Twenty tiny gray houses cluster on opposite sides of Hickory Street, a mile and a half north of the sprawling Hendrick Medical Center in Abilene, Texas.

Each bright red or shiny white door opens to a story — hundreds of stories, really — of a temporary guest with a loved one in intensive care or new parents with a tiny newborn in the NICU.

Other residents are patients who must stay near the hospital for dialysis treatments or while they wait to be placed on an organ transplant list. Some stay for a few nights, others for a few weeks — occasionally months.

Houses for Healing has provided almost 12,000 nights of free lodging for people seeking medical assistance in this West Texas city since completing its first four cottages in 2018. Typically, all 20 units are full with a waiting list. Ten new units are under construction.

Carlin Brooks, outreach coordinator for the nonprofit, told of one man waiting for a liver and kidney who needed lodging for more than a year.

“He finally got a call three weeks ago,” Brooks said in a recent media interview.

Now the man has to stay within 50 miles of Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center in Fort Worth, so the Foursquare Gospel Church in the man’s hometown of Haskell, Texas, had a fundraiser to help. Brooks and his wife, Teresa, made the drive to meet and visit with the church folks there.

Because Hendrick serves 24 West Texas counties totaling more than 400,000 inhabitants, many patients come from a distance that makes a daily commute impractical or medically unwise. But hotel nights piled on top of medical and travel expenses would overwhelm family budgets.

That’s where Houses for Healing becomes a blessing.

A tiny house can sleep three adults on the queen-size bed and sleeper sofa. Occupants find the compact kitchen fully equipped, and most have an accessible walk-in shower. Linens, a TV, every essential has been thought of — like a free Airbnb for people most definitely not on vacation.

And each house has been adopted. One is sponsored by a local nursing school and another by a Chick-fil-A. Two cottages bear the name of Shelby’s Grace Foundation, honoring the memory of Shelby Grace McKillip, an Abilene Christian University alum who died at age 24 after suffering from a crippling chronic illness. Shelby’s cottages are designated for families with babies in the NICU.

But most cottages are adopted by a local church, including three Churches of Christ as well as Baptist, Methodist and Foursquare Gospel congregations.

Involving churches was part of the plan from the beginning, according to Brian Massey, Houses for Healing’s president and founder. Massey attends a Foursquare Gospel church.

Massey said it costs about $55,000 to build and furnish a house. Adopting churches take on financial responsibility for sustaining costs and provide a volunteer base with a welcome team, food, transportation, cleaning and maintenance. Some church volunteers have even helped with construction.

Support from local foundations and other donors, many from the outlying counties served by the nonprofit, help with additional costs. A large workshop building includes a community space and laundry facilities.

The construction classes at Abilene’s vocational high school are building the frames for new cottages under construction. And Habitat for Humanity donated the cabinets for the new community kitchen. It took a village to build this village.

History of hesitancy

The collaboration between a faith-based nonprofit and local churches of various ilk typifies efforts to serve across boundaries in Jesus’ name.

Many Protestant Christians once rejected such efforts but now embrace them through community service and ministerial alliances.

Cooperation sometimes rises to meet a community need, as with Houses for Healing. In response, churches work and serve together.

In other cities, ministerial alliances provide mutual support for church leaders — and in the process expand to bring together Christians from different pews in prayer, service or even worship.

Some alliances from outlying counties provide financial support for Houses for Healing. Abilene’s ministerial alliance, with about 50 to 60 churches, includes a handful of Churches of Christ, but it’s not officially connected to the temporary housing ministry.

In the U.S., alliances have been around since the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1999, an in-depth story detailed the heroic role of the ministerial alliance in Jasper, Texas, after the gory, dragging murder of James Byrd Jr.

“Out of the pain, out of the almost certain longing for revenge, escalation of violence and schism down racial lines, the ministers decided that ‘they needed to stand in unity,’” stated the story.

Ministerial alliance members including Joe Hailey, then minister for the Jasper Church of Christ, met every Monday morning to pray for Jasper, planned a prayer vigil on the courthouse lawn and later forced the dismantling of a fence that divided the Black and White sections of the city cemetery.

Hailey said then that “the ministers’ united stand sent a message to people outside as well as inside the faith.”

Revealing the Father

Here in Abilene, Brooks works as a Hillcrest Church of Christ volunteer in addition to being a part-time employee at Houses for Healing, one of only three.

When Hillcrest first became involved with the ministry, “Ridgemont Baptist had a house, but they had too few people to handle the load,” Brooks explained. “Brian talked to (family and community minister) Jack Hardcastle at Hillcrest, and he got 40 volunteers.”

Massey hosted regular cookouts for volunteers on the patio between the rows of tiny houses. Brooks said getting acquainted with other Christians who believed in Houses for Healing’s mission was a big help to Hillcrest volunteers.

“We got to know people from other adopting churches — Wylie Methodist, Beltway Baptist and Hope 4 Life,” Brooks told media. “I don’t know how we could have come into a house without the advice and cooperation of those other churches”

They shared a common motivation.

“Go back to the place where Jesus revealed the father,” Massey said, by “caring for the sick.”

This article originally appeared at The Christian Chronicle.

Cheryl Mann Bacon is a Christian Chronicle contributing editor who served for 20 years as chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Abilene Christian University.