‘Street church’ on a mission to help needy right in town

Julie’s roof is a concrete overpass. Randy is allowed to sleep in front of a downtown business as long as he clears out by daybreak. Jerry shares stream frontage with about a dozen others; he’s badly in need of a sleeping bag.

There are no last names among the homeless of Colorado Springs’ streets, but they are people with identities just the same.

Based on a rough census, there are about 1,000 homeless souls who mostly live in downtown Colorado Springs. Many are alcoholics. Few pose any real danger to anyone other than themselves.

In a city where there are scant resources for substance abuse programs and shelter only for the sober, they must shift for themselves, almost alone in their weakness and vulnerability.

In the most informal sense, they constitute the congregation of The Street Church (thestreetchurch. com), founded a year ago by Robert and Brenda Moran. Depending on donations from a few churches and individuals, they distribute clothing, personal hygiene items and sleeping bags along Fountain Creek and other locales. They provide a church service and a meal every Sunday at Antlers Park.

Most important, The Street Church provides kindness.

“We try to build relationships,” Robert Moran said. “These are our friends.”

A visit provides one of the few chances a homeless person has for a real conversation.

“Sometimes we just sit down and listen,” Moran said. “Nobody dreams of growing old and not having a place to live, having to beg.”

Moran didn’t proselytize Thursday as he walked his normal route along Fountain Creek. He stopped to chat, pulling a blanket out of his pack for one man, presenting a woman with a bag of personal hygiene items.

Moran typically asked, “How you doing for gear?”

The homeless appear to need everything, but they don’t ask for much. The answer Moran hears often is, “I’m doing all right.”

Specific requests are not too common, and the members of Moran’s flock know he never hands out money.

Thanks to other charities, especially the Marian House soup kitchen, “when you come to town, you’re not going to starve,” Moran said. “What we’re doing is more than that.”

Without a trace of anger, Moran criticizes the city’s religious community for not doing more: “We have over 400 churches in this city. We can do better.”

Local ministries, he said, “send people all over the world, and that’s great, but there’s a great ministry right here in your own backyard.”

Going abroad, though, has a certain exotic cachet.

Moran likes to joke that he’s been on several missions to the Sierra Madre — as in Sierra Madre Street, downtown. It’s just not very sexy delivering bar soap to makeshift hovels in the shadow of the city skyline.

As the season for giving approaches, Moran knows “there is something inherent in us that we find a lot of satisfaction in giving to someone else. It’s not very complicated. You don’t have to go to seminary to understand.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0363 or noreen@gazette.com