Pacific Beer Garden

There are some secular organizations that are just giving up. They are charged to help people out of bondage, but, apart from the gospel, they are finding it impossible, so they are just giving up. That’s what Seattle’s Downtown Emergency Services Center is doing. It's spending $11 million on permanent housing for homeless alcoholics.

Seattle taxpayers were fed up with spending $50,000 per alcoholic, every year, on recovery programs, prison, and emergency room visits. The solution is 1811 Eastlake, a housing complex that accommodates 75 alcoholics. The residents are allowed to drink all they want, and they don't have to be in a recovery program—as long as they're off the streets.

Bill Hobson, the program's executive director, believes most alcoholics can't change. "Once you're an alcoholic, you're always an alcoholic," he says, citing the example of an alcoholic who got drunk 10 minutes after leaving a detox facility he had been in for two months. Hobson and his group believe some people are beyond hope and help.

Contrast Bill Hobson with George and Sarah Clarke. In 1880 Colonel Clarke who had been housing his alcoholic outreach in a Chicago storefront, found larger quarters, at what is now 67 East Van Buren Street, in a building vacated by the notorious Pacific Beer Garden. Later, Dwight L. Moody, fresh from evangelistic meetings in England, suggested that the Clarkes drop out the word Beer and add the word Mission, and call it the Pacific Garden Mission. And ever since 1880, Pacific Garden Mission has seen thousands of alcoholics changed. How? Well, this is how their mission statement for their radio program, Unshackled, states it:

Without Jesus Christ, we are all shackled by sin — by our wrong choices, disobedience and selfish motives. But God is at work, and the power of Christ sets us free of our bondage. We are... "UNSHACKLED!"

That’s what the cross does in our lives. That’s why we can be confident in the cross. It provides a new position and a new power. But we can also be confident in the cross when we understand: