“He who gives to the poor lends to the Lord” —
Proverbs 19:17
From the Heart Back to Basics is a church for the homeless, the drug addicts, the criminals, the mentally ill, the hopeless and the lost.
“Isn’t this what Christianity is supposed to be about?” asks the Rev. Milt Matthews, 59, its founding pastor. “Aren’t we supposed to be seeking the lost, helping the poor and getting people functional? If we can’t change people, then why are we Christians?”
Back to Basics, located in an industrial park in Forestville just off the Capital Beltway in Prince George’s County, sends a bus every Sunday morning to homeless shelters in Washington in search of lost sheep. On any given Sunday, 80 percent of the church’s congregation comes from the streets.
While other churches stock up on turkeys and hams to feed the homeless during the holiday season, Mr. Matthews steers free of giveaway programs for the poor at this time of year.
“Soup lines and old clothes are for pity, not compassion,” he says. “Thanksgiving is the pity time for Christians. We’d just get in the way of that. We’re trying to get folks saved, and they’re trying to get them food. So we’ll wait until the pity season is over.”
Those who have been saved at the church join in the harvesting. One former drug user shows up at the crack dens near Union Station on Sunday mornings to invite her old friends to join the congregation. Another former cocaine addict now sings solos at the church.
It’s a strange way to form a congregation, Mr. Matthews admits, but at least his church isn’t like many majority-black congregations that have mostly women.
Back to Basics has plenty of men. Many just happen to have spent the previous night in a homeless shelter.
‘Think about it’
Every Sunday, a white school bus with “Jesus is Lord” on the marquee leaves Back to Basics at 6:30 a.m. Those who have spent the night at the shelter must leave by 7 a.m. If the bus isn’t there to pick them up, they will head for the streets.
Arriving at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Southeast, home to 150 homeless men, church minister Rachel Foley, 46, is first off the bus.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” she says to a group huddled by the door to keep out of the drizzle. “Anyone want to go to church? Back to Basics? You’re not sure?”
She hugs one of the sleepy-looking men.
“Think about it,” she says. “We’re going to have sausage, eggs and biscuits.”
This rouses interest, and eventually 18 men climb aboard the bus.
Lawrence “Lonnie” Bruce, 48, says he’s been going to the church for years.
“They don’t treat you like you’re a total outcast or a stranger,” he says. “They treat me as if I was a member.”
The bus travels across the Anacostia River to the Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV) shelter in Northwest. The driver is Steve Matthews, 59, a recovered crack-cocaine addict and the pastor’s cousin. Standing behind him is Wayne Smith, 49, a minister-in-training with Back to Basics who also heads up the church’s Saturday morning men’s ministry.
“Those sessions aren’t for the weak of stomach,” Mr. Smith says. “We let it all hang loose. We deal with guys who’ve been incarcerated and drug users. They’re without their children and wives. They’ve got men’s needs.”
During the sessions, “we give them a different way of expressing themselves as Christian men.”
His “graduates” get a new suit and a chance to sing gospel hymns in the church’s “From Bondage to Freedom choir.”
The group has polished its act to include an inauspicious entrance with the men wrapped in hobolike blankets. They gather around the type of flaming barrel often used by the homeless to warm their hands, telling their stories to the audience. Suddenly the men throw off their blankets to reveal suits and ties, then swing into a barbershop-quartet-style number.
‘This is the house of God’
The CCNV shelter is grim and gray, and night clerk Eric Yates is reading from the biblical book of Isaiah when the Back to Basics bus pulls up.
“I came through the door like everyone else,” Mr. Yates says. He was converted through Central Union Mission, another local homeless ministry, where he “saw what it was to love folks unconditionally.”
Four men eventually climb aboard the bus, as well as a woman in a miniskirt and a bright yellow cap.
“We pray You meet them at their place of need,” Mr. Smith says as he prays aloud before the group. “We pray for decency and order in this service. But most of all, we want to lift up the name of Jesus.”
He casts a glance at his listeners, huddled in their coats, and offers some instructions.
“We’re on our way to church, not to the penitentiary, not to the streets,” Mr. Smith says. “We’re going to receive God now. First, no cursing in the church. We’re not going to treat each other ugly. This is the house of God.”
He asks them not to smoke and says an usher will shake them if they fall asleep during the service.
“I am not saying that to be mean,” he assures them, “but if I let you sleep through the Word of God, that is a disservice to you.”
