Today we’d like to introduce you to Dustin & Christina Hite.
Hi Dustin & Christina, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
We both grew up in small, rural towns in central IL, just about 45 minutes from one another. Our communities were fairly homogenous, made up of mostly white folks with a midwestern work ethic and some sort of connection to church on Sundays. Our families raised us with safety, stability, and faith. Both of us have two loving parents who are still married & living in our childhood homes. We’re close to our siblings and didn’t experience a great deal of adversity as we grew up.
We met at a small liberal arts university in 2002 in the “city” that was between our two towns. We quickly became a couple, served together in the campus ministry, and were married in 2007 after moving to Tulsa, Oklahoma to continue our education.
After too many years of graduate school, we finished our degrees and served together on church staff in Tulsa before moving back to central IL in 2013 for Dustin to begin a full-time pastoral job at a small church there. We were grateful to be back closer to family as we began the licensing process to become foster parents.
Christina joined Dustin on the church staff and began overseeing the church’s weekly breakfast that was served to people experiencing homelessness. Week in and week out, we began to share a meal and build friendship with 75-100 people in our community who had been pushed to the side.
Some of our friends around the tables each week were dealing with mental illness or were differently-abled. Some had been through foster care as children and never found the stability of a permanent safe family. Some were struggling with substance use and others found themselves without a home because they’d experienced domestic violence. Some were unhoused for a season, and others spent years waiting for a home, living in shelters or on the streets of Peoria.
While we were building these friendship weekly, we welcomed two little girls (sisters) into our family through foster care. We became a family of four overnight, and after nearly three more years of living in limbo in the system that is child welfare, our girls officially became part of our family forever through adoption. Together, we continued to serve breakfast weekly, building more connections and a commitment to care for those who were pushed to the margins.
On a short getaway trip to Austin, Texas in the spring of 2019, we took a tour of a one-of-a-kind neighborhood – Community First! Village. We were excited to explore the unique approach to coming alongside those who’ve experienced long-term homelessness, but we had no idea how incredible the place would be. After seeing the village full of tiny homes, work opportunities, a community garden, car care shop, forge, woodshop, art house, and most importantly – a community infused with hospitality and belonging – we were floored.
Throughout the tour, our guide shared his experience living in the village as a missional neighbor, someone who had not experienced homelessness but committed to live and serve in this neighborhood. There was a team of about 30 missionals who were neighbors with the 200 folks who had been unhoused, and from the moment he shared about that opportunity to live and serve there, something shifted for us.
The concept and the community captured our hearts, and as soon as we got back in the rental car, we began to explore what it could look like to redesign our life.
After a nine-month mentorship from missionals who were currently living and serving at Community First, we resigned from our pastoral positions, sold our three-bedroom home we thought we’d be in until we couldn’t climb the stairs, and moved our family of four to Austin where a tiny home we’d purchased was waiting for us to join the GOODNESS that is Community First! Village.
We do our best to approach neighboring from a trauma-informed, pastoral approach, leading with acceptance and love as we build trust with our neighbors who have so often been in relationships that were anything but steady and safe.
These days, the village continues to expand. Each month, we’re celebrating about 15 new neighbors who are exiting homelessness and unlocking the door to their new tiny home.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Smooth? Definitely not.
Churches are messy. Child welfare is messy. Homelessness, poverty, mental illness, and substance use can be really, really, messy. The systems that we’ve designed to “help” are incredibly broken – or perhaps – the systems are working in just the way they were designed – to keep those who are already struggling down. Sometimes, things can seem unfixable.
Maybe that’s why we found the idea of living right alongside people to be so incredibly compelling. When you’re not just thinking about “issues” and you’re actually living together as neighbors, especially in a community full of tiny homes, you can’t hide from one another. My neighbors know when I’m having a hard day as a parent, and we know when they’re dealing with loneliness.
We celebrate birthdays together, sit on our porches and chat about the dogs in the neighborhood, and gather when someone passes away too early from chronic health conditions that developed while they lived outside for a decade. All of that messiness makes us want to draw closer.
As the founder of Mobile Loaves and Fishes, Alan Graham says, “Housing alone will never solve homelessness, but community will.” And that’s because homelessness is representative of a bigger issue – the lack of a social safety net that will hold strong when life gets hard, as it does for all of us.
We hope that’s what we’re doing here – fashioning an incredibly strong net that will hold when we all struggle.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
One particularly special part of our journey has been launching A Faithful Presence (AFP), a ministry that helps our family, friends, and partners stay connected to life at Community First. It’s through the generous support of our partners with AFP that we are able to devote many more hours as intentional neighbors in the village. Dustin serves as Chief Peacemaker for A Faithful Presence, and it’s a role named for his unique gift of offering a gentle, non-anxious presence to everyone he meets.
We aim to use our pastoral experience to build steady, safe relationships, focusing on authenticity and shared life together and planning for ups and downs along the way.
Each of our neighbors has walked through multiple traumatic events including, but definitely not limited to, long-term homelessness, and that means it takes time to build real trust. We do our best to show up daily, listen well, and then listen some more. Of course, there are tasks to be done. We give rides to the grocery store, make sure new neighbors know how to get around the village and access services or serve a meal here and there. But mostly, we just keep showing up with a desire to really learn from and listen to our friends.
We are honored to live and serve with A Faithful Presence, and it’s a joy to raise our girls in this beautiful community.
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@afaithfulpresence.org
- Website: www.afaithfulpresence.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afaithfulpresence/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/afaithfulpresence
