I regularly read articles from the Discovery Institute’s Fix Homelessness Initiative [1], and I am grateful for their work. Its writers have challenged the assumption that Housing First is the only compassionate response to homelessness. They understand that giving someone a key is not the same as seeing a life restored. They also recognize that government cannot manufacture hope, belonging, accountability, or purpose.
In the recent article Reintegrating Faith Into the Nation’s Approach to Homelessness [2], Michele Steeb argues that faith-based organizations should once again have a leading role in our nation’s response to homelessness. I agree that Christian ministries have an essential role. But her proposal raises a more foundational question:
Should the government fund Christian ministries?
Before deciding whether government should fund Christian ministries, we should ask why Christian ministry exists at all.
Why Christian Ministry Exists
When Jesus was asked which commandment was greatest, He gave two: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37–40). Christian ministry grows out of these two great imperatives.
We serve because God first loved us (1 John 4:19), because every person bears His image (Genesis 1:26–27), and because Christ has commanded us to love our neighbor. Christian ministry therefore begins not with a social problem to be solved, but with obedience to God.
This distinguishes Christian ministry from a social-service agency. Christian ministry cannot be fully described by the number of meals served, people employed, addictions overcome, people moved off the streets, after-school programs attended, or food boxes distributed. Those outcomes matter, but they do not fully explain why the ministry exists.
Christian ministry exists to bear faithful witness to the love of God by loving the people He places before us.
One Obedience and One Whole Person
Because Christian ministry begins with obedience to God, love of God and love of neighbor cannot be divided into separate missions.
We can distinguish among different activities within a ministry. Serving a meal is not the same activity as teaching the Bible. Giving away clothing is not the same activity as providing biblical counsel. But distinguishing among activities is not the same as separating Christian faith from Christian service.
Each night at the Medford Gospel Mission, a local church joins our staff and program participants for Community Connect. It resembles a church potluck: we share food, build relationships, and enjoy Christian fellowship. Is that a Christian activity? Clearly it is.
Afterward, we open our free restaurant to the general public. Program participants, church members, and Mission staff work side by side, serving dinner to people experiencing poverty. Has the Christian activity now ended and a secular social service begun? Do the people waiting tables cease to be Christians when the doors open to the public? Do they somehow set aside their Christianity while carrying plates, pouring coffee, and talking with our guests?
Of course not. They are Christians serving their neighbors as Christians. Most of our dinner guests understand that. Some ask questions about the Mission, faith, or the changes they see in our program participants. Some even ask for prayer. These encounters often create natural opportunities to talk about Christ.
Christians do not cease to be Christians when working in a secular vocation, although a secular workplace may limit how explicitly they express their faith while carrying out their professional responsibilities. But a Christian ministry cannot separate its practical service from its Christian identity and purpose. Faith is not an addition to the work; it is the reason for the work and shapes how the work is done.
Scripture does not permit us to separate Christian love from practical care. We are called to love “not in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18).
Christian fellowship and serving a public meal are distinguishable activities, but they are not divided into Christian ministry and non-Christian service. Both flow from the same identity and the same obedience to God. The activity changes, and the people being served change, but the Christian character of the service does not disappear. Paul’s instruction is comprehensive: “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17).
When Christians feed someone who is hungry, welcome someone who has been rejected, or walk patiently with someone through failure, we are not taking a break from our religious mission to perform a social service. We are living out that mission. Our love for our neighbor flows from our love for God and from what we believe about the person before us: that every human being bears God’s image and is worthy of truth, dignity, mercy, and love. At the Medford Gospel Mission, that love finds practical expression through an excellent meal prepared and served in the Main Ingredient Restaurant by a local church working alongside our program participants.
This integrated obedience also leads us to care for the whole person. People cannot be neatly divided into material, relational, and spiritual parts to be addressed by unrelated programs. The person who needs a meal also needs dignity, community, truth, and relational restoration. In fact, we all do.
This is why the common division between “religious activity” and “social service” is inadequate for understanding Christian ministry. It suggests that prayer, biblical training, worship, and church activities belong to the religious part of an organization, while food, shelter, and job-skills training belong to its secular work.
A meal does not cease to be Christian ministry because no sermon accompanies it. At the same time, the ministry must not be required to pretend that the meal has nothing to do with Christ. Faith is not an optional program added to the practical work. It is the source, meaning, and governing purpose of the whole ministry.
Government Money Comes With Government Definitions
Government funding is never simply money. Whether it comes through a grant, cooperative agreement, or service contract, it is provided for a defined public purpose and carries definitions, expectations, measurements, and accountability.