‘Seek and reunite with God’
The smell of breakfast wafts through the air at the church, founded 16 years ago by Mr. Matthews and his wife, Linda. Guests are ushered into the dining room, where a team of church members dishes out scrambled eggs, hash browns, grits, biscuits and juice. Tubs of margarine and jelly sit on the tables.
One of the church’s biggest success stories, Tuesday Brown, 48, talks with the guests. Miss Brown was bipolar and into drug use and prostitution when church members found her and her twin daughters living at the CCNV shelter.
She has attended services at various churches that send their buses to the shelter. But once she experienced Back to Basics, she never looked back.
“I’d lost my mother, my grandmother and I didn’t care anymore,” Miss Brown says. “I went on a five-year crack rampage. But I was looking to seek and reunite with God.”
Along with her came Gary Robinson, a crack-cocaine user she knew at the shelter.
“The pastor pulled up one day as I was coming out of the shelter,” he says. “He said, ‘Get on the bus.’ ”
Thanks to three meetings a week at the church, “my mind began to be renewed,” Mr. Robinson says. “I didn’t have any hope at that time. I’d been using drugs for 30 years. It gave me hope coming here. They saw stuff in me I didn’t see in myself.”
The church, which has a policy that all its ministries include at least one homeless person, put Miss Brown and Mr. Robinson to work.
Mr. Robinson was taught how to use the church’s audio board, and Miss Brown became the head usher.
The couple married Aug. 19 at the church’s first “homeless wedding.” Photos of the ceremony are posted near the church entrance, showing the couple and a bevy of silver and fuchsia-clad bridesmaids.
The Robinsons now have a home in Landover. The new wife, who is still on a regimen of 29 pills a day for a variety of mental and medical needs, tells the homeless where to find free medication — and God.
“I know I have to give back,” she says, “or my blessings will stop.”
‘To find good in people’
One recent rainy Sunday morning, Mrs. Robinson was on the Back to Basic bus’s second run of the morning, rousting people out of bed at the CCNV shelter and occasionally ducking into a crack den. At least one person from the crack dens accepts her invitations each week, she reports.
“When I was in a crack house, I wished someone had come and gotten me,” she says.
Working with her is Michael Kelly, 55, who Milt Matthews found beaten and sprawled on the ground in a local park. The pastor had just started his church, and picking mugging victims up off the streets was not his idea of how to bring in members.
But God, he says, told him to approach the man.
“I’d robbed someone,” Mr. Kelly admits. “The people I was supposed to share it with — I took all the money and ran. So they beat me up a couple days later.”
When he came to, he found Mr. Matthews bending over him.
“I saw him one night laying on the ground on the sidewalk outside the shelter,” the pastor says. “I had compassion on him because he was a little guy. I thought, ‘This guy needs some help.’ ”
The pastor invited Mr. Kelly to live with him until he could straighten up his life. His guest ended up staying five years and now works as the church’s building superintendent.
“I sensed there was a lot of good in him,” Mr. Matthews says. “That’s part of our responsibility — to find good in people.”
Mr. Kelly returned the favor by helping the pastor gain some street smarts about the homeless.
“A lot of time they pretend they’re hungry, but there are plenty of places where they can eat,” he says. “They’re just out to gain your sympathy.”
The church doesn’t provide sympathy as much as encouragement.
“They tell you that you can do it,” Mr. Kelly says. “They tell you to get back into the fight.”
When asked how to respond to the omnipresent homeless panhandlers who inhabit Washington’s streets, Mr. Matthews suggests giving conversation instead of money.
“Next time you see someone out there with a sign, you think, ‘What an opportunity for life.’ Spend some time with the brother. Ask him, ‘Why are you here? Do you want Jesus? There’s a better life, you know.’ ”
‘If you’re looking for life’
The Sunday service at the church finally begins at 11, with spirited music, Holy Communion and a sermon by Mr. Matthews.
“Some of you came here wishing for a meal or trying to get out of the shelter,” he says. “But if you’re looking for life, we’ll share with you where that is.”
Although the faces of many of his listeners are impassive, about a dozen come forward after the service seeking to start a new Christian life or join the church.
Encouraging people lost in loneliness and depression might be the church’s biggest mission.
Mary Hovis, 39, who sits in a black jacket with her hair in a neat bun, longs for a job as a clerk, waitress or a bartender. But few employers will consider hiring someone who lives at the shelter, and she cannot afford to leave.
“This church has helped me with my alcohol and drug problem,” she says. “I don’t get much encouragement, but this church gives me strength.”
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