Show me your friends, and I'll show you your future
What is the ACN?
What do we do?
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.
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.
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
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.