‘Church Connections’ aids San Antonio congregations

By Claudia M. Williams
Staff Writer
Wielding a crowbar, Luis Galvan looked at the activity around him and said, “These people are straight up with me. That’s why I’m here.”
Then he went back to prying studs from the floor of the bathroom he was helping to demolish.
For Galvan, working in the fellowship building of Bethany UMC, San Antonio, wasn’t just a labor of love. Like others who live on the streets, Galvan will benefit from the finished project: a bathroom with a shower available to the homeless of San Antonio.
“This is a good place,” he said as he worked. “On the street, everybody is trying to burn everybody else, trying to get over everybody else, trying to hurt each other.
“God gives me strength to get up in the morning, God keeps me safe at night. So I come here to work for him.”
Over the summer, members of Bethany and other San Antonio United Methodist congregations have been spending Saturdays renovating and remodeling the Bethany building so that it can serve two important groups: the homeless and the elderly.
The Bethany renovation is a project of Church Connections, a volunteer-driven ministry devoted to mobilizing congregations to work together to repair, upgrade and renovate their properties.
“This is United Methodist churches helping United Methodist churches,” said Kathy Hess, coordinator. The ministry began in 2004 when Hess and her husband, Bob, approached San Antonio District Superintendent Virgilio Vazquez-Garza about doing something for churches that had fallen into disrepair.
Vazquez-Garza identified a number of churches needing help. Those congregations have potential to thrive, Hess said, but they have little money for maintenance, and church members are older and unable to do the work themselves.
“We’re opening up a small bathroom built in the 1940s,” said Keith Sargent, chair of the Bethany church council and an associate district lay leader. “We’re making it ADA-compliant. The shower we’re putting in there is going to be for the homeless, primarily.”
ADA refers to the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“We have a cold-weather ministry,” Sargent said. “When the temperature gets below 32, we open the fellowship hall and put out the word. We put up signs and flags up and down Austin Highway, about a mile from here, where there are many homeless people, inviting them to come here for the night.
“We usually have 15, on average, out of the cold, sleeping safely inside instead of outside in boxes.”
Sargent said the Bethany renovation includes putting in two showers.
“Literally,” he said, “we had a man last year who bathed in our mop sink, and it just broke our hearts. We had to get something going where people have the dignity of being able to bathe.”
Whitey Whitehurst, husband of Bethany’s pastor, the Rev. Jeannie Whitehurst, said that in addition to showers, the renovation is creating a place for a clothes washer and dryer.
“It was a necessity,” Whitehurst said. “Often we would take people’s clothes to our house, wash them and dry them. But we wanted to have that available here.”
The cold-weather ministry touches a lot of people in the church, White-hurst said. Members of the church are “up with them (homeless visitors) all night long, making sure they’re OK.”
Bethany members feed visitors dinner, provide them with mats to sleep on, feed them breakfast, and then make them a lunch to go, he said.
Sargent said, “God is the reason we’re motivated, and why Luis (Galvan) is motivated. We have 18 to 20 people in this church head over heels involved in the homeless ministry.”
Whitehurst added, “Luis has been here often. When we renovated the fellowship hall, he and his friends would come during the day and help us work on that.”
A second reason for the Bethany renovation is an active ministry with seniors, Whitehurst said.
Bethany provides a daily lunch program for seniors, Gigi Post said. She describes herself as having a passion for the elderly.
“This is where my heart is,” she said.
In addition to lunches, Post said, each Thursday many people come to the fellowship hall for “caregivers’ day out”—a time when church members give caregivers a respite from their daily responsibilities.
“One of our members just came forward and volunteered to come in on caregivers’ day out to give haircuts and manicures,” Post said.
Sargent said that over the years Bethany has been transformed.
“We had been a maintenance church rather than a mission church,” he said. “By the grace of God, we’ve been successful in our ministries.”
Whitehurst said, “Although it is very small, this church is very vivacious in this community, inviting people to come in and be a part of it.”
Church Connections is currently limited to San Antonio, Hess said. It is an ideal mission for anyone who wants to be involved in a mission project but doesn’t have the time or resources to go to such places as Guatemala or Russia.
Churches that would like help from the group—and volunteers who want to help—can contact her at (210) 408-1830 or rhess@satx.rr.com.
Anyone who would like to donate cash to the cause, Hess said, can send checks to Cross Connections, Metro Mission Board, 16400 Huebner Road, San Antonio 78248, Advance Special 1618.
The first project of Church Connections was to refurbish empty space in Jefferson UMC, San Antonio, to be used as a thrift shop. Bob Hess said that sometimes facilities are the basis for reaching out into the community.
“You get people on the campus, into the thrift shop,” he said, “whether they are members of a church or not. Before long they’re involved in Bible study and other activities at the church.”
Sargent said, “We know Christ is already here. We need to bring people to Christ, and we need a place to do it.”