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Bill Kirlin-Hackett offers a workbook on homelesness

To document the journey of the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness (ITFH) to involve communities of faith, director Bill Kirlin-Hackett has published a curriculum on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. “The Stones Would Shout: Homelessness and Place and Faith” is in an 8.5 x 11 workbook format.

Bill Kirlin-Hackett has published workbook.

“It includes stories of local heroes, quotes from authors, poets and theologians, sermon excerpts, interactions with homeless people and learnings from failures and successes,” Bill said.

The goal is to tell congregations how to put in place tools and actions so  people of faith understand how to respond to people needing help.

The book affirms the roles of people of faith in charity, compassion and justice, affirming each as gifts needed in response to the Matthew 25 mandate to care for the poor.

“There is need to feed and house people, to care for them and to change laws about feeding and housing people,” said Bill.

“All are gifts and people of faith across all traditions need to see they are on the same team. We are not enemies because of different emphases. It’s a mandate for Christians, people of other faiths and atheists to reach out to the poor,” he said

He intends it as a working guide. It does not give discussion questions, because the goal is not for people to sit and talk to learn, but to act.

Bill said too often conversations on homelessness make it seem to be so huge a problem that people are paralyzed. People can become frustrated by talking about doing things but not doing anything.

“It’s scary, so I go with a team of two to meet people living in vehicles. With COVID, we wear PPE. People are happy to see us, even if we come with empty hands,” he said.

“We may act incidentally, do a few things periodically, or have an intentional mission,” said Bill.

He invites churches to look at their assets and where they can use them to practice mission in purpose, not accidently or incidentally.

People don’t know what to do, because they think about problems, not needs or people, he said.

Bill seeks a donor to provide the $21 book to each of the 78 PNC congregations.

For information, call 425-442-5418 or email itfh@itfhomeless.org.

 

Copyright © December 2020 - PNC-UCC News

 

 

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