|
SAN FRANCISCO – Page Street Baptist Center is a 1,600-square-foot bunker built into a San Francisco hillside. The modest facility is a haven for the homeless, runaways, unwed mothers, street kids, drug addicts, and anyone in need of love and respect.
“When I started at Page Street 10 years ago this June,” Eric Bergquist, director of the center, said, “it had been established for 30 years. I was a volunteer. I wasn’t really that interested in the Center until I was actually doing it. Whether by God’s design or His grace, after about a month I found it to be a good fit.”
Eric is a community ministry field specialist for the California Southern Baptist Convention Healthy Church Group. His wife, Linda, is a church starting strategist with the CSBC Church Starting Group. They have very different full-time jobs, but enjoy overlapping into each other’s work occasionally. Eric and Linda have an adult son and a teenage daughter.
“There is no self-service here (at the Center),” Eric said. “We serve each other. Everybody is unique and has something unique to contribute just as they have unique needs. If there’s a grandma in a wheelchair with emotional disabilities, but she’s willing to bag beans or do whatever — then we celebrate that.
“My basic assumption is that God is at work in the whole community and in the whole context of people’s lives,” Eric said. He related this story of helping a friend step into the Light:
“For the past eight years, *Jason, a non-believer, has taken me to task about everything. Recently Jason brought his friend, *Thomas, for prayer. I asked Thomas how he wanted me to pray for him.”
“I don’t want to ever put a needle in my arm again,” Thomas answered. “I want to pray to a God who can fix me.”
“This has been two of the hardest weeks of my life,” Thomas told 40 of his peers two weeks later. “I’ve lost a friend, and I’m trying to kick. Somehow, I haven’t gone back to using, and somehow I have been strong in the middle of this. The only way I can explain it is that God has given me strength.”
This is only one of the stories Eric could tell about California Southern Baptists’ ministry through Page Street Center.
And, no matter what people think about the “City by the Bay,” San Francisco is “not a godforsaken place,” Eric said. “It’s a place where God is active, and where He’s invested. God never lets up. He continues to pursue. If someone is breathing, then his or her story is still being written.”
*pseudonym used for privacy
|
|
Eric’s message to California Southern Baptists:
“Many people have come to Page Street to work, and many come with preconceptions about the city. I remind them that San Francisco is the treasure-house of God. Maybe the treasure house has not been unlocked yet, but that is what it is — a storehouse of God’s gifts.
“Moreover, we are a strategic place. Whereas in California one out of every five people was born in another country, here in San Francisco one out of every three is an immigrant. So, we are very connected to the world. We are strategic, and God is very much at work here. The end of the story has yet to be written for San Francisco.”
Eric’s prayer requests:
- Pray for the powerless and lonely elderly who are poor in the city. Pray particularly for 84-year-old Stephanie who was a homeless child on the streets under Hitler and is now facing eviction after 40 years here.
- Pray for the mentally ill who drift in and out of care and contact. Pray especially for Mike who is seeking to follow Christ but still deals with voices in his head. Pray that He will have courage to deal with the challenges of the day and begin to claim a future that makes sense.
- Pray for the under-employed who have skills and time to give. Pray for those who are homeless, which means that it is hard to look good for an interview and hard to be hopeful.
- Pray for coordination with others who are making a difference in the city. Pray especially that together we can find better ways to utilize our individual advantages and resources.
Eric’s praises:
- I am grateful that in the last 10 years we have never turned anyone down who needed food. It may have been modest, but we have never been without resources.
- I am grateful for Southern Baptist support, especially “hunger funds.” There is a lot of goodwill toward Christianity and toward Southern Baptists in particular because we have been available for thousands of people when they needed help.
- I love to salvage souls, and I love my God who is hard at work redeeming the world to Himself.
|
