Jeremy Dys – 8 minutes
We recently secured an important win for our client, Rock Church in Castle Rock, Colorado. A federal judge granted our request for a preliminary injunction that will allow the church to continue its RV ministry that gives people temporary shelter.
You may recall that First Liberty filed a federal lawsuit because Castle Rock officials are trying to stop the church from giving the homeless a place to stay in a pinch, claiming the ministry violates zoning ordinances.
Our recent victory means the church can keep helping people in its community, at least while the case works its way through the courts. It’s a crucial first victory, but the legal battle in Castle Rock isn’t over. There’s still work ahead to fully ensure this church can fulfill its mission and care for those in need of temporary shelter.
As we celebrate this win, I want to share with you my experience visiting the church—and how their ministry and community outreach is changing lives for the better.
A while back, a reporter’s request to ask our client questions about its RV ministry came at the last minute. I was already travelling to visit another client several states away, but, after a few phone calls, we set the details and I bought a ticket.
My alarm came early the next morning. Early risers like the quiet of 4:30 a.m., but I lean more towards being a night owl. My flight left DFW on time and I had just enough time to get through the rental car snarl, make a few phone calls on the way, and meet with the client before the reporter arrived at 10:30.
I had met the pastor before and toured the church months ago. It’s a well-appointed building that looks like it was built around 2003, because it was. It sits at the end of what was probably a cul-de-sac at one point, but now the road empties into the church parking line. Across the 54-acre property, the Rockies loom in the distance. Opposite the Rockies and the vast empty space that fills the gap between mountains and the church is a small, upper-middle class neighborhood that surrounds the property in a shallow ‘U’ shape.
Inside the spacious lobby is a coffee bar. Some students are sitting near the now closed coffee bar—the Town of Castle Rock ordered it shuttered, we think, in retaliation for the church’s RV ministry—prepping materials for an ongoing summer camp at the church. My meeting starts in the administrative wing, which is buzzing with activity.
It was the first time meeting Joe Ridenour. Joe came to Castle Rock from Kansas City. He would tell you he was following a girl, but it might be more accurate to say he was trying to leave behind his decades-long meth addiction. He would also tell you that he was less in control of his sojourn to the Rockies than he thought; God was guiding his every movement. He just didn’t know it yet.
Joe frequently chokes up as he explains his story of addiction and providentially-appointed meeting with Pastor Mike Polhemus—a civil engineer-turned-pastor. He arrived at Rock Church with not much more than a desire to be free of his meth addiction. He had no job, a broken-down car, and no place to live. He was at rock bottom.
Pastor Mike introduced him to Jesus, but went further than an altar call. He knew (and loves) the commands of Matthew 25 and Joe was surely one of the “least of these.” Pastor Mike also knew he had an old, somewhat run-down, but otherwise safe and dry, RV parked out back. He offered Joe a place to shelter. Joe got a place to belong.
Rock Church afforded Joe a community, a purpose, and a future. Over the coming weeks, Pastor Mike, and the loving community of Rock Church, would be a daily feature in the life of Joe Ridenour.
Joe would receive food from a food pantry that now occupies what was once home to four Sunday School rooms. He more than once got some clothes out of the church’s blessing closet—another room repurposed by the church to care for others. A carpenter by trade, the church hired Joe to build a wall round a walk-in freezer the church purchased when a truck suddenly showed up with thousands of pounds of frozen meat to be given away to those in need. He would work security for the Winter Shelter Network hosted in the church’s gym/youth room for women and their children every Saturday throughout the frigid Colorado winter months. And, as the sole, temporary occupant of the RV parked out back, he would welcome walkers from the surrounding neighborhood on their morning walks.
He had been to rehab. He went through drug court diversion programs. Those state programs never gave him a community, never provided him with a purpose, and never treated him as a person with a soul. Rock Church did. With their help, the safety of an old RV, and the love of a community of Christians, meth no longer lays claim to Joe. He is free. More than that, he is a productive member of the community, gainfully employed and living in a place of his own.
Now almost four hours after greeting the reporters, walking them around the food pantry, telling them the miraculous story of the walk-in freezer, and interviewing Joe sitting on the steps of his former temporary shelter, it’s time for me to rush back to the airport. It will be after 9:00p.m. before I’m back home, but as I make the drive back to the airport, I can’t help but think about the importance of cases like this for people like Joe Ridenour.
The Town of Castle Rock wants the two RV’s moved off of the back parking lot of the church. They say it violates various town ordinances. We think this is a church simply doing what churches have done for centuries and recently went to federal court to assert their civil rights.
Rather than punishing this church, the Town ought to be praising them. Here is a church committed to helping one person at a time—an entire community walking with a guy like Joe every day—helping him go from a drain on taxpayer resources to a productive neighbor.
I may not be able to walk alongside people like Joe like Pastor Mike, but I can help the people who do.
Read More:
AP News: Church sues Colorado town to be able to shelter homeless in trailers, work ‘mandated by God’
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