Article Published in Journal of Reflective Practice, Vol. 20, 2020 | Rekindling Hope in Dark Times: San Francisco Night Ministry By Trent J. Thornley, Executive Director & CPE Director
Rekindling Hope in Dark Times: San Francisco Night Ministry
By Trent J. Thornley
Executive Director & CPE Director
Published in Journal of Reflective Practice, Vol. 20, 2020
Spiritual care is a human right.
This assertion has been a hidden premise upon which the San Francisco Night Ministry has operated for 56 years. Since the first late-night walk on November 1, 1964, the Night Ministry has made spiritual care accessible to people when access is otherwise foreclosed. Every night, during the very late-night hours, night ministers stroll the streets, SROs, transit stations, coffee shops, and bars, offering nonjudgmental, non-proselytizing care to anyone open to receiving it.
From the outset, Night Ministry was a progressive force, extending a loving hand to sex workers, runaway youth, people living with mental illness or substance use disorder, veterans, formerly incarcerated folks, LGBTQA+ people, and other people inhabiting the margins of society. The Night Ministry has heeded a particular call to care for people living on the streets. Founded by a council of local churches, Night Ministry thus became known as “the Church’s night shift.”
Night Ministry is at a crossroads. Its traditional ministry partners – mostly mainline Protestant congregations – are struggling to maintain themselves. These churches no longer have the same level of resources in terms of volunteers and finances to support Night Ministry as they have done historically. The Night Ministry faces the prospect of contracting its ministry or finding new avenues of engagement and support.
Universal Human Right to Spiritual Care
The hidden premise of Night Ministry is evolving into an explicit mission: To increase access to the human right of spiritual care and community. Articulating and realizing this mission is refreshing Night Ministry’s work as a social-spiritual engagement that includes, yet reaches beyond, its exclusively Christian form. It occupies a newly forged space at the intersection of sectarian religious ministry and secular social services.
Drawing on the language and values of pluralistic society, Night Ministry is re-envisioning its ministry as a social justice action that is more legible, and hopefully more inviting, to a broader array of people and partner organizations. Though still inchoate, we might call it “the social services of multifaith spiritual care.”
To elaborate, I first take as axiomatic that tending to matters of existential concern – tending to the “spirit” – is an essential dimension of holistic human flourishing. Generally speaking, spiritual care involves offering loving presence, wholesome relationality, and wise seeing as means for accompanying and helping others grapple with the suffering inherent in mortality. Spiritual care professionals, board certified by organizations like the Association of Professional Chaplains, are trained to remain grounded in their own traditions while facilitating “sacred” connections for people in their care – connections to the self, to others, and to the Ultimate, however the cared-for person understands it. Spiritual care thus honors the meaning-making of others. Spiritual care also invites them into community.
While overlapping with the work of therapists and social workers, spiritual care providers utilize a specialized skill set to address a distinct set of needs. And, for many people, traditional religious expressions, such as prayer or meditation, also support mental health and wellbeing. When hopelessness, meaninglessness, existential terror, or other spiritual concerns mercilessly unravel a coherent life, tending to matters of the spirit are paramount. In some desperate moments, spiritual issues rapidly become the issues that most need addressing. Good spiritual care rekindles hope – in the very moment it is offered – that life can be meaningful, that each person is intrinsically valuable, that people can care for one another, that peace is possible, and that an ineffable truth can be realized, even if never grasped.
Access to spiritual care services, therefore, is just as critical as access to health care, mental health, and social work services. And providing everyone with access to spiritual care is a common good. Most people are fortunate enough to access spiritual care by walking into just about any church, temple, meditation center, yoga studio, or the like. Most hospitals and prisons offer chaplaincy. And most agnostics or atheists can connect with the arts or other humanist means for tending to the “spirit.” Yet, what about folks who are forlorn in the late-night hours, when religious communities are closed? Or people living on the streets who feel uncomfortable – or even unwelcome – walking into walled communities, let alone worshipping there?
How Night Ministry Works
Night Ministry recruits spiritual leaders and volunteers of all faiths and spiritual traditions to care for people on the streets or on the phones in the late-night hours. Night ministers walk from 10 PM to 4 AM, while trained volunteers counsel people on the telephone Care Line from 8 PM to 4 AM. In crisis situations, phone counselors can dispatch the on-duty night minister to a caller’s location in the city.
