The Advocates for Community Network (ACN) is a diverse network of leaders co-creating a movement to befriend and live in community with our homeless neighbors.

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Without a hand up into new community after rehab, our homeless friends return to toxic relationships on the streets. We are the answer. The ACN facilitates resources, counsel, and a network of connections to reintegrate the homeless into healthy community and walk them from homelessness and isolation into homes and community.

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Change the trajectory of lives by changing the cycle of relationships keeping them in substance use and homelessness. Offer friendship and help to transition homeless neighbors from:

 

1 - homeless camps to

2 - drug rehabilitation centers

3 - transitional housing programs

4 - permanent homes in the context of committed communities through local churches and home groups

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1. Fill out the form below. We will contact you to listen your interests and discuss areas of connection.

2. Get a feel for what we do by shadowing an advocate, visiting homeless friends wherever you feel comfortable. For example, you may feel more comfortable meeting them in a Rehab facility than in a homeless encampment.

3. Participate in a training facilitated by your local church in partnership with the ACN.

4. Make a friend. This can be done by a referral from an advocate , at one of the several rehab facilities such as Visions of the Cross or No Boundaries, a Promise Home, or in a homeless camp or on the streets. It takes time to determine the right relationship and to for relational trust to lead to hope, a vision for rehab, and desire to move to the next step.

a. Get you friend into Rehab! If your homeless friend is not yet in a rehab program, prayerfully lead him or her to rehab! Without a promise of support during rehab and a place to live afterwards, our words are empty. We hope to provide at least 2-3 advocates to support each friend during rehab, sober living, and into their new church community.

​This step often involves managing a tension of showing compassion without enablement. It's difficult to express friendship for them without enabling their homeless life in the encampments! This accentuates our need to stay in a network - in community with others, leaning on each other's wisdom and perspective.

b. ​Get your friend into community - through new friends and future home.  Many of our homeless friends have lived life from a negative image or identity of themselves. The healthy community they crave will call them up to the unique identity they were created for in the image of their invisible maker – Jesus Christ.  We can offer Jesus' style discipleship, relearning life with a renewed mind.  They may need to belong before they believe, as Jesus' disciples did.