Streetwalking in Emmaus

A four-car garage stands behind the brick six-flat in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood that houses Emmaus Ministries. On the back wall of the garage is a fourteen-by-sixty-foot mural, depicting a modern version of the story of the prodigal son. In the center of the mural, a father wearing a carpenter's belt welcomes a young man in tattered clothes. The young man has a broken arm and only one shoe.

Behind the two men are the words, "Welcome home, my son."

Welcoming home the prodigal son describes the work of Emmaus. Founded by John Green in 1990, Emmaus volunteers and staff reach out to hustlers, young men involved in male prostitution on the streets. While no one knows the exact number of hustlers, Chicago police arrested more than 2,600 men for prostitution in 1998.

Many come from broken homes, or were abused as children. Green tells the story about Joseph, who he met at the drop-in center at Emmaus.

"Every Wednesday night we have a family dinner for the guys in the ministry center. One night, while my wife, Carolyn, was setting up the table, Joseph comes in. He'd only been coming by for a couple of days, so I didn't quite know his whole story. He sat on the couch with me as guys were milling around and getting set up. Then he leaned over to me and said, 'You know John, I have never done this before.'"

Green wasn't sure what Joseph was talking about. He was concerned that Joseph thought he was a potential trick, or sexual customer. Green asked Joseph what he meant.

"He was really embarrassed," Green says, "and he said, 'Well, this family dinner thing. I have never done this before, but I have seen it on TV.' Then it dawned on me. This was a twenty-eight-year-old man who had never sat down at a family dinner table, and he was nervous. He didn't know how to react and he didn't know what to do. And then we starting hearing his story, how he had been abused since he was four months old and had been taken out of the family home. From there, he moved from group home to group home, then to the juvenile detention center, the penitentiary and out on to the street. In the course of that life he never had a family dinner. That just took my breath away. That's what we are trying to provide here--that kind of surrogate home for guys who never had one."

Green, originally from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, came to the Chicago area in 1983 as a student at Wheaton College. He dropped out in 1986, and went to New York City, where he worked with runaway kids and street ministry with Covenant House. He returned to Wheaton in 1989, and started doing outreach in the Uptown neighborhood. He talked several of his classmates and professors into joining him, eventually building a core group of eight volunteers. In the fall of 1990, that group officially organized Emmaus Ministries.

The group had three goals when they started, says Green. They wanted to start an outreach program, a drop-in center, and a residential program.

"I thought that we could rather easily do those three things in a matter of months," says Green, laughing. "Nine years later, we have finally fulfilled that initial vision."

The outreach program started first, followed by the start of the drop-in center, also know as the ministry center in 1993. In 1996, the Greens bought a six-flat building at 921 W. Wilson Avenue, and Emmaus moved to that new location. The offices occupy a first floor apartment. The basement was renovated to include a full kitchen and three bathrooms for the drop-in center. In 1999, Emmaus started a residential program in one of the other apartments. The Greens live in the building, and also rent space to a college urban-internship program.

Every night, at least one team of Emmaus volunteers is out on the streets from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. Each team is made up of one man and one woman. Clad in hats and black shirts with the Emmaus logo, they hang out in the gay bars, parking lots, and streets where male prostitution is prevalent.

They spend most of their time just talking to people. They listen and try to build relationships. They also hand out Emmaus business cards, and invite the men they meet to stop by the ministry center.

Getting people to stop by the center takes time, says Alfred Coleman, ministry coordinator. "One of the guys has been involved with the ministry center for a year and a half," says Coleman, "but his first contact with us was seven years ago. It took him six years to get here."

Coleman, thirty-six, started out as a volunteer outreach minister after meeting Green in 1992. He joined the staff in September 1996. Before he met Green, he was the director of a soup kitchen, homeless shelter, and feeding program. "I felt like God was calling me to do a little more front-line ministry," he says.

The ministry center is open five days a week from noon to 2 p.m., and on Saturdays from 4 to 8 p.m. It is also open from 2 to 8 p.m. on Wednesdays. Much of the time is spent on practical concerns. Guests can eat a meal, do laundry, take a shower, work on their resumés, or look for a job. They can also use the Emmaus address to get their mail--a key concern as many of the men don't have a permanent place to live.

