OURTESY OF COMPASS HOUSING ALLIANCE
A Compass Housing Alliance staff member dries and folds laun- dry for a homeless person.
COURTESY OF COMPASS HOUSING ALLIANCE
Square, one of Seat- tle’s oldest neighbor- hoods. The mission served men coming off the boats in the nearby port. Today, Compass Housing remains a well-respected outreach in Seattle.
Word on the street is that this is a place where one finds compassion. Folks show up at Compass every day seek- ing the gospel in tangible forms—letters, a shower, clean laundry, socks, meals and Bible study. Having a street address is a huge advantage for Com-
pass clients: 77 S. Washington St. enables women and men to receive essential mail and write an address on job applications. People arrive at the windows of the Client Services Office every day to collect everything from Christmas cards to business mail, including doctor bills and Social Security checks. Having an address also means people can register to vote and receive a ballot. Downstairs from Client Services, the alliance runs a hygiene center with showers and laundry facilities. Cli- ents can have 15 pounds of laundry washed and folded
Kristy J. Daniels, pastor, stands with members of the Church of Steadfast Love, an ELCA congregation in Seattle made up of people facing homelessness.
for free once a week. Across the hall from Client Services, people find a
spiritual home at Church of Steadfast Love, an ELCA congregation. There the pastor, Kristy J. Daniels, offers bilingual worship, Bible study and, most importantly, opportunities for this congregation of individuals with- out homes to satisfy their hunger for purpose. She takes parishioners on service projects at area churches. The folks of Steadfast Love know that keeping Jesus safe does not equal keeping him sequestered in a build- ing. During the past century dozens of Seattle-area Lutheran congregations have followed Jesus’ call to ven- ture beyond familiar spaces and worship in God’s star-lit sanctuary. Compass Housing Alliance has expanded well beyond the initial mission in Pioneer Square. Today it serves women and men, veterans and families in more than 25 sites in the Puget Sound area. For decades congregations have responded to the needs of Compass clients—via stacks of towels and quilts, tureens of soup, bushels of socks, volumes of volunteers and pallets of prayers. They learned this les- son from people on the streets: We don’t keep Jesus safe from the big world; Jesus keeps us safe from being trapped in our little worlds. Zephaniah didn’t care about keeping our little worlds safe either. While he boldly wrote of destruction, he
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