KEY POINTS:
Auckland's venerable Methodist Mission has decided that its 157-year-old name now reeks of soup kitchens and colonialist missionaries.
The organisation has adopted a new name - "Lifewise" - and a new strategy aimed at helping homeless people into homes, work and sports.
The new name is part of a plan to go beyond just feeding the homeless at its Airedale St centre.
Mental health workers from the Taylor Centre in Ponsonby, counsellors from the Community Alcohol and Drugs Service (CADS) and its Maori arm, Te Atea Marino, and life-skills tutors from Odyssey House have been brought in to help the homeless back into mainstream society.
And a homelessness worker from Liverpool in England, Stephen McLuckie, has been hired to, among other things, encourage the centre's clients to play sport.
He organised homeless football teams to play in Homeless World Cups at Edinburgh in 2005, Capetown in 2006 and Copenhagen last year.
This year's Homeless World Cup will be in Melbourne in December, and he is working with Wellington's Downtown Community Ministry to recruit players and funding for an NZ team.
"I'm hoping to get trials going here, but my main interest at the moment is getting homeless people involved in football and sport," Mr McLuckie said.
"Homeless people are excluded from a lot of things, including basic day-to-day activities that other people take for granted."
A homeless count last June found 65 people sleeping rough under bridges and rough shelters within a 3km radius of the Sky Tower. A further 69 were in the Airedale St night shelter and other temporary accommodation.
Mission superintendent John Murray, who becomes Lifewise executive director, said Lifewise would continue to be part of the Methodist Church but it would no longer be just about doling out food - what he called "rice-bowl Christianity".
"The whole Biblical theology is about life. It's about abundant life. So it seemed to us we were about enabling people to gain a sense of life," he said.
"Our task is not to do things but to help people do things for themselves. Many of our homeless people are not stupid. They are an oppressed people, a disadvantaged people. They need to turn their lives around."
Under the new branding, the Airedale Centre will be called the "Lifewise Centre", the mission's services for the elderly will become "Lifewise Homecare" and its West Auckland Family Services become "Lifewise Family Services".
* www.homelessworldcup.org
