Our Community, Our Mission
Our Community, Our Mission
EP #284 – Holy Discontent and Bold Innovation with Matt Dildine
Matt Dildine, CEO of the Fresno Rescue Mission, shows what happens when holy discontent collides with bold innovation. Leaving behind a successful law career, he stepped into leadership with a vision to reimagine how communities respond to homelessness. Out of that vision came City Center—a collaborative campus in the heart of Fresno that houses more than 20 service providers under one roof, and creates spaces that uplift and inspire the surrounding community.
At the center of this model is DTCR: dignity, time, community, and relationship. Rather than pushing people quickly through programs, Fresno Mission embraces longer engagement to build meaningful connections and lasting change. From replacing mandatory chapel with relational church experiences to offering a free grocery store that becomes a bridge to both care and the gospel, the approach is reshaping how faith-based organizations serve. As Chairman of the Board for Citygate Network, Dildine also provides leadership on a national scale, helping guide innovation and collaboration among ministries serving vulnerable populations across the country.
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Gracious Heavenly Father. We thank you, lord, for this beautiful day and your blessings and your mercies. God, thank you for this time to record this podcast, lord, for our special guest that we have on today, and Lord, just the work that you're doing, not just in Topeka, not just in Kansas, but, lord, across this nation and across the globe. Lord, we thank you for your servants and we pray your blessing over this time and this conversation In your holy wonderful name. We pray, amen, wonderful name we pray Amen.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody, thank you for joining us for our community, our mission. A podcast of the Topeka Rescue Mission. I'm your host today, barry Feaker, on this Tuesday, september 16th of 2025, it's episode number 284. Lamanda Cunningham good morning.
Speaker 3:Hello, good morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 284.
Speaker 3:That's before you were born, isn't it?
Speaker 2:I was just about to say something about your age, but you beat me. Yes, that's right. That's not my age, that's the number of podcasts we've done, that's right. So Lamanda just ended a very successful Night of Praise last week.
Speaker 3:And talk a little bit about that before we get into our guest and our conversation today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we just had our third annual Night of Praise.
Speaker 3:You know started a couple of years ago with just the heart of how do we do an annual fundraiser for the rescue mission to not only bring in additional finances that we need to maintain a healthy budget, but also how do we do something that brings unity within our community, and so that kind of birthed this idea of having a worship night and to bring God glory for all that he's done, but also bring awareness to homelessness and the needs and to also be talking about financial stewardship. So we just had this one. We're still working on numbers and counts and all of that, but we'll be talking about that in the next podcast or so. But one thing that is just incredible, in my opinion, each time we do these is just the vulnerability that, whether it's someone that's agreed to do a video for us and share their testimony, if it's someone that is willing to do an in-person interview and this year we had both. We had an audio of a family member talking and we did a video and an in-person, but we also had what? Eight or nine posters.
Speaker 1:Nine.
Speaker 3:Nine that had people's pictures on them, had their stories, but when you clicked this little voice box it was them talking about their testimony and to me that was just an added thing this year to really try to get the word out of what our people face, but also God's redemption and I don't know. I just always try to be thankful when people share that vulnerability, but this year it hit me differently that we tell them as stories. But these are people's lives and I just want TRM to always be finding that respectful balance and appreciate the people that are talking about their change.
Speaker 2:It was a well orchestrated, very thoughtful, a lot of detail that went into it. So it was a great balance between telling story, talking about the need for money and worshiping the Lord all together. So that's what it was intended for. Well, Amanda, one of the things we've been doing here recently on our community our mission is going outside of the Topeka community to talk to other entities that are in the same space of rescue ministry and, as we've shared before, topeka Rescue Mission is part of what's called the City Gate Network. You've been very involved from your day, first day here at.
Speaker 2:Topeka Rescue Mission and that and different committees and so forth, and that's a coming together of over 300 rescue ministries in North America. It's an organization that's been around over 100 years. I've been around for three name changes. It's called the International Union of Gospel Missions at one time, and then the Association of Gospel Missions and then I think in 2018 and 2019, it changed to CityGate Network. So we're privileged today to have another member of this network from Fresno, california. That's clear out in California. I think we've had a couple other folks from California on this before.
Speaker 3:I kind of wish I was out in California right now.
Speaker 2:Do you yes? Depends on where.
