This past week, I had the privilege of participating in a panel discussion on the history and practice of behavioral health outreach, specifically for people experiencing homelessness. One of the panelists was the Rev. Craig Rennebhom, a longtime behavioral health advocate in the Seattle area. He developed and worked as a chaplain for the ecumenical companionship ministry called the Mental Health Chaplaincy, which has taken off nationwide.

The panel was for the 2024 Annual Outreach Academy, which provided training and networking opportunities for outreach workers in Washington State. It was put on by the Washington State Health Care Authority and the University of Washington Department of Rehabilitation Medicine. He had done an earlier workshop on the companionship model for outreach workers who were early in their work. Before and after the panel, I enjoyed hearing participants thank Craig for his workshop and overall work. A longtime outreach worker from the Downtown Emergency Service Center stopped to tell Craig how much his book (written with David Paul), Souls in the Hands of a Tender God: Stories of the Search for Home and Healing on the Streets. His book has been helpful to me as well in my work on homelessness over the years.

On February 2, 2016, I interviewed Craig from my Skid Road oral history project. He told me that his "deepest bias" is as follows: "My time at the hospital working with folks who were homeless and mentally ill, I realized that if we can't bring some level of peace to our neighbors on the streets and our communities, there's no hope for us being a more peaceable presence in the larger world. We need to learn how to be peaceable and healing at the most fundamental levels of our common life as families, neighbors, cities, and towns--communities."