With clergy from the ELCA and the PC(USA), the church ministers to the city’s chronically homeless
by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service
The Rev. Schaunel Steinnagel administers Communion during an outdoor service at The Welcome Church in Philadelphia. (Photos courtesy of the Rev. Schaunel Steinnagel)
LOUISVILLE — The Welcome Church in Philadelphia, a church without walls, is served by an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America pastor and by the Rev. Schaunel Steinnagel, a Minister of Word and Sacrament with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the associate pastor of The Welcome Church. It’s recognized as a community ministry by the Presbytery of Philadelphia and is a congregation under development in the ELCA’s Synod of Southeastern Pennsylvania.
According to Steinnagel, “The Welcome Church is a congregation made up predominantly by people experiencing chronic homelessness” who currently worship at outdoor venues in Center City, the Philadelphia neighborhood in the heart of one of the nation’s historic communities. “We are focused on confronting poverty, and we seek to be conscious of racism and being an antiracist organization.”
Steinnagel, the Presbytery of Philadelphia’s former hunger action enabler, said her colleague in ministry, the Rev. Violet Little, is “a wonderful connector” who founded The Welcome Church in 2007. “She would put on a pot of tea and invite people in to hang out,” Steinnagel said. “From that setting, people began to say to her, ‘We hear you are a Lutheran pastor. Are you going to offer Bible study?’ She started a series one summer, and basically it never ended. It grew into something we recognize today as The Welcome Church.”
The Rev. Violet Little, founder and developer of The Welcome Church, prays with people during a service held alongside the Ben Franklin Parkway.
With the hunger work Steinnagel was doing at the time, the ministry provided by The Welcome Church “made sense. I would sign up churches to provide coffee and snacks after worship.” When people at The Welcome Church would move from homelessness, the church would supply them with a welcome home kit including things they would need for their new kitchen, bedroom and bathroom.
In 2012, the presbytery restructured, and Steinnagel found herself looking for her next call. “I was talking to Violet on the phone,” Steinnagel recalled. “She said, ‘I’d hire you anytime.’ That started the conversation of me coming on board to The Welcome Church. For me, it’s something I’d long dreamed of doing. Being a pastor to people on the streets was my vision.”
Both Little and Steinnagel serve The Welcome Church part-time. On Mondays, The Welcome Church meets for Bible study at a Lutheran church. They’d been meeting on Tuesdays at a Methodist church, but a fire last spring “set us to wandering a bit,” Steinnagel said. For the past several months, The Welcome Church has been meeting outside Amtrak’s 30th Street Station seated around “some nice picnic tables” to enjoy coffee and cold drinks together as a friend does recreation and art projects with anyone who wants to.
On two Sundays every month, The Welcome Church holds a worship service with Communion in a park across from The Franklin Institute. “Worship is as simple as you can imagine,” Steinnagel said. “We get churches to do coffee hour with us. The coffee hour host offers people snack bags, and then we have the service.” The Rev. Peter Ahn of Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church frequently shows up with his guitar. A man from a Seventh-Day Adventist background “who continues to flirt with going to seminary” also helps lead music.
Members of one of The Welcome Church’s women’s groups display their artwork.
“We encourage people to think about, what of yourself is God calling you to share this week?” Steinnagel said. “It’s a wonderful community. It’s impossible to make it [unhoused] alone, and so people on the streets support one another.”
Two women’s groups from The Welcome Church meet once per month. One gives attendees the chance to chat over pizza and then weave. Another meets in the Comcast Center’s basement food court for coffee and “to hang out and talk,” Steinnagel said.
One thing Steinnagel appreciates about the ministry “is the reminder that lots of people, including me, hide behind the mask of having it all together,” she said. People who attend The Welcome Church “need each other and need to have a spiritual element in their lives. We are all sinners together, and it has a very equalizing effect.”
It’s the most humbling thing I continue to be woken up to,” she said. “We’re all sharing our needs and our gifts together.” Just recently, a woman brought a bag of popcorn to Bible study and placed it on the table for all to share. “She said, ‘That’s what you taught me,’” Steinnagel said. “I thought, I never told anyone to bring a bag of popcorn. But people bring tangible things, and whatever else they bring to the table.”
Each year, The Welcome Church holds a Stations of the Cross service. Pictured is one held at Suburban Station, the train station in Philadelphia’s Center City.
Eight years ago, The Welcome Church founded a women’s shelter in a church that has since closed, “and we’re looking for a new property for that,” Steinnagel said. A nonprofit formed to purchase tiny homes has seen its mission stalled inside City Hall, she said.
On the plus side, key restaurateurs and caterers encourage their regular patrons to pay an extra $11 or less for their meal so that people on the streets, many served by The Welcome Church, can enjoy a meal. The city estimates that about 900 Philadelphians are living on the streets, with about 5,000 total considered homeless, including families living in shelters.
“Most people at The Welcome Church are single adults. Some have children, and they are still welcome,” Steinnagel said. “It’s a very diverse community, and there are fewer services available for women, so we try to set aside special space for women, so they won’t feel unsafe.”
Learn more about The Welcome Church’s programs here.
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