Outside the City Walls: Homelessness, Hope, and the Church’s Calling

A reflection from Rev Andrew Irwin, St Paul’s & St Barnabas, Belfast, and a member of the Church and Society Commission

On Thursday Afternoon (4th December 2025), our parish of St Paul’s and St Barnabas hosted the De Paul Celebration of Life service, an event marked by dignity, honesty and compassion as we remembered those who had died while experiencing homelessness or profound social vulnerability during the past year. De Paul has been serving people across Northern Ireland for twenty years, and their presence, together with colleagues from Simon Community, Radius and various civic leaders, created a moment in which shared grief and shared responsibility met one another within the walls of our Church.

The service reminded us that homelessness in Northern Ireland is not a marginal or isolated issue, nor is it restricted to those who are visibly sleeping rough. According to the Northern Ireland Audit Office Report on Homelessness, more than 26,000 households were accepted as homeless in 2022–23, a figure that reveals not only the scale of the crisis but its complexity, since homelessness often emerges through the combined pressures of poverty, mental ill-health, addiction, trauma and family breakdown rather than a single cause. The report highlights that many individuals move repeatedly between precarious accommodation, temporary housing and moments of crisis that erode stability over time until the smallest disruption becomes the final tipping point.

At the service, we were told that eleven people known to De Paul had died in the past year. Each person carried a story that mattered, and hearing those names spoken aloud brought to mind the words from Hebrews which say, “Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore.” (Hebrews 13.12–13). What I find challenging when I recall these verses is that they speak not simply of a location, they speak of a way of being, serving, and making Christ known. This is the way of the Kingdom of Christ, Hebrews 13:13 must challenge our approach to mercy and mission, because it reminds us where Christ is often received - by those who live on the margins, those whose lives unfold beyond the safety of the city walls. Then it calls the Church to meet them there, rather than wait for them to come to us. Why? so they can encounter the love of God through us.

The Gospels carry this same pattern in the flight of Mary and Joseph into Egypt, moving in vulnerability and uncertainty, and in the parable of the Good Samaritan, where compassion draws near to the one left by the roadside. These texts ask us not to treat urban poverty, displacement or homelessness as abstractions but as places where Christ has already gone ahead of us, calling his people to recognise him in the faces and stories of those who are most often overlooked.

North Belfast knows these realities with painful clarity. Nearly a third of neighbourhoods in this constituency fall within the most deprived ten per cent in Northern Ireland, and more than three quarters of local young people grow up in areas shaped by long-term deprivation, instability and intergenerational disadvantage. These are more than numbers. These are the conditions in which many local churches minister every day. At St Paul’s and St Barnabas, it is not unusual to encounter individuals seeking warmth, shelter or simple human connection at the door. These interruptions are never an inconvenience. They are a reminder that Christian ministry begins at the moment a person in need crosses our path, because that is the moment at which the Church is invited to go outside the camp and meet Christ where he has chosen to stand.

The Church and Society Commission which I am privileged to serve on has recently encouraged parishes to engage seriously with the issue of homelessness. We have suggested some practical and relational steps that congregations can take that I can testify personally will have a profound impact on individuals:

providing warm spaces in winter,
supporting local food banks,
partnering with homelessness charities,
building friendships with those at risk,
and recognising that every person experiencing homelessness carries a unique story that deserves respect and compassion.

And if I may offer one more, supporting our churches who find themselves on the frontline of need and opportunity across all the cities on this Island. CASC's guidance stresses that our actions must be grounded in prayerful commitment, sustained engagement and partnership with those who work daily on the frontlines of poverty. In our own parish context, the Celebration of Life service brought these themes into sharp focus as we approach our 175th anniversary. For almost two centuries, this Church has stood at the crossroads of shipyards, working-class streets, conflict, regeneration and demographic change, and the challenges around us have not diminished. If anything, they have intensified. Yet the calling of the Church remains constant. We are placed here so that the light of Christ may be made known not through distance but through presence, as we come alongside our neighbours with the conviction that every person is created in the image of God, worthy of honour, dignity and love, and that this God-given identity finds its true fulfilment and restoration through faith in Christ who stepped outside the city gate for us. In contexts where hopelessness often feels overwhelming, it is our hope in Christ that motivates our perseverance in mercy and shapes our understanding of what it means to be a people sent into the places of fracture and need, and it is that same hope that holds out the promise of wholeness for every human life, including those whom society is quickest to overlook.

Urban ministry in places like ours invites the Church of Ireland to consider how the parish system becomes a gift when congregations commit themselves to long-term presence in communities where need is most visible. It requires us to use our buildings, our partnerships and our people not chiefly for maintenance but as instruments of mercy and hospitality for the Sake of Christ. It encourages us to cultivate a public theology that listens to the cries of the vulnerable, speaks truthfully about the social conditions that shape their lives, and embodies the compassion of Christ in practical and relational ways. It is our call to fruitful living and faithful discipleship, it is the outworking of the great commission in parts of our cities that we might often wish to ignore. And, it is not simply the burden of the local parish, it is our collective responsibility to go, and support those places on the front line in our mission for Christ together as Anglicans.

The Celebration of Life service was not simply a moment of remembrance. It was a call to attention and Gospel readiness. It asked us to see every life as precious, to understand the complexity of homelessness with humility and honesty, and to allow our discipleship to be shaped by the needs of those outside the camp, so that they can know the love of God in the same way we have had. It calls us to embrace radical hospitality that embraces the mess of the world rather than closing our doors and hearts to it, so that the love of Christ is known. As we move deeper into Advent, with its themes of waiting, displacement and the surprising arrival of God in unexpected places, my prayer is that the Church across this island will hear the challenge of this moment and respond with courage, compassion and clarity of faith, so that every person, housed or unhoused, may know that they are not forgotten, and they are loved by the God who knows their suffering, by his suffering outside the city walls so that we might have eternal hope by faith even amid the most hopeless situations in our times.

You can watch the service via our youtube: