Jeff Finley

Jeff Finley

Light + Life Executive Editor

Jeff Finley is this magazine’s executive editor. He joined the Light+Life team in 2011 after a dozen years of reporting and editing for Sun-Times Media. He is a member of John Wesley Free Methodist Church where his wife, Jen, serves as the lead pastor.

by Jeff Finley

When Rick Reynolds’ four decades of urban ministry are celebrated June 1 during a party at First Free Methodist Church, don’t expect the typical tributes to a retiring pastor. After all, the clerical collar-wearing Free Methodist elder is more likely to be seen on Seattle’s streets than behind a pulpit.

“Probably the number one thing I want to preach about is the redeemability of every human being,” said Reynolds during a May 19 conversation with Light + Life.

His résumé includes a dozen years of leading a church, but his longest assignment has been serving as the executive director of Operation Nightwatch for the past 28 years. The interdenominational organization has a mission of reducing “the impact of poverty and homelessness, in keeping with Jesus’ teaching to love our neighbors” and a vision of “no tents, no litter, no people alone under a bridge, no seniors without homes because there are friends, housing, health care, treatment for all.”

“It started in 1967 when a local Covenant pastor organized clergy from all different denominations — Roman Catholic to charismatic — to go out on the street,” Reynolds said. “They got formally incorporated in the mid-1970s.”

A short time later, Reynolds became acquainted with the nonprofit organization, but he didn’t expect to lead it someday.

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“I wasn’t thinking about ordination at that point.”

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“In 1977, I was in a men’s discipleship group, and our pastor brought us down to meet with the director of Nightwatch, and I heard about it and I thought, ‘Well, that’d be fun,’ but I wasn’t thinking about ordination at that point,” said Reynolds, whose jobs have included working for Catholic Community Services and in a nursing home. Eventually, however, “my church hired me to be an associate pastor and put me through seminary.”

He volunteered with Operation Nightwatch while earning a master’s degree in theology from Fuller Seminary Northwest. After a dozen years of leading a local church, he mentioned to the Rev. Norman Riggins, Operation Nightwatch’s first paid director, that he was ready for a change. Riggins was preparing to retire, and Reynolds soon became his successor.

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“[Jesus] was fearless showing love to people, and I don’t know exactly why with that example and the call on our lives we aren’t fully engaged with homeless people.”

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“I think a lot of us turn away from homeless people because we’re worried about our own personal safety, and yet here I am after 28 years as a worker and 10 years as a volunteer, and I’ve very rarely ever felt any anxiety about my own personal safety,” Reynolds said. “Jesus touched lepers. He was fearless showing love to people, and I don’t know exactly why with that example and the call on our lives we aren’t fully engaged with homeless people.”

He said homelessness is “a growing problem, not just in Seattle but around the country. What’s happening is that we have a lot of people that are economically dislocated. There’s a lot of social inequities in our society right now. We’ve got a lot of people that are totally priced out of the housing market in Seattle and without any real hope of getting into a place unless it’s got some kind of big subsidy.”

Payscale.com ranks Seattle’s housing expenses as 94% higher than the national average. The city’s median rent is $2,220, according to the Hotpads apartment rental website.

“They continue to tear down older affordable homes and build condos for a million dollars,” Reynolds said. “Our little home that is in Seattle’s Central District was valued at well over a million dollars on Zillow. It’s just mind-blowing to me how anybody could afford that, but then, of course, a lot of people in this community are making more than a small nonprofit executive director.”

For a small nonprofit, Operation Nightwatch makes a big impact with efforts ranging from meals to permanent housing.

“We have 24 seniors in our housing program,” said Reynold, who added that the program offers “small sleeping rooms with shared bathrooms and kitchens. It’s permanent housing for people over age 62 below 50% median income, but the average income in the building’s about $1,200 a month, and most of them have some lived experience of homelessness.”

Outreach is a priority for Operation Nightwatch. Reynolds explained, “We have three full-time street ministers that do outreach into the community.”

Food and shelter efforts include a hot meal served at 9 p.m. using donated food and volunteer cooks. People are then dispatched to sleep at different shelters around the city.

“At one time, we had over 100 shelter beds available to us, but now because of COVID, we’ve had to close some,” Reynolds said. “We lost the 50-bed shelter because of COVID, and we’ve been developing small-scale shelters for 10 people in a church basement with a Nightwatch worker overnight. They’re brought to the shelter directly from Nightwatch, so there’s no walk-ins, and it doesn’t impact the neighborhood.”

Reynolds survived his own battle with COVID-19. The virus remains a concern for Operation Nightwatch.

