Shepherd’s Heart
Nearly every Sunday, from November through April, Trinity helps provide for the ministry of Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship at 13 Pride Street in Uptown, as part of our partnership with Shepherd’s Heart. Open from approximately 7:30 a.m. to Noon, the ministry provides shelter, a delicious breakfast, and worship. A shuttle bus ferries people who used to take shelter from the cold in the back of the Cathedral on Sunday mornings to Shepherd’s Heart, and returns them to downtown when Shepherd’s Heart closes. (When the cold reaches a certain point, Shepherd’s Heart also serves as a cold weather shelter).
One or two volunteers are needed to assist the staff of Shepherd’s Heart in serving food and in making worship possible. The need for volunteers is greatest in the early morning from 7:30 to 10:00 a.m., allowing people to attend the later Eucharist at the Cathedral. If you would like to volunteer, call the office or speak with one of the clergy. Instructions will be provided for all new volunteers.
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For much of its history, Trinity Cathedral has embraced a mission of service to the last, the lost and the least. From the Trinity Lunch Room for working women in the Downtown area in the early 1900s through its participation in the Walk-In Ministry of the Downtown Ministerium today, Trinity’s clergy and people have recognized that the mission of the Church is to serve the needs of the whole person, both spiritual and material.
Trinity is a popular place for reflection and contemplation for the Downtown community and this includes many of the area’s homeless residents, particularly when the weather is exceptionally cold. On Sunday mornings, Trinity has been one of the few Downtown churches willing to admit the homeless during regular worship hours. Many, though by no means all, are looking for a safe environment (shelters frequently cannot be so characterized) for a few hours of slumber and not necessarily to participate in regular congregational worship.
Trinity parishioners wished to provide an atmosphere suited to rest and food more nourishing than that commonly available at our coffee hour. In January 2007, therefore, Trinity Cathedral initiated a partnership with Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship in Pittsburgh’s Uptown District. Shepherd’s Heart was launched as a ministry of pastoral care to the homeless residents of Oakland in 1993 and moved to its current location, just a few blocks from Mercy Hospital, in 2006. Regular worship is offered on Sunday evenings at 5:15 p.m., followed by a meal supplied in rotation by various congregations of our diocese. Although many of its members are only nominally on the rolls, the ratio of average Sunday attendance to membership is one of the highest in the diocese, and its members, though some of the poorest, contribute liberally from what they have.
Until 2007, Shepherd’s Heart was opened as a place of rest and refreshment from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 N only on weekdays. Under the new partnership with Trinity Cathedral, it is now open on Sunday mornings. Led by a member of the clergy team from Shepherd’s Heart, volunteers from Trinity (as well as friends and neighbors) serve food, distribute clothing, talk with our guests and participate in Morning Prayer. One of the culinary highlights is an egg casserole, which we prepare in batches at the cathedral on a Saturday morning and local businesses have been generous in donating coffee and baked goods. A van runs between Trinity Cathedral and Shepherd’s Heart every forty minutes between 7:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. to pick up those who wish to come to Shepherd’s Heart; the van then departs Shepherd’s Heart for the Downtown area around 11:45 a.m. for all those who wish to return.
If you have a heart for such a ministry of service please contact Trinity Cathedral, so that together we may indeed thank the Lord our God “with heart and hands and voices.”
