By Chris Moon
Gabe Piechowicz understands Jesus did ministry on the margins of society—and so that’s where Piechowicz spends virtually all his time.
The pastor of EveryOne Church in Eugene, Ore., is devoting his life to helping the homeless in his community.
Piechowicz got a quick start when homeless individuals began staying on the front porch of his former church. That blossomed into a church plant—EveryOne Church—that has begun its life by doing mission work rather than holding traditional Sunday morning services.
The church this year launched a city-sponsored “safe sleep” site that will give a place to stay to 60 to 80 individuals on 3.5 acres of vacant land. Out of that, Piechowicz hopes to build the church.
The traditional church-planting model—very difficult in the secular Northwest—moves from worship to mission. Church planters typically try to establish a core group of church members who worship together and eventually begin to do service work.
But Eugene is a bit of a graveyard for church plants, Piechowicz said.
So, if that model doesn’t work, try something else. Put mission before worship services.
“Go in reverse,” Piechowicz said. “Walk this whole pathway backwards.”
FROM LOGGING TO MINISTRY
Piechowicz grew up in New York and moved to the Northwest in 1998. He tried college for a while and then went into social work, helping kids with autism.
Then he saw a job advertisement for loggers—at $12 an hour to start. That began a 15-year logging career.
But logging is a young man’s job, so Piechowicz went back to college, this time to Northwest Christian University (now Bushnell University) in Eugene.
A professor one day asked Piechowicz what he planned to do with the rest of his life . . . and had he thought about becoming a pastor?
Piechowicz laughed, but then began to explore the idea.
He already had been following Christ for six or seven years, and he began to dive deeply into Scripture. Piechowicz said he found “great power” in the narrative arc of the Bible and was drawn to the power of its story.
As it turned out, ministry was for him.
Piechowicz began ministry at Westside Christian Church in Eugene. The church, however, was a dying congregation, headed toward closure.
The church partnered with the Christian Evangelistic Association, a church-planting organization focused in the Northwest. Together, they formed a renewal and transition team.
Out of that sprang EveryOne Church.
MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
But even before EveryOne Church got its start, it found its mission—and Piechowicz found his.
Piechowicz still was pastoring at Westside Christian Church when he noticed a number of homeless people in the neighborhood.
They sometimes gathered at a nearby intersection, and Piechowicz one day went out to meet them. Learning he was a pastor, some of those who had gathered began to quote Scripture to him—in context.
That’s when Piechowicz learned “there is way more than meets the eyes for these humans.”
He eventually befriended them and simply began doing what friends do for each other. One rainy night, he offered up the church porch as a place to stay.
One thing led to another, and Westside Christian Church was becoming a place where the homeless hung out.
“I quickly turned into an I-5 rest stop,” Piechowicz said.
Such a mission has its ups and downs, of course, and the city got interested in what Piechowicz was doing. City officials appreciated his hands-on approach to helping the homeless.
A more formal program developed at Westside Christian Church.
As many as eight people stayed on the porch each night, and Piechowicz would meet with them every Tuesday morning for accountability—always a talk that had a religious aspect.
On Saturdays, they would do community service in the neighborhood. Local business leaders chipped in with resources to help.
HEALING THE WOUND
And that’s how it all started.
Westside’s building eventually was sold, and the ministry shifted to the industrial west end of Eugene—now as part of EveryOne Church.
Homelessness had become a problem in west Eugene.
As housing prices soared, lower-income workers found it difficult to find places to live. Those on disability insurance were priced out of their living situations. People began to live in their cars, or in campers or tents wherever they could find a place to put them.
“It crippled the west end of town,” Piechowicz said.
RVs would be parked on the street. Garbage piled up, and theft was a problem.
“We just leaned into that part of the wound,” Piechowicz said.
The city was helpless, he said.
“Everything they tried was a failure,” Piechowicz said.
He obtained a grant from the city to work on the problem.
One day, a Christian business leader offered up a 3.5-acre parcel of land in west Eugene for a “safe sleep” site. Everyone Village was born.
A MAYORAL ‘THANK-YOU’
The Village operates as a 24/7 emergency shelter with a mix of tiny homes and RVs.
When a person applies and is accepted to live in the Village, he or she agrees to simple guidelines for community life. Numerous resources are brought in to provide for the needs of the people there—from mental health counseling to job training to financial literacy education.
The goal is to move people into stable housing, regardless of how long it takes.
The Village launched in January. Up to 40 people can live on a portion of the site that is paved, and 31 already have moved in.
An unpaved portion will undergo improvements in the spring and summer, increasing the Village’s capacity.
Piechowicz recently received a community award for his work from the city of Eugene.
Mayor Lucy Vinis described Piechowicz’s work during her 2022 State of the City Address, saying it was “greatly valued by the city of Eugene.”
“We’re grateful for your work. We’re grateful for your can-do spirit and your confidence in the future,” the mayor told Piechowicz during her speech. “It makes us all feel optimistic of what we have ahead.”
‘SPIRITUAL SOMETHING’
The hope now is that the model works. Everyone Village has been developed with an eye toward reproducing it elsewhere.
“Everyone Village will not solve the problem. That’s why we are wanting this to be a reproducible model,” said Bruce White, a former pastor in Eugene who is helping put together EveryOne Church.
And while all the work on the Village is moving forward, there also is a church to be built.
“With Gabe’s leadership, this vision is focusing first and foremost on the mission,” White said. “We call it the reverse church plant. We’re starting with the community outreach component. . . . As we do life with them, as we model Christ’s love, out of that will be birthed a spiritual community.”
Today, EveryOne Church has 10 to 20 people who gather on Wednesday nights for a meeting they call “Spiritual Something.” It is a safe space to search out spiritual concepts.
They might study the concept of “hope”—what it is, how it works, and where a person gets it. The Christians in the group offer their perspective on Jesus and how he is the source of hope.
PRACTICING TO BELIEVE
Piechowicz said when people come to Everyone Village, they have very clear needs—from physical to spiritual, emotional, and mental.
But he said once a person has his or her physical needs met at the Village, the next questions often are spiritual ones.
A person’s spiritual life is “where hopes and dreams and joys kind of sit,” Piechowicz said. “This is what gets ripped from you” through a season of homelessness, he said.
In addition to “Spiritual Something,” the church is preparing to launch a weekly Bible study.
The church so far is made up of staff and volunteers at Everyone Village, among others.
The idea is eventually to develop a full-fledged “Jesus-following community” that is reproducible, Piechowicz said. Other planters may want to follow this model—with mission preceding worship.
“It’s practicing to believe, not believing to practice,” he said.
Chris Moon is a pastor and writer living in Redstone, Colorado.
This is fantastic. An answer to prayer and what the “good news” that needs to be a part of any church.