we.
Those are the complex parts. But as far as, like, who is
unhoused and who is housed, it's just whoever's not
in housing. So put them in housing and they are now no longer
unhoused. Well, the ID ministry to me became one of those
logical first steps to removing a barrier to
housing. And undoubtedly somebody else
is listening to this and thinking the same thing. Do you have advice
of where to start for empowering
people to find their IDs or to start
an assistive program like you're running through Foundry?
Yeah. Oh, good. Great, great stuff, Ryan. I. We
have been as forthright as we can be. We'll support
anyone, church, community, group, whatever. If
somebody wanted to start an ID ministry similar to what we have
going, we'll share with you whatever you want.
Because we had to get really good at every
state. Plus the multiple jurisdiction,
like New York City, for example, is a separate jurisdiction than
New York State. New York City has their own birth certificates.
You, you may not, you're not going to know that unless you were born there.
So we had to get really good at that. So we keep
what we call our state book. We've got like kind of the shortest path
for every jurisdiction that you can think of. It would take
you forever to try and put that together if you were trying to start something
new. So if you want to start something new, you can call us, you can
reach out to us, emails, and we'll help provide that information so that
you could get going. There's a
few organizations like this sincerely
has been coming along. Arizona is the one that
comes to mind immediately. They've actually got like a public private partnership
in place that does some of this. There have been more that have
popped up because of states that have
voter ID laws. So there's a nationwide group
called Vote Ride that does this to help
individuals get in place what they need for like a voter id.
But the process is the exact same. So all of
the baseline foundational process is the exact same for getting the ID
as for then getting a voter id. So you can even. There's probably, there
might be one, one of those kind of chapters in your area.
And you could, you could either learn from them, you
could volunteer with them, I guess, if you want to work on voter ID stuff.
But you could also learn from them some of the process in your local area
if you then wanted to do something just focused around non
driver's IDs, birth certificate, Social Security card.
Because everybody, and it doesn't matter, you know, everybody wants people
off the street, as it were. There's, there's not a group that's out there,
like I really want people. No one is saying that.
No one's out there saying that. So it doesn't, it doesn't matter political stripe on
this one. We disagree a little bit about how best to do it,
but everybody wants it to happen. Yeah, yeah.
Idaho is going to be a barrier either way. Whatever,
whatever route you choose ID as a barrier either
way. So that's what I would kind of say, like,
you access some of the resources that are already there. We are
here. We are so happy to help support somebody if they want to
launch something. And just let us know,
like, don't reinvent the wheel. Like, we got a really good wheel over here.
Let us know. Cool. Will they find contact information through,
like, the church website? Church website, absolutely. Otherwise, it's
just
idministryounderumc.org
perfect. All right. Well, Ben, always good to talk to you. Thanks so
much for giving the time this morning. 100%. Ryan. Thank you for
reaching out. Blessings on you and your continued ministry as you share the story
for us. Appreciate it. Thanks, man. That
wraps up this episode of Compass, Finding Spirituality in the
Everyday Life. If you would like to dive deeper into anything that we've talked about
today, be sure to visit our
website@umc.org
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