Colorado Newsline — which leans harder left than an Instagram influencer with a Marx poster — dropped an article about STRIDE’s street medicine program and how it’s teetering on the brink thanks to funding cuts. The piece paints a clear picture: there are angels in scrubs walking Denver’s streets helping the least of us but guess what? We’re depending on bureaucrats and budget crumbs instead of the Body of Christ.
The Bullet Point Brief
- STRIDE’s healthcare teams deliver medical care straight to folks living on asphalt and sleeping under bridges.
- Pandemic dollars made it possible, government cuts are now putting them on life support.
- Mobile units serve more than 2,000 people per year. That’s not welfare—that’s wartime triage.
- Instead of church pews filling the gap, they’re leaning back and waiting on tax-funded salvation.
- As usual, when real help is needed, faith takes a smoke break and government steps in with red tape and an IOU.
My Bottom Line
I’m going to say this clearly—I admire these STRIDE folks. They’re out there doing what most politicians won’t and some churches forgot: serving people nobody wants to see. They deliver healthcare curbside—in alleyways, under I-25 bridges, behind forgotten buildings downtown. That’s not progressive fluff; that’s New Testament grind-it-out love-in-action. But here’s where I get good and ticked off—we’re asking Washington D.C. to backfill what should be Sunday morning offering plates and community tithes making happen. Where’s the faith community?
Seriously—why is this Godly work dependent on term-limited clowns throwing ARPA dollars around like candy at a Fourth of July parade? Hell no. We’ve outsourced compassion to bureaucrats who need a committee meeting just to define ‘compassion.’ The Church was once the hospital, the shelter, the family…not just the place with matching choir robes singing from 1980s hymnals while sipping bad coffee after service. If every church in Denver gave even modestly toward this work—if Christians stepped up with their wallets instead of their Instagram bios—we wouldn’t need Uncle Sam pretending he’s Mother Teresa.
It boils down to this: we don’t have a big government problem because government’s too ambitious—we have one because God got evicted from public life and His Church clocked out early. You want small government? Live big faith. You want limited taxation? Amplify generosity. Until then, even programs as righteous as STRIDE will be held hostage by budget cycles instead of being lifted by the conviction of the faithful.
