Wright-Riggins’ message celebrates two decades of Norristown Ministries’ service to poor

Vince Robey thanked Norristown Ministries for the “hand up.”

As the featured preacher, Dr. Aidsand F. Wright-Riggins III, executive director, American Baptist Home Mission Societies, celebrated with Norristown Ministries Inc. Hospitality Center (NMI) its 20th anniversary of serving the poor and homeless just outside Philadelphia, Pa., on Sunday.

Wright-Riggins confessed that he had an “attitude” for a while about Jesus’ Matthew 26:11 statement that the poor will always be with you. Using Matthew 25:40 to illuminate the Matthew 26 verse, Wright-Riggins grew to understand, he said, that Jesus’ message was not a prediction that there will always be people living on the streets.

Instead, the Matthew 25 message—“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me”—clearly instructs Jesus’ followers to care for those less fortunate. That charge means followers of Jesus will be “constant companions” of the poor, said Wright-Riggins;
“those who are with God will find [themselves] always with
the homeless.”

Francis O’Donnell found a haven in Norristown Ministries.

“It is in the faces of the broken and the bruised that we see Christ,” Wright-Riggins said, calling NMI’s “radical hospitality” a “wonderful and powerful” ministry.

At the celebration, observed during an afternoon worship service at First Baptist Church, Norristown, the Rev. Kim Egolf-Fox, Norristown Ministries’ executive director and an American Baptist pastor, thanked and recognized the 24 Catholic, Protestant and Jewish congregations along with 14 community organizations that collaborated two decades ago to establish the ministry that serves Norristown's poor and homeless. The founding organizations included three local American Baptist congregations: Upper Merion Baptist, Calvary Baptist and First Baptist.

Egolf-Fox said 20 years ago Norristown churches found individuals with complicated issues knocking on their doors for assistance and direction, because resources to help them were limited or nonexistent. The founding organizations came together with the charge: “We have to do better.”

The Rev. Kim Egolf-Fox, American Baptist pastor and Norristown Ministries’ executive director, told those gathered that the numbers of poor have increased in the last 20 years.

Citing an Associated Press story late last year, Egolf-Fox pointed out that the numbers of poor and homeless have increased in the last 20 years. Today, nearly one in two Americans lives in poverty or scrapes by at the low-income level, according to the 2010 Census.

NMI provides morning meals, emergency food, showers, lockers, phones and the services of a case manager and mentor/life coach.

At the celebration service, Francis O’Donnell, a recovering alcoholic, said he was introduced to NMI by a fellow homeless person. The center, where people never “looked down on him” and there was always “a hand open,” became a haven to him.

Former client Vince Robey expressed his gratitude to the churches and volunteers who have invested money and time into such a “great, God-worthy cause.” “Thank you for the hand up,” he said," “may the love and compassion given to me always be with you.”

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