Site Mission:

Serving our neighbors in need, transforming lives and communities in response to Christ's call.

About the Site:

Criminal Background Check - Required

M.U.S.T Ministries serves approximately 1000 persons per week, many of them homeless or near homeless persons. M.U.S.T. Ministries operates many programs, including food pantries, clothes closets, financial assistance, employment services, emergency shelter, transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, and a free health clinic.

Students will work in a number of the following areas: in the Elizabeth Inn Shelter in the late afternoons and evenings, assisting with hospitality, intake and case management, and in Weekday Services, assisting with hospitality, intake and case management. Students may also work as 'proto-Chaplains' at the noonday meal, being able to sit and listen to the spiritual, psychological, and communal/social needs of our friends who come to lunch every day during the week. On the job, students will work under the supervision of staffers on either the MUST Marietta or MUST Housing staff.

The two largest windows for students to work are Monday-Friday, 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. and Monday-Sunday, 4:30 p.m.-10:30 p.m. The Elizabeth Inn Emergency Night Shelter operates seven days a week, weekdays from 4:30 p.m. until 6:30 a.m. and all day on weekends. The Loaves and Fishes Community Kitchen provides a hot lunch meal to anyone in need in the community, Monday-Friday. Monday-Friday, M.U.S.T operates its Weekday Services (i.e. hot meals, food pantry, clothing closet, showers/laundry service for homeless persons) for persons from the community from 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.

Both Euro-Americans and African Americans, men and women access MUST resources. Nearly half of the recipients of MUST's services are children. The Latino population is on the rise, with Latinos coming close to comprising the majority population in a few of the Weekday Services, and make up nearly 3/4 of our clinic patients.

A Student's Perspective:

Brad says:

"My experience in service at M.U.S.T Ministries and in regular communal reflection with my ConEd group was not only the best thing about my first year at Candler; it was one of the most profoundly transformative experiences of my life as a Christian. Rather than plopping me in a church and saying, 'Go!' I first learned the all-important practices of life, friendship, struggle, and service with the poor - specifically at M.U.S.T - men, women, and children experiencing homelessness.

These practices established two central features of discipleship to Jesus that, now, will never leave my life: first, that a hungry stomach remains hungry regardless of the content of abstract religious speech; second, that the gospel therefore is only faithful to the extent that it is embodied and not merely thought, read, written, or spoken. I met Christ in the faces of those I came to know at MUST not only because they were in the midst of an oppressive experience, but precisely because they spoke and taught and lived the gospel for and before me. As I shared more than once with my ConEd reflection group, I was the one listening at the feet of M.U.S.T's homeless theologians. For that, and for so much more, I am forever thankful that I was given the privilege of serving at M.U.S.T Ministries."