Speaker 3:Well, the weather is so back and forth here. Everybody's dealing with the allergies and the sinuses and feels like winter one day, summer the next, fall all of it in three days.
Speaker 2:Well, you could be in places where it's just hot, I know, and so, but anyway, from Fresno, the CEO of the Fresno Rescue Mission, we have Matt Dildine with us here today, who is also the chairman of the board of the CityGate Network, and so we'd like to welcome you, matt, to our community, our mission.
Speaker 4:Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. So, matt, talk to us a little bit about yourself and, in regards to the mission, how long you've been there. I had some intersection years ago with your previous executive director there. Ceo. Matter of fact, we met in some different places. I think we met in Minneapolis one time and eventually out there in California, but it's got a longstanding history. How long has the mission been around and how long you've been around, and what brought you to it?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so the Fresno mission is. I think this will be our 77th year coming up in November here. 77th year coming up in November here. I've been with the mission in the capacity of CEO for about seven years. Prior to that, I was on the board for a few years and what brought me to the mission is that you know, I had actually, you know, been a partner in a large law firm here in our community and and, um, you know, was was doing great.
Speaker 4:I always told people I didn't want anybody else's legal career. I felt like I had everything that I wanted in terms of my legal career, in terms of made partner at my law firm faster than anybody else was on, uh, handling the cases that were on the front page of a newspaper, conferences in Hawaii, five-star hotels, um, you know, uh, all, all the uh, all the rewards that come with that um. But my wife, um at the time was uh, she's now the ceo of the central california food bank and um, but she also worked for the food bank at that time and you know we attended church, faithful followers of jesus, um, um and uh. But but some things really started to bother me, kind of developed this holy discontent and you know, I remember looking around my church and, you know, going to a nice church and thinking like, hey, where are all the poor people at? You know, where are the people that I kind of grew up in a no collar, blue collar church, and um and um, you know, and I looked around, like you know, I just didn't see anybody. And um, and not that my church didn't have anybody, that's poor but like I looked around, I saw a lot of people that were doing like me, like pretty well and very comfortable, and I started to just kind of look around a little bit more and somebody called me and said there was this gang member, a former gang member, who was a janitor at an inner city church, who was trying to do this thing on his property inside this very, very poor neighborhood in Fresno, and so they asked if I could come help him. I'm like, ah, you know, all right, I should go help somebody. I mean, people ask me all the time to start nonprofits. I'll, I'll go follow the paper. And uh, and I go and I meet this guy and it's this, you know guy who doesn't have two nickels to rub together, but he's in Fresno's poorest neighborhood and he basically tried to create this property because kids didn't have any safe places to go in his neighborhood and because the parks were filled with gang members and homeless and drugs, and then there was no parks and it was really dangerous everywhere, and so he just started to open up this unique property really dangerous everywhere and so he just started opening up this unique property and so when I met him, I, you know, I feel like there's a few times in my life where I felt this overpowering of the Holy Spirit. That was one of them and you know, we ended up forming this, this, this bond, this relationship that ultimately led, led me to where I'm at right now and and I and I think some of the drivers of that to me is in that season that that things really started to bother me.
Speaker 4:Fresno for those that don't know, we're in the central Valley of California, so so if you look on a map and you look at California, there's this big kind of green strip that's in the middle and it's where your food comes from. And so we produce. My county produces more food than just about every other state. We're the number one food producing region in the entire world. We produce more oranges in Florida and more peaches than Georgia, in addition to others. So people don't really know that. But one thing that people don't know is that the counties that make up the Central Valley, there's five counties. Those five counties will be one, two, three, four and five in terms of highest producing food producing counties in the nation, but they're also going to finish one, two, three and four and five in terms of highest rates of food insecurity.
Speaker 4:And then you know most, most people who are facing food insecurity, most hunger, and, um, another thing about Fresno is Fresno has will finish, you know, on the on the medal podium for the highest concentrations of poverty in the United States.
Speaker 4:Um, so the most neighborhoods, um, that have high, high levels of poverty.
Speaker 4:But west of Texas we actually are the second highest amount of people that are attending church and actually the only city that beats us is much smaller.
