b'where you could walk in the door drunk, meet Jesus,movement. One the heroes of her book was Rev. and walk out 30 years later as the retired executiveClemme Ellis White. She was a girl from upstate New director. Today very few CEOs are former clients, dueYork who accepted Christ at an early age and moved to to the increased need for training in management,New York City to be a schoolteacher. While in the city, fundraising, operations, and so on. But many frontlineshe got involved in rescue mission work. She taught staff in missions are former clients. Currently, one-third ofduring the day and participated in street preaching Shelter KC staff are program graduates. at night, bringing all she could back to the West Side My mother, Delores Burger, authored a book titledGospel Mission, which she also directed. White was one Women Who Changed the Heart of the City. This workof the founders of the International Union of Gospel discussed some of the history of the rescue missionMissions (Citygate Network). She wrote a tract in the 1900s titled The Rescue Mission.The Rescue Missionby Rev. Clemme Ellis WhiteThe Rescue Mission is a soul saving place;to assets, from loafers to laborers. The mission a place where human wreckage is salvageddoes not pauperize men, instead it helps men to through the making over of lives by the Gospelshelp themselves.power. It is an oasis in the desert of despair; aWho founded it? Jesus Christ, the first mission haven of hope for the homeless and heavy- man, the founder of rescue missions, perpet-hearted; the salvage department of the church;ually identified Himself with mission work and the church at work downtown every night ofcontinuously interested Himself in the group the year. The rescue mission is truly an arm ofwhich every rescue mission seeks to reach. Hear the church working in the dark places of our bigHim as He reads, The Spirit of the Lord is upon cities, and usually in the slum districts. me, because he hath anointed me to preach By the grace of God, it is able not only to put athe gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal new suit on a man, but much more important, tothe brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the put a new man in the suit. captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to The mission is a relief society, an employmentset at liberty them that are bruised (Luke 4:18 bureau, a reading and rest room, a restaurant,KJV). Hear Him again as He outlines the pro-the poor mans hotel, a place to be fumigatedgram of the rescue mission, I was an hungred, in and where one may get a bath. The missionand ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave is a place devoted to the reconditioning, theme drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: rehabilitating of human derelicts who haveNaked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye been wrecked by the storms of life. The missionvisited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me is a spiritual awakener, a crime preventer; it(Matt. 25:35-36 KJV).is a soul saving and life saving institution. OurNothing was nearer to the Heart of our Lord missions keep the spiritual supreme; in a missionthan real mission and nothing more scriptural under the power of the Gospel, which is dailythan the work of the real rescue mission. proclaimed, men are changed from liabilities 17 INSTIGATE|January/February|2026'