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Reaching the Unwanted

Rescue Atlanta Church, Atlanta, Georgia

By Scott Harrup

The names of many inner-city communities contain a certain irony. For example, Summerhill in Atlanta, Georgia, is no exception. If the conjured image is a grassy knoll bathed in sunshine, the stark rows of apartments quickly explode that myth. Summerhill has the second-highest level of crime of any housing project in Atlanta, and lies in Zone 3, the worst zone in the police department’s districting plan.

Yet at Summerhill’s perimeter, Rescue Atlanta Church stands as a spiritual beacon. Pastor Mel Rolls and his wife, Teresa, have spent 14 years building relational bridges with people whom society has written off — not just struggling families from Summerhill’s crowded housing, but many who call the area’s alleys and sidewalks home.

"We’re reaching the people no one else wants," Rolls says. "Ninety-five percent of our congregation are homeless."

Rolls served on church staffs in the late 70s and through the 80s while he pursued inner-city outreach. He soon discovered that traditional churches were not prepared to disciple the people he was salvaging off the streets. Recognizing the need for a church designed to meet this need, Rolls realized God was leading him to establish such a congregation.

Rescue Atlanta Church was born.

Ministry at Rescue Atlanta starts early every Sunday. Rolls is there at 5 a.m. Volunteers from four other churches are there by 6 a.m. For an hour and a half, they labor over preparations for a steaming breakfast. By 8 a.m., the people who have lined up to be served are filing in to take a seat. Some 800-900 meals later, with a solid presentation of the gospel thrown in, Sunday morning service is over and clean-up crews are in full swing. There is no evening service.

"Some people ask us why we don’t have a Sunday night service," Rolls says. "The Sunday morning outreach from start to finish takes 9 hours. There’s really no way to do that twice. Second, it just makes sense in this neighborhood not to have people out at night."

Even the daytime is not immune to risk.

"We had a tent outreach going on for the neighborhood kids once," Rolls says. "A gunfight started nearby. Helicopters were circling overhead. The kids were outside trying to see what was going on, and I had to round them up and remind them this wasn’t television."

The unexpected is always expected here. Besides the occasional interruption of neighborhood gunshots, there is no telling when a disturbed person might try to disrupt a service or a drug addict might have a seizure and require a call to the emts. But Rolls and his staff — people largely from the ranks of the homeless and addicted who have been saved at Rescue Atlanta — keep plugging into Summerhill’s needs with the power of the gospel. Besides the feeding outreach, the church offers clean showers, personal counseling, and a referral service to halfway houses.

"We also have ministry teams come in from churches across the country," Rolls says. "Our goal is simply to connect them with the people in need in this community and get them started. We put together the skeleton of an outreach and let them put the meat on it. Young people come and serve here and get first-hand exposure to needs they’ve never encountered before."

After 14 years, Rescue Atlanta has grown to about 400 in attendance. But Rolls points out that it is a cyclical congregation. People come and go all the time. He doesn’t mind.

"I was visiting a hospital just recently," he says. "A man came up to me. ’Pastor Mel,’ he said, ’I’m so sorry I haven’t been to church lately.’ He’d gotten his life together, moved out to another part of the city, and found a full-time job and another church. He just wanted to thank me."

For Rolls, the continuing ministry of Rescue Atlanta is a continuing exercise of faith. Working marathon hours every week, he is unable to travel to raise funds. His staff is largely comprised of volunteers from the surrounding communities. Burnout has been a challenge as some staff members have married and started families and decided that small children and the inner city are not a good combination. But the church moves ahead one day at a time.

This coming Sunday it will still be dark when Rolls unlocks the doors. Sunlight will just begin to bounce between apartment windows as spiritually and physically hungry people line up for breakfast. Another day will dawn over a community fraught with every societal ill imaginable. And, under the Holy Spirit’s anointing, more souls in Atlanta will be rescued.

— Scott Harrup is associate editor of Today’s Pentecostal Evangel,Springfield, Missouri.