Polar Vortex 2019: Four Christian ministries caring for 'the least of these'

By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Assistant Editor Friday, February 01, 2019

Room in the Inn

Room in the Inn, located in Marshall Country, Alabama, organizes a cooperative of churches to provide emergency temporary shelter for people without homes. Through November–March, the organization runs a cold-weather shelter, housing people on a rotating basis at local churches.

Shirley Chupp, executive director for Marshall County Homeless Ministries, told The Christian Post that amid the current cold front, 18 individuals are staying at the nonprofit’s emergency shelter program. Guests are picked up at a designated site and transported to a host church where they are greeted by a hospitality team providing a hot meal, fellowship, and a place to sleep.

Through the act of reaching out, the nonprofit seeks to provide a safe place for the kind of fellowship that can result in empowerment and change.

She explained that the organization doesn’t just assist those who are homeless, but those who live in sub-standard housing, as well.

“If they can’t keep their home warm, they come to us in this extreme cold until they can return to their houses,” she said.

But the cold weather doesn’t change the group’s overall mission, Chupp said.

“We work year-round to mobilize the local church community to respond to needs of those underprivileged,” she said. “As a faith-based organization, part of our role is education as well as giving churches some ways to express hands-on ministry to our neighbors without homes.”