Peanut Butter Jelly Times At Church

On Child Homelessness and Not Fixing Your Doors

Child homelessness is a problem in Iowa City. At Resurrection Assembly of God, we have helped innumerable kids who were at the local Shelter House, couch surfing, or—like the Son of Man—just had literally nowhere to lay their heads. Pastor Abby Anderson and her husband Kyle (along with a few others in the church) have used their own home both as emergency housing for kids that DHS quite simply doesn’t know what to do with, and as long term housing for kids who—well—just need it.

We’ve gotten the reputation of being a church that cares about kids. Over the years, we’ve had church family dinner every Wednesday that’s open to the community. Kids come for a few months at a time, disappear for a few months more, and then will often reappear as their parents navigate U of Iowa-caused high rental prices, slum lords who know how to bend the law to their will, and personal failures to plan for next month’s rent. The kids know there’s always food, fun, and neighborly love waiting for them when they enter the doors. This reputation seems to have brought a heartbreaking situation to our doorstep.

One day I found an open jar of peanut butter, grape jelly, and a sticky butter knife on a shelf in our kids ministry closet. The walk-in closet is where we keep the puppets, costumes, and decades of random craft supplies. It’s also where the circuit breaker is. The carpet is stained from decades of use. There are no windows, and it smells like 1982.

I was more than a little irritated to find the mess. Other small church pastors will understand that volunteers are sometimes few and far between, and when messes are left, pastors frequently play the part of janitor. Assuming the PB&J had grown mold, I chucked it all in a trash can.

It was around this time that our basement door latch had also broken. It is an old metal door hidden at the bottom of an outdoor flight of stairs that goes below street level. I kept asking various people in the church to help me fix it because we didn’t have money to hire a handy man. It was broken for weeks, but we weren’t worried about it because it looked like it was locked. Who would go down a dark flight of concrete stairs to check it anyway? And if they got in, what would they steal? Our sound system to this day has no re-sale value. The only thing worth stealing would be pantry items, and we give food liberally and without reproach to all who ask.

Again around this time, one of our deacons approached Pastor Abby and said, “Ha! You really had me startled the other morning with the pile of clothes and the shoes in the closet. I thought there was someone laying there.”

Then we connected the dots: The peanut butter and jelly. The unlocked door. The pile of clothes and shoes.

We went into the kids ministry closet and observed right under the circuit breaker a bed made of carpet scraps from a recent renovation project, a small pair of ratty shoes, and food wrappers strewn about.

A child was sleeping in our church.

Pastor Abby, the deacon, and I had a hushed and whispered conversation. Who was the child? How could we help him or her? Why did they need to sleep here of all places? What should we do?

So we made a plan. First of all, we definitely weren’t going to fix the door. If someone needed a warm, safe place to sleep—especially a child—we weren’t going to stop them. We decided to keep it a secret, because it might have made people in the church uncomfortable—not to mention our insurance company. Pastor Abby, both since she had a reputation amongst the kids of the neighborhood for being a safe person, and because she is a woman, would check the building every night to try to introduce herself. She always knows what to do when kids are in crisis. It’s one of her spiritual gifts. She had herself slept in the church when she was a homeless kid in Iowa City.

We checked night after night, but we never found the child. Pastor Abby spread word amongst the kids of the neighborhood that if anyone needed a place to sleep, to be sure to talk to her (but, of course, they already knew that). I still think about that little person every time I go into the closet. I take a moment to look at the circuit breaker with both gratitude and a broken heart.

Here is what I’ve learned:

The kingdom of God is like a broken door latch. God breaks the latch so that all who want to enter may do so. There’s free food inside.

The kingdom of God is like a pile of clothes. It startles us.

The kingdom of God is like a bed under a circuit breaker. It’s a safe place to sleep.

The kingdom of God is like peanut butter and jelly. It’s a kid’s favorite.

Let them come to Jesus.

And may the church not fix her broken doors.