By Priscilla Greear, Staff Writer

ATLANTA—Holding gym bags, shoulder bags or nothing, and dressed in clothes ranging from flannel to dress shirts, dozens of men quietly waited in the evening light at the church door behind the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

St. Jude the Apostle volunteer Joe Goode, a tall man with a steady demeanor, stood at the door and methodically read off a list of names. Some of the men greeted Goode as he checked IDs to let men pass through.

“How you doin’ Joe?” one man called out. Others approached him to get in, bringing referral forms from various help agencies.

A year after being closed for renovations, the shelter at the Shrine reopened Nov. 1. As the archdiocese’s only emergency night shelter to

help homeless men of Atlanta, the Shrine, with adjoining Central Presbyterian Church, forms the Central Night Shelter. It is the only all-volunteer shelter in metro Atlanta.

Billy Bowie had just moved to Atlanta and handed Goode his referral. This was his second visit to the Shrine; he had spent the night here two years ago. From Alabama, the construction worker came to Atlanta looking for work.

“I really don’t like to be homeless. I’m just changing locations and I need a place to stay to get enough work to get me (started),” he said. “This is the only place I’d rather come for a helping hand.”

“That they do something like this is just awesome. Many people take the time out to make sacrifices. They do it with joy,” Bowie said as he entered the shelter.

For men like Bowie, the shelter represents a way to get off the streets and back on his feet. For volunteers like Goode, the shelter represents a long-term commitment. Goode started 19 years ago, volunteering at Central Presbyterian Shelter. St. Jude’s has been involved since 1983, with volunteers from the church serving 10 nights this year.

Goode recalled the early years at Central Presbyterian, before the shelter at the Shrine was opened, when there was only one bathroom and no kitchens.

“Over the years we’ve been consistently trying it make it a more dignified place for people to stay. It used to be people slept on the floor. I didn’t enjoy it at all. I was overwhelmed, but I kept coming because I felt I could do it as good as anyone else and I had gotten to where I kind of enjoyed this ministry — great people and guests, lots and lots of stories.”

Katie Bashor knows lots of stories too. A Shrine member who works full time as a Physical Education paraprofessional, she has served as director of the Central Night Shelter for the past year and a half. She fears that with the downturn in the economy, the homeless and unemployed will face a tougher year this year. Recently she mistook a “fairly well-dressed” homeless person for a volunteer, until he handed her a referral.

“We’ve had doctors, lawyers (as) people who’ve become homeless. One night I ran into someone I used to work with,” she said. “I think it’s going to be really bad this year.”

Sister Marie Sullivan, OP, who directs the Sullivan Center in southwest Atlanta, which serves the poor, sees a similar picture. The center is seeing an increasing number of the unemployed. Typically the center’s program for financial aid attracts between 25 to 50 people per month. This past October 110 people signed up.

“We are in the process of having more people becoming homeless because of the recession. The number of people we have coming in right now who have lost their jobs is really unbelievable,” she said. “I think we’re going to see more homeless because it seems every day you see in the paper another company laying off ‘x’ number of people. The people in the bottom racks with the recession are the ones that are really going to get hurt.”

Serving homeless men who are actively trying to get their lives in order, the Central Night Shelter is one of the largest shelters in metro Atlanta, said Bashor.

Open from November until the end of March, the Shrine and Central Presbyterian Church combined house about 90 men a night. Men usually start arriving at 7 p.m., eat dinner, take a shower and leave by 6 a.m.

Bashor has volunteered at the shelter since the beginning with her husband Mark, when then Shrine pastor Father John Adamski approached the couple to help convert the basement of the Shrine into a shelter in conjunction with

Central Presbyterian. Men were sleeping all over the church steps and they were tripping over bodies they couldn’t take at Central, she said.

That was seven years ago. Today the shelters represent ecumenism in action — with Central Presbyterian housing 65 men and the Shrine 25 men.

Additionally, the Shrine hosts the St. Francis Table soup kitchen every Saturday, a ministry that was begun about 20 years ago to create an area where the hungry could get a meal every day. St. Luke’s Episcopal Church serves lunch during the week and Trinity United Methodist Church dishes out meals on Sundays. Across town, St. Anthony’s Church serves hot lunches four days a week, a tradition that has endured for more than 20 years. Nearby Our Lady of Lourdes Church also follows suit, serving a free lunch to the homeless and needy twice a week.

