Jon Hopkins sat at the front of a mostly empty Concordia Lutheran Church during an outreach meeting last Wednesday and traded ideas with seven other volunteers about how to make new churchgoers feel welcome.
During the brief 20-minute meeting, he filled the vacant church with boisterous laughter and jokes and he listened intently to others.
Since joining Concordia Lutheran in 2009, Hopkins has made it his goal, in more ways than one, to have everyone in Concord feel cared for, especially the city’s homeless population.
“When I first assumed to be the pastor here, one of the issues that was kind of front and center in our city and in our church was homelessness in general,” he said. “The people of the church wanted to get involved and start doing things around homelessness.”
Inspired by his congregation’s desire to make a difference, Hopkins started Family Promise chapter in Greater Concord, part of a nonprofit that helps unhoused families with young children achieve independence.
Family Promise is a national organization with over 200 affiliates in 40 states. Hopkins founded the Concord chapter a decade ago, and at its 10th anniversary gala on Friday, he will be awarded the Pillar of Promise award for his instrumental role.
Hopkins became involved with Family Promise during his time in seminary in Philadelphia. Coming to Concord and discussing homelessness with other church leaders, he learned that there were a few winter shelters in the capital region but no dedicated support for families. From there, with the help of leaders from St. Paul’s Church and East Congregational Church, Hopkins set out to create a Family Promise chapter in the city.
The process took a while, he said. At least 13 houses of faith needed to be on board to establish a chapter, but the internal politics of some congregations made it difficult. Hopkins was also told that some people tried to start Family Promise 20 years before he did and failed. In spite of all the doubts, he and his team persisted.
“I really believed [in] it,” he said. “I have seen it work.”
Family Promise in Greater Concord launched in 2010 and has helped over 350 people start the transition to independence and stable housing.
Misty Keller, a 34-year-old mom of three, stayed with Family Promise for eight months until she was able to get a home on Loudon Road, where she has now lived for nearly a year.
“They helped me so much,” she said. “I wouldn’t be where I am right now if it wasn’t for them helping me get into housing.”
Keller, a licensed nursing assistant, said that she has lived between Nashua and Ohio since she was 15 years old. She lived with her ex-husband in Nashville, Tenn., for about six years until they separated and she moved back to Ohio with her children to be closer to her family.
But Keller said Ohio didn’t have the resources she needed for a fresh start. She worked odd jobs and found it “hard to get on my feet down there.” After 11 months, she moved back to Nashua, where she experienced homelessness. City hall referred her to Family Promise.
The 13 congregations affiliated with the Greater Concord chapter have designated spaces and rooms for the people they help. Although Keller said the rhythm of moving from church to church every week was hard to get used to at first, she is thankful that she and her kids — now 17, 13 and 5 years old — were fed a homemade meal every night and were taken care of by Family Promise volunteers.
“We’re very grateful to them,” she said. “They’re very nice people, and they give their time to us and stuff, and make sure that we have somewhere nice and warm to come into.”
Keller said Family Promise is a lot more hands-on than other shelters. The organization helped her apply for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, helped fix her car and helped put down a first month’s rent deposit for her home.
Paul Russo, a longtime member of Hopkins’s church and the chair of the local Family Promise chapter’s board of trustees, said once people leave the program, the organization checks in with them and helps with any issues they may be facing.
The number of children experiencing homelessness increased by 33% between 2023 and 2024, the largest increase compared to other age groups, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Russo said families are often separated because of shelter requirements or foster care. Family Promise wants to keep the unit intact.
“What we focus on is families and children because we have the systems in place, and they can keep them together and get them off the streets ultimately, and back into their own place,” Russo said.
Hopkins, who no longer works directly on the chapter’s board of trustees but continues coordinating his church’s involvement, said he is glad that he kept pushing to make a chapter in Concord and he is thankful for all the people that helped him get it started.
“I hope that people see that it was really a shared endeavor, and we did this together as a community of faith, and we did it together as a community of Concord, too,” he said.
Those that worked with Hopkins over the years said he is steadfast in uplifting people in the Greater Concord area.
“He’s very, very committed to not only the church community, but the overall community in Concord, and a person that’s very involved in working with many different groups and organizations and people to the betterment of our environment and community,” Russo said.
Hopkins said he hopes the anniversary gala will bring more visibility to the organization so more people experiencing homelessness in the Concord area can take advantage of its resources.
“I think those of us who are in positions where we get to help people is a great gift,” he said. “I’m very proud or just ecstatic that we were able to pull this off and have a program that really does help people and helps us as people of faith to lift that up.”