"Each day when a guy comes in they have to have a goal," says Coleman, "whether it is making phone calls, working on a resumé, or preparing for a job interview. We do a lot of general things --feeding, clothing, job support, but our main thrust is realizing that they are all individuals and need a certain amount of support and care. We also set up sponsorships, where a guy who is serious about changing his life meets with [a sponsor] once a week. The [guest] is accountable to the sponsor and the sponsor supports them by praying for them or by encouraging them."

Coleman says that the number of men who drop by can vary from as few as three to as many as twenty-five. The numbers jump dramatically in the summer, as many of the guys work in places like New Orleans in the winter, and move north to Chicago for the summer.

Aaron, one of the guests in the ministry center, had been working as a prostitute on Hubbard Street when he met one of the Emmaus outreach teams. Wearing a University of Colorado sweatshirt and a baseball cap, he says that he turned to prostitution after getting out of prison, where he served a ten-year term for dealing drugs.

"I promised God I would not go back to selling drugs," says Aaron. "Nothing is worse than making a vow to God and breaking it."

He says that he is having a hard time keeping that promise. "It's so hard to be out on the street," he says, "wondering whether I am going to eat or sleep, and knowing that I could call my old friends and go back to dealing drugs. I am not going back to that life."

Because many employers won't hire convicted felons, Aaron has had a hard time finding a job. He says he lost his last job when his employer discovered that he lied about his conviction record.

As one of the other men passes by, Aaron jumps up and yells, "Seven o'clock, remember, the guy told me to be here at seven, across the street at the circus." Just down the street from Emmaus are several trucks carrying carnival equipment. The carnival will be hiring laborers for a couple of days' work.

Aaron holds up a photo taken at the Easter dinner Emmaus hosted. He is in the bottom right of the photo, next to John and a group of about twelve. "This is real nice," he says. He looks at me and says, "This is the only picture I have." A few weeks later, Green says that Aaron has dropped out of sight. A woman has been calling the center, telling the staff that Aaron disappeared with her car.

Many of the men that Emmaus works with have multiple obstacles to overcome. Some have criminal records and many have drug addictions. Many have no family to turn to, or may have even been put out on the streets to earn money for their family.

"About 75 percent of the guys are heterosexual in their orientation," says Green, "but are engaging in homosexual activity. So to go out and perform they start doing a few shots, smoking some dope, or snort some coke. That begins to create an addiction and to feed that addiction they have to prostitute more and to prostitute more they use more."

Green says that the cycle of addiction and prostitution can go on for five to six years, until, like the prodigal son, "they come to their senses."

"When you are in a relationship with a person," says Green, "and through the grace of God, you help a prodigal son come to his senses--that is a powerful place to be. To me, that is such an awesome privilege to be used by God in that way. Sometimes that happens right out on the streets, while you are just talking to a guy and he is hustling, and then he starts sharing, 'I am just so sick and tired of being sick and tired.' "

Helping someone get off the streets takes a great deal of time and energy. Emmaus's residential program provides short term assistance, giving people a place to stay while they await a long-term placement in a drug treatment center or other program.

"There's a lot of restoration that has to go on in the lives of these guys," says Green. "We really struggle with seeing guys make a few steps ahead and then take a step back. They make a few more steps ahead and a few steps back--it's definitely a cycle of change and growth that people go through."

But there are successes. A number of guys have made it off the streets and into new lives. One of them, named Leslie, recently stopped in to see John with his five-year-old son.

"Leslie was baptized at Uptown Baptist Church a couple of weeks ago and it has been so exciting to see the growth in him, but it has been in fits and starts. Six years ago, he was a hard-core male prostitute and crack cocaine addict. He has had a couple relapses in the last couple of years but he has held it together. What is a success about this is that it has not just changed his life--this has now changed generations. If he stays on the right path, he is not going to abuse his son like his father abused him. That cycle of abuse has stopped in this life and to me that is exciting, because we are literally changing generations."

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