This is not necessarily evidence of hostility toward Christianity. Government has a legitimate responsibility to determine how public money is used. If it funds a meal service, it must establish the purpose of the funding, determine which expenses are allowable, set standards for how the service will be delivered, and specify what must be reported. Government therefore has legitimate authority to establish the terms governing the work it funds.
Suppose the Mission accepted direct government funding to operate the Main Ingredient Restaurant.
Our residential program is expressly Christian, and part of our staff’s responsibility is to talk with dinner guests about it. Our program participants also regularly share their experiences with guests and explain how God is working in their lives. At times, both staff and participants share the gospel. When appropriate, Christians from local churches serving alongside us do the same.
These conversations are not incidental additions to the evening. They grow naturally out of the relationships formed as Christians serve meals, sit with guests, listen to their stories, and care for them. No one is required to participate in a religious activity, listen to a gospel presentation, or express interest in our residential program in order to receive a meal. Nevertheless, Christian witness remains an integral part of the evening.
If the meal service were directly government-funded, public funds could not be used to support this explicitly religious outreach. We would have to determine where the government-funded service ended and the privately supported Christian ministry began. We might also have to distinguish among the roles of staff, program participants, and church volunteers during an evening that we understand as one integrated expression of Christian ministry.
That is the difficulty for us. Christian service and Christian witness are not two unrelated activities that happen to occur in the same room. Both flow from our love for God and our love for our neighbors. Separating them to satisfy the requirements of government funding would require us to divide something that lies at the heart of how our ministry actually works.
At the Medford Gospel Mission, we do not accept government funding. We therefore remain free to carry out the entire evening as one integrated expression of Christian ministry, without having to determine where a publicly funded service ends and our Christian ministry begins.
Government can define the work it funds, but it cannot define Christian ministry in its fullness. It does not possess the theological vocabulary, spiritual authority, or understanding necessary to define obedience to God, Christian fellowship, faithfulness, reconciliation, or Christian love. The danger is not that government can truly define Christian ministry. The danger is that its necessarily limited definitions acquire practical authority over an organization that accepts its money.
When a Christian organization accepts government funding, it becomes accountable not only to its Christian convictions, supporting churches, and donors, but also to the agency administering the funds. Government is no longer merely protecting the organization’s freedom to serve its neighbors. It has legitimate authority to establish the purposes, conditions, and accountability requirements governing the publicly funded work.
Those terms create real obligations. As financial dependence grows, those obligations can become increasingly difficult to refuse—especially during times of financial strain.
The requirements may initially appear compatible with the ministry’s work. But policies change, administrations change, and public priorities change. A ministry that builds its staffing, facilities, and programs around government revenue may eventually discover that it cannot refuse new requirements without placing the organization itself at risk. The danger is not limited to an openly objectionable rule. A more gradual danger is mission drift.
Government funding can gradually teach a ministry to understand its work in government terms. Success becomes defined by what the funding agreement measures. Activities eligible for reimbursement expand, while aspects of the ministry that cannot be publicly funded may receive less attention. Staff members devote increasing amounts of time to documentation, compliance, and publicly defined outcomes. Over time, what began as an integrated act of Christian obedience can be reorganized around the delivery of government-approved services.
The Medford Gospel Mission illustrates the choice involved. We have never accepted government funding. Had we done so, we might have a much larger budget and operate more programs than we do today. We might still operate a twenty-four-hour emergency shelter, but the terms of available public funding would not have allowed us to maintain the admission standards we believed necessary to provide a safe and restorative environment, particularly regarding active drug use.
We might also have been selected to operate the navigation center or urban campground and received substantial public funding for doing so. In fact, we were invited to apply, but we chose not to. We understood that accepting the money would also mean accepting government authority to define the funded work—and we believed the resulting compromise would be too great.
We might be larger today, but being larger is not the same as being more faithful. Scripture’s fundamental measure of stewardship is faithfulness: “It is required of stewards that they be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2).
Government money does not automatically corrupt a Christian ministry, but it does make faithfulness more complicated. It introduces another authority—one with the legitimate power to define, regulate, and measure the publicly funded activity. As a ministry becomes dependent upon that funding, those limited definitions can begin to govern its decisions and reshape the ministry itself.
A ministry must therefore ask more than whether public money would enable it to serve more people. It must also ask whether accepting that money could eventually reshape its understanding of what faithful service requires.
Protection Rather Than Patronage
If government should not define Christian ministry, what role should it have?
Government should protect the freedom of Christian ministries rather than become their patron.