“We continue to do everything we did before COVID — just how we do it, it’s been really profoundly impacted,” he said. “We had two deaths in our senior apartments from COVID. The entire third floor was affected.”

FM Connections

Involvement in the Free Methodist Church USA goes back multiple generations for both Reynolds and his wife, Lorri Peck Reynolds. While growing up in the Seattle area, he attended the Shoreline Free Methodist Church were his parents were charter members. Lorri grew up in a family with longtime involvement in the Oregon Conference.

With these Free Methodist roots, it’s no surprise Reynolds ended up at a Free Methodist institution of higher learning, Seattle Pacific University, where he graduated in 1975 with a sociology major. He was named the university’s 2015 Alumnus of the Year, an honor coinciding with the unexpected release of his book “Street Stories.

“It was written as blog entries, and people from the publications department at Seattle Pacific, as a surprise to me, put it together,” he explained. “At the end of the program, they held up my copy of a book that I had never seen and said, ‘Rick’s book is available on Amazon.’”

Along with the formatting and layout, the university staff solicited endorsements from local pastors. Proceeds from the book sales benefit Operation Nightwatch.

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“There’s a whole lot of ministry going on outside the church walls, and really isn’t that what we’re supposed to be about to begin with?”

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Reynolds has found connection with other elders through the Chaplains Association of the Free Methodist Church. He said it’s “great to be a part of the chaplains association, because you realize there’s a whole lot of ministry going on outside the church walls, and really isn’t that what we’re supposed to be about to begin with? We spend all of our time in churches trying to get people to come to us when the command is to go.”

According to the denomination’s Book of Discipline, “we claim exemption from all military service for those who register officially with the Church as conscientious objectors to war.” Reynolds is among the Free Methodists who have registered.

“As far as I know, I’m the only Free Methodist chaplain in the world that’s a conscientious objector. I wondered, ‘Well, how are these military [chaplain] guys going to look at me?’ Well, they welcomed me with open arms,” he said.

Retirement Plans

When asked about his retirement plans, Reynolds referenced his earlier remarks about Seattle’s rising property values.

“Zillow may say I’ve got a million dollar house, but it needs some TLC, and I’ll have time to do projects. I’m very handy, and I’ve got handy friends,” he said. “My one brother teaches construction in Alaska, and the other one is a journeyman plumber, so if I get stuck on a project, I can call somebody. I’ll do all the ‘honey do’ things I didn’t get done in the last 10 years.”

After decades of intense urban ministry, Reynolds knows “it’s going to take me some time to decompress, and probably I need to do more writing than I’ve been able to do lately.”

He hopes to release a second book, and, this time, he’ll know it’s coming. He also looks forward to spending more time with Lorri.

“I’d be remiss not to mention my long-suffering and tolerant wife who is very much a part of everything I do,” he said. “She is one with me in heart in caring for poor and marginalized people.”

Although she was not able to accompany him in a lot of his Operation Nightwatch work, she brought similar ministry into their home.

“She brought a homeless woman home. She met this woman in a doctor’s office. She was living in her car and waiting for surgery in Seattle,” said Reynolds, who added that the woman “lived with us for just a few months. I got her into transitional housing and then into subsidized housing. She continued to be part of our family for 15 years.”

Then the woman died.

“A year later, we got this little life insurance check in the mail. She had named us as her beneficiaries. We knew nothing about it,” he said. “It was just the amount that we owed on our house, so my house is paid for by a homeless woman, and it’s because my wife brought her home. I wouldn’t have done that, but my wife could do it.”

Reynolds’ retirement is making news in Seattle. The Real Change newspaper published a May 11 article titled “Youre the director; here’s a mop. The next issue of Seattle Pacific University’s Response magazine will include an in-depth article about him. Under Reynold’s leadership, Operation Nightwatch has also attracted the attention of The Seattle Times, Post-Intelligencer, Met, KNKX and other media outlets.

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“I’m not the reason Nightwatch is where it’s at. It’s really God’s work.”

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However, Reynolds isn’t a person who seeks credit for the organization’s impact.

“Glory to God; I feel like a lot of what’s gone on at Nightwatch has been while I tried to stay out of the way,” he said. “God’s done some marvelous things, and I’m not the reason Nightwatch is where it’s at. It’s really God’s work.” +

Jeff Finley

Jeff Finley

Light + Life Executive Editor

Jeff Finley is this magazine’s executive editor. He joined the Light+Life team in 2011 after a dozen years of reporting and editing for Sun-Times Media. He is a member of John Wesley Free Methodist Church where his wife, Jen, serves as the lead pastor.