The homeless problem in the United States and in Tulsa is growing and John 3:16 Mission, a Christian church, is expanding its facilities to accommodate that growing need.

John 3:16 Mission just broke ground on an expansion project called The Refuge, located next to the former Chouteau Elementary school building which the mission previously purchased in 2013.

“It’s called The Refuge after the cities of refuge in Israel,” said the Rev. Steve Whitaker, senior pastor and CEO of John 3:16 Mission. “If somebody got sideways of someone or was accused of murder, they could flee to one of the cities of refuge and they had one year to settle their issue.

“So our one-year program is going to find its home there at the Mission for men and women at The Refuge.

The Mission will build three additional buildings. Women will be housed in a new 10,000-square-foot building next to the former school. John 3:16 will construct a 15,000 square-foot work training center/administrative building and a 25,000-square-foot distribution center for donations for the homeless.

“There will be 30 beds for women and that will be a residential setting for them, with semi-private rooms,” Whitaker said. “And a woman’s day program is going to be very interesting to see how all that plays out. There’s going to be a jobs’ program on that site…Most homeless people need to go back to work. We are going to help them with that.”

In 2008, Whitaker said he had a conviction that the Mission needed to do more for homeless.

“There was a woman who slept on the front porch of the Mission every night and she asked when are you going to do a program for somebody like me?” Whitaker said. “It took a while and then all we had was an in-shelter at that point. There was no putting the women’s shelter in with the men’s shelter.

“So, we started a day program. That worked pretty good for a while and we helped a lot of people find their way home.”

In 2017, there was a time of record violence against the homeless women in Tulsa and a record number of deaths.

“A lot of people in Tulsa don’t know that that happened because frankly, sadly, a homeless woman dying in Tulsa is not news,” Whitaker said. “It doesn’t find its way into the newspaper. We were incensed. We felt like God gave us a mandate to do something about that.”

That’s when they bought the surplus elementary school and expanded the program for women. And then they purchased 150 acres surrounding the school and they have put in a huge garden, including bee hives.

“We are already growing our own food,” Whitaker said. “We have bee farming. We have a T-shirt shop. We are just getting started creating industry for the homeless.”

John 3:16 Mission has been providing Christian sharing, shelter, food and clothing to homeless Tulsans since 1952.

In 2020, John 3:16 provided more than 200,000 meals, more than 45,000 shelter beds and nearly 15,000 articles of clothing.

“I’m not sure that I could recall all the times that God has answered prayers, big and small,” Whitaker said.