A Wide Open Door Can Only Help When You Can Find It

Last week, I wrote about the difference between Disney and the DMV—and why our processes should always exist to serve people, not the other way around.

But there is another question we need to ask: What about the people who never make it through our doors in the first place?

We can create the most welcoming church, compassionate nonprofit, or accessible social-service program imaginable. We can improve our signs, simplify our paperwork, train our volunteers, and fill our buildings with people who genuinely care.

All of that matters.

But it won’t help someone who doesn’t know we exist. It won’t reach the person who is too ashamed to ask for help, too overwhelmed to navigate another complicated system, or too wounded by past experiences to trust that this one will be any different.

A wide-open door is only helpful if someone can find it—and believes it is safe to walk through.

People in crisis are often expected to become expert navigators at precisely the moment when they have the least capacity to do so. We ask someone facing eviction to identify the correct agency, gather the right documents, understand their legal rights, complete complicated applications, make multiple phone calls, and travel between offices—all while trying to keep a job, care for their children, and figure out where they will sleep next month.

Then, when they fail to find the help that technically exists, we sometimes conclude that they weren’t motivated enough to receive it.

Perhaps the problem isn’t always that people refuse to enter our systems. Perhaps our systems were never designed to go looking for them.

In Luke 15, Jesus tells three stories about something—or someone—being lost.

A shepherd realizes that one sheep is missing, so he leaves the ninety-nine and goes searching for it. A woman loses a coin and lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and searches carefully until she finds it. A father sees his lost son while he is still a long way off and runs toward him.

In each story, what is missing is treated as valuable.

The shepherd doesn’t blame the sheep for wandering away. The woman doesn’t decide the coin must not want to be found. The father doesn’t stand at the door with crossed arms and demand that his son complete an intake form before coming home.

The shepherd searches. The woman searches. The father watches, runs, embraces, and restores.

Jesus is describing the heart of God—a God who moves toward people.

That should shape the way we think about ministry, charity, and community. It is not enough to build good programs and hope people in crisis eventually discover them. We need pathways of care that move beyond our buildings and into the places where people already live, work, struggle, and survive.

At City Relief, that conviction is built into the way we operate. We bring our mobile outreaches into parks and neighborhoods across New York City and New Jersey. We serve meals and distribute socks, but those tangible resources are often simply the beginning of a relationship.

Our deeper purpose is to create an accessible doorway to connection, care, and support right in the middle of someone’s everyday life.

But this principle extends far beyond homelessness and beyond City Relief.

What would it look like for churches to move beyond inviting people to attend services and begin searching for the people their communities are missing? What if businesses learned how to recognize and support employees quietly slipping into crisis? What if nonprofits measured accessibility not only by how people are treated when they arrive, but also by how effectively they reach those who may never arrive on their own?

And what if each of us began paying closer attention to the people already around us?

The neighbor whose rent suddenly increased. The coworker sleeping in their car. The single parent falling behind on bills. The older adult choosing between food and medication. The teenager who no longer feels safe at home.

Many of the people closest to crisis do not look the way we expect. They may still be working, attending church, dropping their children off at school, or sitting beside us in a meeting. They may not know their rights, understand their options, or have the words to explain what is happening.

Sometimes finding people simply means becoming the kind of person they feel safe telling.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of exploring these ideas with church and community leaders at Northview’s Missions & Outreach Gathering in Indiana. Our workshop was called Wide-Open Doors & Well-Worn Sidewalks because I believe we need both.

We need wide-open doors that communicate, “You are welcome here.”

And we need well-worn sidewalks that demonstrate, “You matter enough for us to come to you.”

Hospitality waits with the door open. Compassion steps outside and begins walking.

The question isn’t only whether people in crisis can find their way to us. The question is whether we are building lives, churches, organizations, and systems willing to find their way to them.

With Gratitude,

Josiah Haken

City Relief, CEO