Speaker 4:So I kind of consider us actually the Bible Belt west of Texas. We're kind of like the Texas of California, and so that really bothered me that we had the most food, yet most hungry people. We had the most neighborhoods that were a reflect of creation that God didn't intend and yet the most people sitting in church pews, and those statistics really, really started to bother me, and so what I did is that all the time I was investing into being a good attorney, I actually started investing it into communities of poverty, and that led me on a multi-year journey that ultimately ended up with the former CEO asking if I would take over for him here at the mission the Fresno mission and I thought we had some really, really unique opportunities at our place in history to do something that wasn't being done anywhere else in the country, and so now we're seven years in and you know, some really, really cool stuff happened along the way.
Speaker 2:Matt. That's quite an explanation of background, very unique, lamanda. It goes to the fact that not all people are born executive directors or CEOs or rescue missions. They come from a variety of different backgrounds. You come from education, matt comes from the legal, which I think is really, really helpful. Both of those experiences for what you do and trying to help people and equip them educationally, but also, matt, having been in the position I was in for many years. If I ever had the chance to stop, I'd go to law school to figure out how to do this to protect the organization as well as the people we're working for to try to help Matt. What's the population of Fresno, or that general area there that you are working in?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so Fresno, the city of Fresno probably has a population around 750,000. There's a few kind of like you know cities that you cross over a street and you're in another city, and so the geographic area of Fresno County has about a million you know, just over a million people.
Speaker 2:That's a pretty big population, especially compared to where we are in Topeka, kansas. But also one of the other things having visited with your previous CEO there, there was another, I think, thing that stood out in my mind a pretty significant challenge with drugs in the valley there. Is that still the case, where there's a lot of influence with people affected by drug addiction or people who are actually marketing the drugs there?
Speaker 4:Yeah, we definitely have.
Speaker 4:You know, I think anywhere there where there's a lot of poverty, you're going to find a lot of drugs.
Speaker 4:And also the way that Fresno works is we kind of are along this artery that connects Northern California and Southern California, and so the highway that comes through our community, that connects kind of the Northern part and Southern California, and so the highway that comes through our community that connects kind of the Northern part of the Southern part of the States is kind of looked at like is the main thoroughfare for a lot of drug activity, whether that's drugs that are coming from North to South or South to North, a lot of traffic, and it happens along that route as well.
Speaker 4:But the other part about Fresno, why there's more activity here, is that it has a lot of rural, rural communities. Uh, and so Fresno is kind of a uh, you know, highly populated, you know County, but it also is somewhat of a rural County and then surrounded by other rural counties and so um and so it's really easy when you get these rural, small, under-policed, under-sheriffed, quasi-off-grid farming, big plots of land type thing, and it's really easy to slip under the radar in terms of drug production and some of the other bad things that happen. So.
Speaker 2:Sounds like you. Quite a disparity there, a dichotomy between the largest food production and yet the greatest food insecurity in the surrounding area. Here you listed off of, you know, five different counties there, greatest food production, also the greatest food insecurity, and then also, just outside of Texas, one of the greatest or most attended churches that are happening and that really got to you, as you said, in this last seven years. How has that all come together for you? You obviously stepped out of something that you were successful in. You were enjoying it. At a time God began to speak to your heart. Obviously, you and your wife are very, very involved in addressing this issue. What has happened? You've taken your life and you've invested it in the Fresno Rescue Mission, but what has changed in regards to you and or the community because of this disparity between so much have and so much lacking?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So I think you know, the biggest thing that's happened over the last several years is, you know, I think when, when I started, I was a board member, and I think board members you're in the position of you know, always being told everything is great, and you know, I mean you look at financials and all that stuff, but like you know, like you're constantly being told you're the greatest, you know the greatest thing since sliced bread, right, and I remember Not in Topeka.
Speaker 2:Yeah, amanda's very transparent. Yes, that's good.
Speaker 4:That means you have a, that means you have a very good leader. At least that's the position that I was in. And then we talked to staff like it was talked like the greatest thing sliced bread and I even joke about this going around to other missions Like I've never met a mission director.
Speaker 4:I've never met a mission program person who doesn't think they have the best program in the country, Like even the ones that are half half on Netflix, like they're just this inner ability to think like, hey, what we're doing is the best, which is, you know, which is some ways good, but in some ways it's very inhibiting. And so, you know, when I came from the legal field, like yes, I'm going into ministry, thought it was great and the Lord provided me a very nice, you know, six-month honeymoon. Six-month honeymoon, I would say that he allowed me to decompress from the stress of being a lawyer. But then I started to see kind of the cracks. I started to see the cracks and not like financial or anything like that Cracks in terms of like, wait a second, this is not, this is not the best way to do something. Or I started looking around at the other nonprofits and thinking like, wait a second, you're not doing everything you're saying, that you're doing in your marketing materials.
