Church of God Rev. David Bowery shows the entrance to a room in the church that will be converted into sleeping quarters for those needing to get off the street for a night.
The Maysville Church of God is working on an emergency sleeping shelter that will be called The Chapel.
The church is located on Buckner Street in the East End of Maysville.
David Bowery, pastor of the church, said the area will not be a shelter to house people permanently, but will instead be a location where those in need of a place to sleep for the night can stop.
“They will be able to come in during a window of time in the evening,” he said. “They’ll be out by 6:30 in the morning or so. We’re just trying to make a space available for the night.”
Bowery said there will be times when food will be available as well as accommodations for showers and cleaning up.
“That’s something we’re looking at implementing as a service.”
According to Bowery, Mike Manning, an intern with the church, lives next door to the church and there is an individual who stays upstairs in the building, so there will be some supervision.
Bowery said the size of the building makes it perfect to allow this program.
“This area was our church dining room, but we’re a small congregation and most of this building goes unused, so we can convert these rooms and do different things. And Lowe’s has stepped up and given us a discount on the materials in order to do this.”
Bowery showed where the opening will be for those staying inside. There is a door leading outside and up a set of concrete steps, where individuals will enter.
“We’re calling it the Chapel, because chapels can be left open 24 hours if need be, in order to pray, or whatever. Our goal is to allow people to come in for warmth, food and sleep if they need to,” he said. “We’ve always had people ask before if they could stay and we’ve let them if they needed it. But, we’ve had problems with people having full access and this takes care of that.”
According to Bowery and Manning, those who enter the Chapel will be checked to make sure nothing dangerous is brought in and there will be 24-hour monitoring with cameras.
There is still work that needs to be finished, but Bowery and Manning hope to have everything complete as soon as possible to allow individuals to begin utilizing the space.
Manning said the church is always looking for volunteers who are interested in helping.
“We started this two months ago. Our hope is to find people who would be interested in helping change our community,” he said.
Anyone interested in assisting with the project can call Bowery or Manning at 606-407-1614 or 606-584-4227.
