It started with one question: who is my neighbor?
The story of how a vision God gave Brian Massey became a neighborhood of hope for families across the Big Country.
Every week, families from small towns all over West Texas drive into Abilene behind an ambulance, or toward a chemotherapy chair, or to a NICU where a baby born too soon is fighting for every breath. Many of them are hours from home. Many can't afford a hotel for a night — let alone for weeks.
Some sleep in waiting-room chairs. Some sleep in their cars. Others make the long drive home and back again, day after day, because there's simply no other option. And in the middle of the hardest season of their lives, they're doing it alone.
Brian Massey saw that need up close. And he couldn't stop thinking about the man in Jesus' parable who stopped on the road to Jericho — the Good Samaritan who bandaged a stranger's wounds, set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn and paid for his stay. "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man?" Jesus asked. "The one who had mercy on him."
"Go and do likewise."— Luke 10:37
houses open
A house for healing — for anyone who needs one.
In 2018, the Lord gave Brian a vision: a place in Abilene where anyone facing a medical crisis away from home could find a warm, private, dignified place to stay — free — no matter who they are or where they come from.
Other cities have hospitality houses built by corporations and charities. Brian asked a different question: how much greater would it be if the Church did this — not one congregation, but many of them, together?
That same year the first four tiny houses opened on Hickory Street, each one named for a Big Country county and each one cared for by a local church family.
From four houses to a neighborhood
Built largely by volunteer hands and adopted, house by house, by churches and partners who said yes.
Four houses open
Nolan, Veteran, Brown and Callahan welcome their first guests. God also gives Brian a vision connecting Abilene to Jerusalem.
Phase 2 rises
Sixteen more tiny houses go up across four blocks — named for Big Country counties, plus a house for First Responders — on land acquired with help from the Kinney family.
Twenty homes serving
Families of ICU and NICU patients, dialysis and transplant patients, and many more find rest — more than 17,000 nights of free lodging and counting.
What's next
A new North Side property for NICU families and transplant patients, a staff house on campus, and ten more homes underway.
A place where the Church works as one.
From the beginning, Brian has believed Houses for Healing is about more than roofs and beds. It's a place where believers from different churches, denominations, backgrounds and ages serve shoulder to shoulder — and in doing so, answer Jesus' prayer that His people would be one.
"…that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you… so that the world may believe that you have sent me."— John 17:21
That's why every house is adopted by a church or partner who welcomes guests, brings meals, offers rides and prays with families who want it. Christ's burden, our calling.
A word from Brian Massey
— Brian Massey, Founder & President
The next chapter gets written by people who say yes.
Adopt a house with your church, give toward the next home, or join a volunteer team. Every family we welcome is a story you helped write.