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For nearly two thousand years, churches have been at the forefront of helping the poor and disadvantaged, but now many communities are trying to stop this from happening.\u00a0 Earlier today, I was absolutely stunned when I came across an article that talked about how a church in Dundalk, Maryland has been fined $12,000<\/a> for allowing the homeless to sleep outside the church at night\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cI showed up Wednesday morning to find a citation on the door that said we\u2019re going to be fined $12,000 and have a court date because we have unhoused homeless people sleeping outside the church at night,\u201d said Reverend Katie Grover with the Patapsco United Methodist Church.<\/p>\n Grover added that the men and women who sleep outside their doors do so because they have nowhere else to go and because they feel safe there.<\/p>\n \u201cWe feel we here as a church that it\u2019s scriptural mandate that\u2019s it an imperative to care for the least, the last, the lost, the poor, the hungry,\u201d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The authorities in Dundalk say that the church is running a \u201cnon-permitted rooming and boarding house\u201d, and the severity of this fine is likely to put the church in significant financial difficulty if it is forced to pay it.\u00a0 You can watch a local news report discussing this story on YouTube right here<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n