Why don’t more churches decide to invite unhoused persons into their warm buildings on cold nights?
The Rev. Don Hanshew is grateful his congregation asked the hard questions and took the preparatory steps over the last year, so that Fountain City United Methodist Church could be ready to open its doors during an unusually cold winter.
Fountain City United Methodist Church is a part of the Holston Annual Conference.
“So many of us have people who are sleeping outside against our buildings,” said Hanshew. “None of us wants to wake up and find someone who didn’t make it through the night.”
This winter, Fountain City is one of four United Methodist churches in Knoxville working with city agencies to take in people on nights when the temperature drops below 25 degrees. The other churches are Cokesbury, Magnolia Avenue, and Vestal.
In an interview with The Call last year, Erin Read said the United Methodists stepped up when the city asked.
“I reached out to about two dozen churches, and consistently, the congregations that reached back out and felt this visceral call to help were United Methodist,” said Read, executive director of the Knoxville-Knox County Office of Housing Stability.
“We have a theology of social holiness and personal piety, so it makes sense,” said Hanshew, senior pastor of Fountain City United Methodist Church. “Our DNA makes us more suitable.”
With about 505,000 in population, Knox County has nearly 2,000 persons who were unhoused or at risk of being homeless in 2024, according to Knoxville Homeless Management Information System. In January 2025, five emergency warming centers (including United Methodist churches as well as a Salvation Army facility) are housing more than 300 people total on cold nights, according to Reed’s office.
Fountain City didn’t join the Knoxville warming center list until Dec. 15, 2024. When first approached by the city, the north Knoxville church’s council decided more time was needed to consider and prepare for the undertaking, Hanshew said.
Hanshew explained that Fountain City’s warming center shares the same space with the preschool. The space is transformed from a nighttime sleeping place back to a preschool play space before the teachers arrive.
“We have to flip that space hard,” he said, “but it is clean, clean, clean and ready to go by 8:30 a.m. on weekdays.”
From a pool of about 50 volunteers, about 11 volunteers plus one security officer are needed each night over three shifts, including five on the cleaning team alone. The pastor notes 20% of their volunteers are not church members but people from the community. For churches that might consider hosting warming centers in the future, “you’re going to be delightfully surprised that people from the community will want to step up.”
As of Jan. 20, Fountain City warming center has already been open for at least 15 nights, with more frozen predictions expected before spring.
"Our church members and friends who have served every other night -- holy smokes," said Hanshew, praising the volunteer force that’s feeding and sheltering as many as 25 people each night. “It’s more than we bargained for. They’re very tired but they’re passionate about this ministry.”
Hanshew understands that not all churches can open as warming centers. “Churches weren’t meant to be hotels. No judgement on churches that can’t host because it is tough.” But he recommends that more churches begin to plan emergency shelters of some type for the fires, floods, and other unexpected crises that could happen in their communities. “Figure it out now because when it’s needed, you need to have a plan,” he said.
In the meantime, partnering to provide shelter to unhoused neighbors on bitterly cold nights is an obvious way for churches to work together as the Body of Christ, living into Matthew 25. Cokesbury, for example, has four partner churches that help provide food and volunteers.
excerpt from a story by Annette Spence, editor of The Call, the Holston Conference source of news and stories.
This story represents how United Methodist local churches through their Annual Conferences are living as Vital Congregations. A vital congregation is the body of Christ making and engaging disciples for the transformation of the world. Vital congregations are shaped by and witnessed through four focus areas: calling and shaping principled Christian leaders; creating and sustaining new places for new people; ministries with poor people and communities; and abundant health for all.
