âThey werenât strangers. They were family.â
Thereâs a moment in the late 1980s when John Edwards walked into a shelter called New Image, years before Church of Greater Works even had a name. He wasnât there to preach. He was there with clothes in his hands and a car outside, ready to drive someone to church, to help someone get off drugs, to help someone find their way toward a trucking career and a life that felt like their own again. He wasnât building an organization yet. He was just showing up.
Thatâs where this story starts, not with a building, not with a 501(c)(3), but with one man who believed something simple: the homeless men filling those shelters werenât strangers. They were family. Heâd later describe it as a word from God, and it became the conviction that would define everything Church of Greater Works became.
For years, this work was funded entirely out of pocket, by Pastor Edwards and his mother, drawing on her retirement income to keep people housed and fed. Between 1999 and 2010, what became Church of Greater Works was operating two properties at once, a seven-bedroom home on Trinity Street housing 26 people, and an annex on 121st Street housing another 18. Veterans lived there. Men rebuilding their lives after addiction lived there. AB 109 reentry clients lived there too, their parole officers stopping by regularly to check in, because Church of Greater Works had become a place the system itself trusted.
One of the men who came through New Image in those early years, Tremon McZeal, later received a service award from Los Angeles County. He went on to do the same work himself, out in the field, connecting other homeless residents to the help he once needed. Thatâs the kind of ripple this organization has been creating for four decades, not in headlines, but in lives.
Along the way, Church of Greater Works partnered with LA Mission, Union Rescue Mission, and the Long Beach Mission, a partnership that continues today through regular beach outings for homeless individuals, simple, human moments of joy for people whose lives rarely include them. The church was even approved for a HealthRIGHT 360 contract to formally fund its housing work, one of several times this organization was found qualified and awarded real opportunities that, for reasons outside their control, never came through with actual funding. They kept going anyway.
âThe homeless men filling these shelters were not strangers but family.â
Today, that same belief still drives the work. Church of Greater Works continues its rehabilitation housing program, still rooted in the idea that reentry doesnât succeed through housing alone, it succeeds when people are reconnected to the relationships that give their lives meaning and accountability. Four decades in, the mission hasnât changed. Only the scale of whatâs needed has grown.
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đ 510 W. 121st Street, Los Angeles, CA 90044
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