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by RANDALL
MURPHREE | AFA Journal News Editor
"Shelter!" the voice
answers the telephone abruptly.
"Can you tell me if
you have any beds open tonight?"
"Hold on!"
A short pause, then
a second voice comes on the line.
"Hello?"
"Can you tell me if
you have any beds open tonight?"
"If you wanted a bed,
you shoulda been here at six o’clock."
With that rejection,
Keith wanders through the Pittsburgh streets to another shelter.
Same kind of welcome, similar response. No bed for Keith.
Ironically, Keith Wasserman
is homeless by choice – on occasion. Once every year or two,
he goes to live with the homeless on the streets for a few days
– and often sleepless nights – in various cities. He practices
this discipline to prepare for ministry to the homeless through
Good Works, Inc., which he founded in 1981.
Not
orthodox, but creative
"I go to live on the streets to expand my perspective and understanding
of home-lessness and homeless people," says Keith. "I want to have
my reservoir of compassion replenished."
The Athens, Ohio, man
grew up in a Jewish home and developed a hostile attitude toward
Christ. As a teenager, he used drugs, sold drugs and accumulated
quite a juvenile crime record. But after a high school friend persistently
witnessed to him, Keith accepted Christ during his junior year in
high school.
A few years later, as
an Ohio University senior, Keith proposed an unusual internship
project to meet degree requirements. Having not grown up in the
church, he didn’t know he was thinking outside the box when
he opened up his basement to the homeless. That’s precisely
what he did as an alternative to a more traditional internship,
and university supervisors oversaw the whole project. Little did
he know what he had started.
Keith is a soft-spoken
man, but his deep passion for the needy is crystal clear. His forays
into street living reflect God’s own plan of the incarnation
of Christ as an example of one willing to "walk a mile in our shoes"
so to speak. By living for a few days with the homeless, Keith not
only gathers critical insights, but also earns credibility among
those God has called him to serve.
He gains new or deeper
wisdom each time he goes to the streets. In Lexington, Kentucky,
he says he learned about fear while bunking next to a man who brandished
a knife and threatened to stab another man. "Fear changes one’s
personality," Keith says, "Prolonged fear turns you into someone
you don’t like and don’t want to be around."
In Indianapolis, he
learned that time is the enemy of the homeless: "So much idle time
to get depressed. So little hope. When you do earn money, you become
a target for others to steal, exploit or beg."
In Akron, Ohio, he learned
about losing one’s identity: "When we lose a sense of who we
are, we lose the realization of the image of God upon us and our
purpose in this world."
Not
seminary, but effective
Good Works was a natural outgrowth of his university project, and
he is confident that God’s hand was in it all along. He began
his unique life-on-the streets episodes in the late 1980s. The unorthodox
method of preparing for ministry is not exactly seminary, but it
works.
"I have learned that
in order to understand and help people who are suffering, one must
leave the comfort of one’s own security and reach out, perhaps
incurring some personal risk and pain," he says. He discounts conventional
wisdom that most of the homeless could change their circumstances
if they really wanted to. Keith emphasizes that people become homeless
for various reasons – job loss, sickness, separation or divorce,
abandonment, loss of home to fire.
Over the 25-year history
of Good Works, Keith has seen the ministry expand to offer services
he could never have anticipated. In1992, he implemented Friday Night
Life, a community family-style supper for the homeless and others
struggling with poverty. Local churches help sponsor the supper,
plus activities for some 90 adults and Friday Night Kids Club for
about 35 children.
For Ken Weinkauf, Friday
Night Life was his bridge from Good Works resident to a position
as Good Works Webmaster. After his family disintegrated, Ken lost
his home, his car and his job. At Good Works, he found a refuge
where he could rebuild his life.
Ken remembers the welcome
he received. "They said, ‘You can stay here, we have a bed
for you, we have food on the table. Come and join us.’" He
lived at Good Works for nine months, got back on his feet and found
a job before moving to his own apartment. A few months later, he
returned as a volunteer cooking Friday dinner.
"I made spaghetti every
Friday night for two years, right alongside Keith Wasserman," he
says. "And he saw in me the potential that I didn’t see in
me. He believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, and
that is a great gift." Keith helped Ken catch that kind of vision
for others, too, and by the mid 1990s, he was on the full-time staff.
Good Gifts is another
component of Good Works. The Good Gifts store offers items imported
by Ten Thousand Villages, a Mennonite ministry dedicated to helping
people who struggle with poverty all over the world.
"We challenge people
in this area to buy from us because, by doing so, they’re helping
the poor all over the world," says Keith. The gift shop also provides
another practical avenue for job training for residents.
"The thing I’m
most excited about today is something that I would never have dreamed
we could do," Keith says. It’s the dovetailing of two elements
that began as separate arms of Good Works. Samaritan Projects was
founded in 1999 to connect volunteers with widows and the disabled.
Volunteers work on summer or weekend work teams for larger projects
or one-on-one assistance for simpler needs.
In 2004, Transformation
Station was begun. Keith explains: "That’s a project where
people who need a washing machine or a refrigerator or an automobile
call us. Then they have to work. For example, the washer may cost
them ten hours. Or an automobile may cost them 50 hours or a hundred
hours, depending on book value." Such clients are often assigned
to perform services for those on the Samaritan Projects list.
Presently, one man is
working for a car. He’s already been to two homes on Samaritan
projects, thus serving two senior citizens fixing things at their
homes in exchange for the car he’ll receive.
Not
numbers, but impact
Keith seems happily unaware of the remarkable and unique ministry
he oversees. However, others in southeastern Ohio are very much
aware. Keith was the first recipient of the Jenco Foundation Award
when the foundation was created in 2001. Its purpose is to recognize
and honor those who work to better the lives of others in a 29-county
area of Ohio Appalachia.
The foundation was initiated
and is directed by Athens businessman Terry Anderson, former Associated
Press reporter who was a hostage of Shiite Muslim radicals in Beirut,
Lebanon, from 1985 to 1991. It is named in memory of Fr. Lawrence
Jenco, a Catholic priest and fellow hostage with Anderson.
Ask Keith how many people
Good Works serves in a year, and he responds humbly, "I have no
idea. I couldn’t even guess. It’s not something I think
much about." If pressed, however, he digs out some 2004 figures
– 216 residents at the shelter, 35 widows and disabled in Samaritan
projects and 17,000 Friday night meals.
But numbers aren’t
the point. Changed lives are the point. By both measures, Good Works
is clearly having an impact for Christ.
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