The idea of a night shelter was conceived more than 20 years ago, when six men froze to death on the streets of Atlanta. Soon after, members of Clifton Presbyterian Church approached Central Presbyterian about the use of their gym for a night shelter, Bashor said. When it was agreed upon, 200 men came and slept on the floor, bringing their cardboard mats with them. They received a meal — frozen bologna sandwiches and hot tea. Today the men get a hot dinner, a bag lunch, a hot shower and a mattress to sleep on.

The Central Night Shelter relies on volunteers to staff it at night and cook meals, said Bashor. From six to 20 volunteers are needed to spend the night, keeping watch. Like Goode’s group from St. Jude’s, most volunteers come from churches, but volunteers in the past have also included Marist High School students, businesses, and fraternities — even men’s poker groups and recovering alcoholic groups. And every Wednesday, in the Gospel foot-washing spirit, trained volunteers come in to soak guests’ sore feet in special solutions and treat foot problems.

While the Shrine provides the free space for the shelter, it relies on financial donations to cover supply costs and is “desperate” for volunteers to fill several open time slots this month and in December, she said.

“Our biggest challenge is getting people to come for the first time,” said Bashor. “We need more volunteers. Being closed for a year, you always lose that momentum.”

As many people now are focused on giving money and other support to relief efforts following the terrorist attacks, Bashor is “a little concerned” that people may forget the homeless right in their midst.

“The focus is on that and it should be, but I do worry we won’t be getting as many donations and volunteers because of that focus.”

Father Adamski, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Atlanta, noted that those who want to experience God’s kingdom after death better start building it on earth as souls reap eternally what they sow temporarily.

Serving the homeless is a “tangible expression of the charity of Christ reaching out to all, reaching out to those in very special need,” he said. “It’s our faith that all of us are called to share in one banquet table of the Lord. We prepare that by the way we live together now . . . If we’re God’s people, this is what we have to be about, following Jesus’ example and teaching.”

He added, “This is not an urban-suburban thing — it’s a human community thing.”

He noted that the homeless are easy to overlook as people take care of themselves and their families. “We are all concerned about our security now. With a homeless person, he doesn’t have any security, it’s not even a possibility.”

The priest added that one can be a smarter Samaritan by supporting ministries like the Shrine that are structured to serve the homeless rather than just through handouts.

“I don’t think it’s just handing somebody a dollar,” he said.

To gain that security, Bashor said the men are encouraged to stay at the shelter nightly for the full five months, to find jobs if they are unemployed, and save their money to secure housing later.

“Some of (homelessness) is from, of course, substance abuse. A lot of it is the economy, loss of a job, lack of affordable housing. People who do have jobs, but can’t find affordable housing, can’t afford to pay rent and feed themselves.”

Bashor struggles with having to turn people away.

“You watch them walk off and I think this was a test from God,” she said. “They’re telling you their stories. You want to listen, but you don’t want to listen, because you can’t take them in. You can only do what you can do.”

Bashor takes pride in enforcing the shelter rules. While there have been occasional fights, and drunks are not allowed in, she said the men at the shelter generally treat her better than those in normal life. She is inspired by the men’s prayers of gratitude at mealtime for the volunteers and for a place to rest.

She is inspired by how they get through the day with dignity, humility and compassion. “It’s like, ‘Katie, you can do that too with all you have.’”

When Bashor was dating her husband, she agreed to love him — and the shelter where he volunteered much of his time — if he would love her and her cats. But now she loves the work.

“I think it’s a way for me to stay very focused on what I consider to be the most fundamental part of our faith — that we take care of each other and love each other and do what Christ asks us to do. It really grounds me and makes me grateful for the life I have, rich in blessings.”

Goode sometimes feels like he doesn’t do enough or gets frustrated when some men routinely try to con him, but he is also glad to run into former Shrine “guests” on MARTA.

“It always makes me feel good when they come to say hello and speak to me and are not looking for a pass to the night shelter,” he said. “To me the greatest benefit of this ministry is to put privileged people with people in difficult conditions and find out they are just humble, good people that have had bad things in their life. It’s important for us as well-to-do people to be in their midst, if even (for) just a couple of hours.”

For information on volunteering at Central Night Shelter call Ana Bailie at (404) 373-5174 or Karen Cross at (404) 881-1872.