Speaker 4:Like every every, every nonprofit cause they're all in this competition for influence like kind of says that they do everything or that everything's the best and everything's great, and that's just not true. They're like. I looked at him like that's not true. The gift of being a you know, the gift or the burden of being a lawyer, is that allows you to kind of like they kind of mess up your brain and it kind of it kind of allows you to like synthesize, synthesize problems and really look at like root issues and then trying to problem solve. And I, I come from a very poor. You know Fresno doesn't have it has some wealth but not very much right Like high poverty. You know, high poverty. We don't have Fortune 500 companies here. We have a lot of ag business but it's rural and it's different and yet we have so much poverty. With a friend of mine in Atlanta who runs another faith-based organization and I was visiting with him and he told me about a half a million dollar fundraiser. They have like half a million dollars.
Speaker 4:Like hey, in Fresno, if we raised a half a million dollars at a fundraiser, we'd be like over the moon, that's great. He said, no, it costs a half million. We raised 14 million and I'm like man, it was so depressing. And I'm like, look like you know he has, you know he has like the co-owner of Chick-fil-A on his board and he has and he has the you know Arthur Blank on his cell phone and pro athletes and just so much more wealth. And I'm like, how is this? Like we can produce just as much poverty, but we can't do without the wealth. How do we do this? How do we come up with a better business plan for all this? Because I looked around and I saw everybody's hustling and trying to raise the next dollar and you're always tracking, you know donations going up, donations going down. And so we had this opportunity to.
Speaker 4:The California High Speed Rail came through and took one of our properties and when I say took, I mean it like you know, eminent domain, a process which takes your property and had to pay us something for it. So we had this little bit of a nest egg and what we chose to do, as opposed to just investing in us and us building our next campus. What we said is well, what if we invested this in a property that we could provide, we could bring together all these different other organizations and ministries onto a common campus not call it the Fresno Mission, call it something else and create this like very large community asset where all these different organizations can work together as part of a common campus. And so we're, and so that's the direction that we went in creating this campus called City Center, city Center, and so Fresno is 16.48 miles from east to west and 17.44 miles from north to south, where those two distance intersect, are at where our campus is at, which is why we call it City Center, because it's at the dead center of the city. And so we're in.
Speaker 4:You know, we've kind of opened it in phases, but we finished the first phase, you know our kind of first strategic phase and in February this year we finally cut the ribbon, even though we had cut a bunch of other people's ribbons and opened up different properties on the campus. We're kind of in the still in that first year of it being completely open and operational and um, and so that to me has been the biggest change that that not only we have seen as the mission, but actually my community has seen because it's it's it's garnered a lot of attention. I have people come from all over North America, um, all over North America, uh, to come see it, and it it is. You know, it is unlike anything else in the rest of the country, and so that's been a really great thing for our city. It's really created a lot of momentum for us here at the Fresno Mission.
Speaker 2:So you saw a need for a better business plan and this is you had an opportunity to invest in that better business plan, and it sounds like it wasn't just for the Fresno Rescue Mission, it sounds like it was for the total community. But Fresno Rescue Mission, under your leadership, led that effort to create City Center. So what do you find in City Center today and what's the goal? What are the next steps? And what does City Center do? I'm kind of gathering. It's a gathering place for some different agencies, but what's your big goal here? And then, obviously, what's related to that is how do you get people to work together, because everybody's kind of in their silo or they're protecting their own turf or whatever. Talk a little bit about both of those. What's there, what do you hope to have there, and how do you get people to take a risk?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so great great questions there. What do you hope to have there and how do you get people to take a risk? Yeah, so great, great questions. And so my macro goal. My macro goal is that, ultimately, I want people to come to Christ, I want people to know Jesus, I want people to experience, I want people to experience Christ and love of Christ and to form a relationship with Jesus. So that's my like macro goal, right.
