The Vote – who should care for the homeless?

The church has had bad press lately but several are giving shelter to the homeless

Tom Bucher was a student at Sussex University until the summer. For the next three months the 22-year-old English graduate is running a project to keep homeless people off the streets this winter. He is co-ordinating hundreds of volunteers from nine congregations as the Brighton and Hove Churches Night Shelter gets up and running for the second year.

The project was a response to the loss of the night shelter at St Patrick’s in Hove. Mr Bucher will work with Antifreeze, part of Off The Fence charity, to direct rough sleepers to a different church each night. His role includes interviewing and assessing his guests before they are offered dinner, bed and breakfast.

Mr Bucher said: “I’ll be checking their welfare and encouraging those who have chaotic lives to meet their appointments for help and support. Some also have confidence issues.

I’ll be carrying out a risk assessment.” The aim is to protect the church volunteers and the other rough sleepers in their care.
After graduating, Mr Bucher became an intern at St Peter’s Church in Brighton. He has been running a day centre on Fridays for about 30 to 40 homeless men. The church has long had a day centre for homeless women. And each Saturday night St Peter’s also feeds about 100 homeless adults.

Mr Bucher will be checking in each evening to his own church or the Church on the Rock, CCK, Sacred Heart, St Joseph’s, One Church, Bishop Hannington, All Saints and St Andrew’s.

Forty members of the congregation of about 800 at St Peter’s have volunteered to help – many took part last year. Mr Bucher opened the church’s doors to the homeless on Saturday – the night before the first day of advent. Preparations started long before. The night shelter will run until Thursday 28 February.

Just over a week ago Martin Warner was enthroned as the new Bishop of Chichester. He oversees the Church of England in Brighton and Hove. He indicated in his first sermon that church politics in the shape of the vote on women priests at the General Synod had damaged the church’s reputation. And he acknowledged issues locally around the abuse of children and vulnerable adults by those employed by the church.

He said: “If you want to identify the data for taking the Church of England seriously, do not turn to its institutional structures, to the General Synod or even to the bishops in isolation from their people – knowledge of my own fallibility tells me how little that might yield.

“Look instead at the Christians, priests and laity alike who model and sustain on a daily basis the best of what we are about.” He cited work with the homeless and, undoubtedly, the work of Tom Bucher and his hundreds of helpers will provide more examples of the best of the modern church.

The Vote
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Who should care for the homeless?
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• Churches
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