Summary: Tent City is gone. We still do what we’ve always done, and love the hundreds who are walking that line from living outside. And those who still are. My lease is about up, which means everything is about to change. I wrestle with the uncertainty of whatever God has in mind next.

Read Time: Six minutes

For the longest time, I thought this month’s journal was going to be about closing the door on Tent City.

It seemed straightforward enough. A man I know told me that people had quietly returned to two of the larger camps after being forced out months ago. I wanted to believe him. Not because I wanted people living in tents again, but because if they had chosen to remain outside, I hoped they had found somewhere to land.

So after our monthly outreach, I laced up my boots and went looking.

I covered as much of the property as the flooded river would allow. Places that had once been alive with people were now slowly disappearing back into the woods. The familiar trails were fading beneath new growth. The camps held little more than scattered reminders that people had once called them home—a tarp, a shoe, a length of rope still tied around a tree. Everything else had become strangely quiet.

A week later, I returned with my wife after the water had dropped. The answer hadn’t changed.

Tent City, as we knew it, is over.

Or at least, that chapter is.

When I sat down to write about it, I found myself spending pages describing trails, construction, river crossings, and camps. It wasn’t until I stepped away that I realized I wasn’t avoiding the story because I couldn’t find it.

I was avoiding it because I had found it.

The real question wasn’t whether Tent City was gone. It was, “Where does that leave us?”

For years, the image of Tent City became the face of our outreach. It captured people’s attention and reminded us all that there are people living in places most of us never see. But the truth is, the camps have never been the larger part of what we do. Long before Tent City became known, and throughout the years we walked its trails, we’ve quietly served hundreds of people living in weekly motels, broken apartments, cars, and countless situations where one more setback might mean sleeping outside.

The need hasn’t disappeared. It has simply moved, and now, in a strange way, so must we.

The harder part to admit is that this isn’t just about outreach.

It’s about me.

Our outreach exists largely because my computer business exists. It provides the space where donations arrive, where food is sorted, where supplies are stored, and where volunteers gather. It provides my income, and it gives me the flexibility to spend much of my life doing work that doesn’t pay at all.

My lease will be up in a little over a year. Business isn’t what it once was. For the first time since opening these doors, I can see the possibility that this entire season of my life may be drawing to a close.

I’ve realized that what I’ve really been grieving isn’t the loss of a camp. It’s the possibility that the life I’ve built—the business, the outreach as we’ve known it, and this particular season of purpose—may all be changing at the same time.

That frightens me.

Walking through those woods recently, I found myself thinking about something I hadn’t considered in years. Long before there was a Just People, before there was a computer shop, before there was a Tent City, I was always drawn toward places most people overlooked. I never thought much about it then. It was simply where my feet carried me.

Maybe that’s why these trails have always felt strangely familiar. Not because of where they lead, but because they’ve reminded me of something God has been doing in me for much longer than I understood.

A few mornings later, after praying about what comes next, I drifted off to sleep and saw a large map covered with pins. Each pin represented someone living outside. A voice simply said,

“It’s your map.”

My first response was immediate.

“I can’t afford to do that.”

Again came the quiet reminder.

“You’re not thinking in Kingdom ways.”

“You doubted Me when you got the place you’re in now. You don’t think I can handle this?”

I don’t like it when God does this to me. It feels like putting a bag over my head and walking into traffic. I didn’t ask for all of this in the first place.

Then again, when I look back over my life, neither did the chapters that shaped me most. They rarely began with certainty. More often they began with questions I couldn’t answer, paths I couldn’t clearly see, and a quiet nudge to take the next step anyway.

 

 

All of the real names used here were used with permission. Otherwise, the names have been changed. To protect the identity of those photographed, they have been blurred intentionally unless consent was given before publishing.