This is where I agree with Michele Steeb’s concern that faith-based organizations have been pushed to the margins. Christian ministries should not be excluded from public conversations because they understand homelessness differently from government agencies. They should not be pressured to abandon their convictions, disguise their identity, or adopt Housing First—or any other government-preferred approach—as the price of being allowed to serve.
But ending that marginalization does not require government to finance Christian ministry. Making government its patron may reproduce the very problem we are trying to correct.
A patron does more than provide money. A patron gains influence over the work being supported. Government must determine which organizations qualify, which activities may be funded, which standards apply, and which outcomes justify continued support. Even if those definitions favor Christian organizations today, another administration may revise them tomorrow.
Political favor is not the same as religious freedom.
A government that funds Christian organizations because it approves of their methods today may defund or regulate them when its priorities change. Religious freedom is more durable because it does not depend upon government approving, financing, or adopting a ministry’s beliefs.
Government should protect religious liberty, apply laws fairly, remove unnecessary obstacles, and allow Christian organizations to participate openly in community life without surrendering their identity. It should recognize that local churches, gospel missions, and other ministries possess relationships, knowledge, and forms of accountability that government cannot manufacture. It should leave room for these organizations to pursue approaches that differ from prevailing public policy.
Government should also recognize the limits of its own role. Government employees and secular organizations can act with genuine compassion and provide valuable assistance. But government cannot, as government, love our neighbors out of obedience to Christ. It cannot proclaim the gospel, provide biblical counsel, invite people into Christian fellowship, or minister to their spiritual needs as Christian ministry does.
Christian ministry therefore contributes something government cannot create, purchase, or reproduce: practical care flowing from love for God and neighbor, offered to the whole person in the name of Christ. Government best serves the public good not by attempting to finance or direct that ministry, but by protecting the freedom in which it can remain fully and faithfully Christian.
Christian ministries do not need government funding to legitimize their work. Their authority comes from Christ, and their responsibility is to obey Him faithfully. What they need from government is something both more limited and more appropriate: respect for the boundaries of its authority and protection of the freedom in which Christians can love God and serve their neighbors.
Our Christian Ministry Is Sustained by Christian Generosity
For sixty-seven years, the Medford Gospel Mission has experienced the remarkable generosity of churches and individual Christians. Scripture describes those who support gospel ministry as “fellow workers for the truth” (3 John 8). Our faithful supporters have fulfilled that role by providing most of our financial support, volunteering their time, praying faithfully, offering leadership, building relationships, and walking alongside people through difficult seasons.
Because of their generosity, the Mission has remained distinctly and openly Christian without depending upon government funding. We do not take their faithfulness for granted. Their support is more than a financial transaction. It is an act of Christian partnership—an expression of shared obedience to God and shared love for our neighbors.
Government funding might have allowed us to become larger, employ more people, or operate more programs. We have instead chosen to depend upon God working through His people. That choice has sometimes limited what we could do, but it has also preserved our freedom to care for the whole person in the name of Christ.
This does not mean that every Christian organization accepting government funding has abandoned its faith. Public funding simply brings obligations and influences that should be considered carefully. Each ministry must discern whether a particular arrangement will preserve its freedom to remain faithful to the purpose God has entrusted to it.
Michele Steeb is right that government cannot manufacture hope or reproduce the relational community found in faithful ministries.[2] Government can fulfill the public responsibilities that properly belong to it. Christian ministry, however, is sustained by Christians who give, serve, pray, and remain present in the lives of their neighbors.
So, should government fund Christian ministries?
At the Medford Gospel Mission, our answer has been no. Everything we do is deeply intertwined with our love for God and the love for our neighbors that flows from it. Practical care and Christian ministry are not separate parts of our work that can easily be divided. Together, they form one integrated expression of our obedience to Christ.
Government may fund the public services it chooses to provide. We are profoundly grateful that churches, donors, volunteers, and other faithful friends have made it possible for us to carry out the ministry Christ has entrusted to us without asking government to fund it.
To everyone who has supported the Mission: thank you. Your generosity does more than keep programs operating. It preserves a place where practical care, Christian fellowship, biblical truth, and the love of Christ remain part of one undivided ministry.
Because of you, we are free to serve our neighbors openly as Christians—and to remain faithful to the One who entrusted this work to us.
[1] Fix Homelessness Initiative: https://fixhomelessness.org
[2] Reintegrating Faith Into the Nation’s Approach to Homelessness by Michele Steeb https://fixhomelessness.org/2026/reintegrating-faith-into-the-nations-approach-to-homelessness/
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