STATEMENT BY CHRISTIAN LEADERS AFFIRMING 2016 NATIONAL HUNGER AND HOMELESSNESS AWARENESS WEEK
(November 12-22, 2016)
Each year, “National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week” is held the week before our nation’s Thanksgiving holiday. It serves as an important reminder that many children, youth, families, seniors, veterans and others in our state lack a safe, stable place to call home and don’t have enough food to eat, preventing them from reaching their full potential. As faith leaders, we see the magnitude of this social problem as we minister to those in need and worship with people in our congregations who are experiencing hunger and homelessness.
The Gospel consistently points us to the importance of loving our neighbor, inviting us to marshal our resources so that persistent problems such as homelessness and hunger might be ended in our community. We are emphatically called to feed the hungry and shelter the stranger (Matthew 25: 34).
The 2016 National Hunger and Homelessness Week focuses on specific steps that Coloradans–as individuals, groups or organizations–can take. We recognize that if we work together, hunger and homelessness are solvable problems.
We are blessed to be working on these challenges with a broad coalition of people in the faith, nonprofit, private and public sectors. We are committed to building well-being in our community by: connecting Coloradans to available services; implementing public policy initiatives to address the root causes of these problems, and encouraging all to speak up and lend a hand so that Colorado can be a state where everyone has a safe place to call home and enough food to eat.
Rev. Sue Artt
Conference Minister
Rocky Mountain Conference
United Church of Christ
Rev. Hollis Booker
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
Bishop Jim Gonia
Rocky Mountain Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Father Michael Nicosia
Vicar to the Rocky Mountain Region
Ecumenical Catholic Communion
The Right Reverend Robert O’Neill
Bishop
The Episcopal Church in Colorado
Bishop Karen Oliveto
Mountain Sky Area
United Methodist Church
Rev. Dean Phelps
Interim Executive Regional Minister
Central Rocky Mountain Region
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Rev. Jonathan Rhone
Presiding Elder
Rocky Mountain District
African Methodist Episcopal Church
Rev. Thomas Sheffield
Presbytery Pastor
The Presbytery of Denver
Rev. Steven Van Ostran
Executive Minister
American Baptist Churches of the Rocky Mountains
