PROGRAMING
four programs – one journey
From first contact to lasting stability, our programs walk alongside our unhoused neighbors, meeting them in shelters, at encampments, on the streets and at our Outreach Center. We are guided by patient compassion, intentional respect, unconditional love and the inherent dignity of every person we serve.
HOW WE WORK
We build relationships with our guests. That generates trust. With trust established, we offer help and keep in touch for as long as is wanted and needed.
Rooted in the conviction that true transformation begins with connection, we meet our neighbors where they are. Our work unfolds in a sequence. We begin by creating relationships through presence, listening and caring (John 13:34). We earn trust through consistency and respect. Once earned, trust allows the real obstacles to surface and a real path forward to be developed. We offer help as friends and navigators while our guests remain the drivers of their own journeys. And we are committed to follow up because the most powerful follow up is integration: yesterday’s guest becomes today’s volunteer, tomorrow’s teammate and forever friend.
Dignity on Wheels
DOW, our mobile shower unit
Wd deliver hot showers, hygiene supplies and human connection at our Outreach Center and on the streets where our unhoused neighbors live. The Dignity on Wheels trailer travels to encampments, shelter sites and community locations across St. Louis. It brings privacy, warm water, toiletries and love to people for whom both are scarce.
A shower is rarely just a shower. It’s the first time in days, sometimes weeks or months, that an unhoused person feels seen as a whole human being. That’s where a relationship begins.
Community Fellowship (ComFe)
Saturdays (except the last Saturday of each month) at our Outreach Center
Every Saturday, from 8:30 a.m. until Noon, our Outreach Center (4265 Shaw Boulevard St. Louis MO 63110) becomes a temporary home. Neighbors arrive for hot meals, hygiene supplies, clothing, bus tickets, birth certificates, IDs and, most importantly, the kind of welcome and love that’s hard to find anywhere else. Volunteers and guests share tables and conversations. Guests visit our Boutique, our Resource Room and Dignity on Wheels. Some of today’s volunteers were yesterday’s guests. ComFe is the front door of nearly everything we do.
Open every Saturday except the last of the month, when our team is out and about in community with Dignity on Wheels, our mobile shower service.
Winter Safe Haven
Cold weather shelter when exposure turns life-threatening
When temperatures drop into life-threatening territory, Winter Safe Haven cooperates with St. Louis motels to give our unhoused neighbors something simple yet essential: a warm room, a real bed and a door that locks. From November through March, we cover motel guest nights for families with children who would otherwise face the cold.
In winter 2024–25, we provided 482 motel guest nights, In so doing we served 26 families with 43 children who deserved a season that wasn’t spent shivering.
Discipleship
As a Christian ministry, inExcelsis board members, staff and volunteers reach out to guests with the Word of God and Jesus’ love and teachings.
Bible Exploration
During Community Fellowship hours, neighbors who wish to step into a brief reflection on Scripture can do so. At the same time, our Outreach Center continues to deliver showers and supplies to anyone who prefers not to. Afterward, we share a community meal.
Bible Studies
A weekly small-group study is held at a local transitional housing center. Our spiritual leaders collaborate with shelter staff to deliver The Word. All residents who choose to attend are welcome.
Delivering our programs relies on people and donations.
Volunteers are the backbone of every Saturday at ComFe, every shower delivered, every motel night funded and the Bibles and Christian materials used in discipleship activities . Monthly donors are the reason we can promise guests that our ministry will continue to do its good works.