“Haywood St began with a simple charge: include the most excluded. Loitering and listening on the Downtown corner, I scribbled down notes about the heartbreak of being denied shelter because of a prior conviction, the embarrassment of scavenging through someone else’s trash for dinner, the trauma of negotiating poverty without a psych script, the indignity of holding a sign pleading for help, the rejection of being turned away at the door for not wearing a pressed shirt. Informed by the lived experience of siblings on the street, we set out to do the opposite in Jesus’s name. To be a church that finds every holy excuse– feeding, clothing, healing, gardening, painting, worshiping– to practice the family of faith, to interrupt the isolation of estrangement through relationship.” – Rev. Brian Combs

Haywood Street Congregation | Downtown Welcome Table | Community Development