Homeless families have a new church they can turn to for help in Salt Lake County. Leaders at Trinity Methodist in Kearns have decided to become a host church for the Family Promise Interfaith Network.
As a host church, Trinity Methodist will shelter families for a week at a time. Senior pastor Reverend Rob Bruendl says they are expecting their first homeless family on Sunday.
“The families stay overnight here for each night for a week,” Bruendl says. “During the day they are out either looking for jobs or getting training, children are in school. We welcome them back in the evening, we feed them dinner and then they stay the night.”
The Family Promise Interfaith Network itself has been operating in Utah almost twenty years. Its network of churches includes Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopalian, Catholic, LDS, and Jewish. Tom Milner is the Networks Executive Director. He says that in addition to providing help to the homeless, Family Promise also acts as an organizing tool for Utah’s religions seeking to serve the poor.
“One of our sub-missions with family promise is that we like to be bridge for the interfaith community in Salt Lake,” Milner says. “Our collective tenants basically tell us that one thing we all have in common is giving service to the poor, and so we like to uphold that. We’re a conduit for these churches to give direct service.”
After a family completes a week’s stay, they can move to another church in the network until they are able to support themselves.