Over the last decade, Night Ministry has expanded into offering street-level spiritual community programs. Night Ministry’s Open Cathedrals are two weekly outdoor Christian worship services. One is a Spanish-English bilingual service on Thursday evenings at a major transit hub, and another happens on Sunday afternoons in the civic center plaza. Everyone is welcome at the Open Cathedrals, in whatever state of sobriety or shower, centeredness or vulnerability. Each Open Cathedral has its own committed congregation, some of whom serve as ushers, servers, and singers. Local congregations and community groups sign-up to donate a meal for after-service fellowship, and ministry staff is available for one-on-one care.
Building on the success of Open Cathedrals, Night Ministry last year began offering a weekly Buddhist Meditation Group on Monday evening. Emerging programs include a weekly outdoor Yogic “Movements” course, based on Tai Chi breathing-movement practices, and an outdoor Open Shabbat.
By offering a growing diversity of community programs, Night Ministry is both multifaith and interfaith. “Multifaith” here refers to how each program unapologetically expresses the prominent tenets and practices of its own religious tradition. “Interfaith” here refers to how denominational differences within each tradition are included ecumenically. For example, every Open Cathedral offers the Eucharist, though rotating ministers use differing words of institution based on their various ordinations; every Meditation Group offers a Dharma talk, though rotating facilitators use diverse skillful means appropriate to their lineages, like a Zen story or a Theravada metta chant. In another kind of interfaith expression, Night Ministry joins its partner organizations in leading an annual interfaith vigil on the winter’s solstice, which incorporates many traditions, for people who died on the streets in that year.
Night Ministry’s New Vision In Practice
Furthering its new vision of providing “the social services of multifaith spiritual care,” Night Ministry has been taking steps to transform itself from an extension of Christian ministry into a nonsectarian religious nonprofit that is structured and governed according to widely accepted standards. This new direction is not about divorcing SFNM from its Christian roots. To the contrary, Night Ministry gambles that it is through its new multifaith form that its Christian ministry will survive and thrive.
Night Ministry is also evolving out of what in nonprofits studies is known as its “founder stage,” in which a charismatic leader both provides the bulk of direct services and also runs the organization. Each successive Night Minster effectively has been a new “founder.” The Night Ministry’s hiring of an executive director was a significant step in a new direction, allowing the Night Minister to focus more energy on direct spiritual care services. Night Ministry is working to retain its charm and eccentricity while decentralizing its services and professionalizing its systems.
Night Ministry hopes to attract a broader base of financial and volunteer support by becoming a more recognizable inhabitant of the city’s nonprofit ecosystem. One approach is to raise both consciousness and funding by connecting privileged and marginalized residents of San Francisco in a “ministry of awareness.” Night Ministry offers technology companies an opportunity to sponsor group night walks of their employees with the Night Minister. We remain vigilant that such walks do not devolve into a kind of safari, instead emphasizing a “street retreat” approach, in which participants are challenged to work with what arises in themselves and in relationship. Included in the walks are heart-centered debriefing sessions. Our ministry of awareness not only bridges communities – and strengthens interconnectedness – it leans into an innovative, even entrepreneurial, spirit around generating resources.
In other avenues, secular grant-making foundations who historically have passed over Night Ministry are responding favorably to its new vision. Night Ministry has never sought nor received public funding; however, our provision of non-proselytizing, non-sectarian spiritual care services might qualify.
Finally, the Night Ministry has trained a religious diversity of new spiritual care leaders in its multifaith CPE programs, accredited by the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education. In Spring 2020, Night Ministry experimented with a Buddhist-centered program. Night Ministry is the rare CPE center that offers a community-based program from its own nonprofit clinical placement site. CPE students are required to launch a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign for Night Ministry, with the goal of engaging new support from at least ten distinct donors. The project provides an opportunity for students to learn the art of funding ministry in the digital age. Importantly, every student participates in CPE regardless of whatever funds they raise. Students are also invited into intra-team meetings – in which Night Ministry staff plans and promotes new programs – and inter-team meetings (akin to interdisciplinary teams in health care), in which students interact on behalf of Night Ministry in community coalition meetings.
Night Ministry’s motto is “rekindling hope in dark times.” My hope is that a spirit of wisdom will lead all of us who love the San Francisco Night Ministry as we navigate through its dark night – its dark womb of transformation – and into a new life of compassionate service under the morning stars . . . for another 50 years to come.