Speaker 4:And so when we created City Center, one of the things that I really started to think through in this process was what is the church? If you had to design a church, what does the church look like for somebody who is struggling with food insecurity? What does it look like for a homeless mother? What does it look like for somebody that's been trafficked? What does it look like for somebody that's been trafficked? What does it look by for a transitional youth or an aged out foster chief? What does the church look like? I'm talking like the physical church, like what should it actually look like? And my conclusion was it doesn't look like a 1500 person auditory, right. It doesn't look like a really nice foyer.
Speaker 2:It doesn't look like a really nice foyer.
Speaker 4:Okay, it doesn't look like a really nice have a really nice baptismal right. Those weren't my conclusions. What it did look like for me is it looked like someplace that was going to have a free grocery store. It looked like for me someplace that families could come. That wasn't just about a shelter, but it was going to be look like a community park or community center that they would feel comfortable being at, regardless if they had a roof problem or not. It was going to look like a place that could provide a charter school, that was going to provide a drop-in center. That was going to look like the nicest place in our community and it wasn't just the nicest place for a homeless mother to go, it was going to look like the nicest place for any mother to go. And that when people are here, they don't feel like this is a social services center. They think it looks like just a cool place to be and to hang out, that it was going to be a nexus for all different types, all different people from all different walks of life to come into. And so why is that? Well, the purpose of that is because what I believe about how the gospel is best communicated, I believe it's best communicated through relationships.
Speaker 4:I think if you've ever been in a crisis, typically what gets you from point A to point B is not some like magical moment. It typically is somebody in your life walking with you over an extended period of time to get you from point A to point B. And I would also argue that the opposite is true. When somebody falls into crisis, typically not always, but typically it's because they haven't had that relationship that prevents them from getting into crisis. There's a lot of people who are mentally ill. Not everybody who's mentally ill becomes homeless. There's a lot of people who are addicted. Not everybody who's addicted becomes homeless. There's a lot of foster youth. Not every foster youth becomes homeless, but the ones who don't have anybody else in their life. If you're mentally ill and you don't have anybody, or you don't have a healthy relationship, if you're mentally ill and you don't have anybody, or you don't have a healthy relationship, if you're an addicted and you don't have healthy relationships around you, if you're a foster youth and you have nowhere to go after you get out, there's a likelihood you're going to end up homeless because you don't have that relationship.
Speaker 4:And so, for us, one of the things that we want to do here is like how do we facilitate? The question was like, if we want to be the church, we have to facilitate relationships, and so our method here was to come up with a place. We called it the. We called the DTCR model dignity, time, community, relationship, dtcr model places of dignity build places where anybody wants to be, no matter who they are, that provide the benefit of time, meaning we want people to actually be with us. We actually think it's a good thing that they come back. Time is our asset, which is which is for in California the opposite of what the government wants. The government wants to get you out of their shelter as fast as possible. We look at saying we want you with us as long as possible, because the longer someone's with us, the better chance I have to help them. Yes, so the after time we wanted to build community, to do that with a sense of belonging, a sense of place, a sense of connectivity that ultimately leads to that final piece, which is relationship Right. And that to me, that, to me, is where our secret to success is Right.
Speaker 4:And so, in creating this place and creating this place, it wasn't like when you think of a shelter you think of. Okay, let's just build a shelter and it's a place people go. And then the second, that they don't have to be there anymore. They don't want to be there, they don't want to ever be there again, and we didn't want that. We want to be like, we want to make it one. So the shelter was the nicest looking thing you've ever seen.
Speaker 4:And then, two, that they would have reasons to come back to the campus, to be part of the campus and it was a normal part of what happens here. Why? Because we have the coolest playground in the city and their kids like playing on it and it's free for them to come back. Why Because kids go to our charter school and they keep coming and they can keep coming back. Why Because we have a coffee shop and people like coming to our coffee shop. Why Because we have a church and we don't, you know, instead of having chapel services, we started a church. Why, because we want people to be part of our faith community.
Speaker 4:And so city center. So the goal of city center is to create this kind of this, this center point of the community where people would come back to for different reasons. Um, some are in crisis, and some crisis have been, you know, relieved, uh, but it's a place where people keep coming back to. And then, where people are here, they're when they come in for crisis, whether that crisis because they needed shelter, or that crisis is they're hungry and they needed food, or they are addicted, or whatever it might be. They could come here and feel like this is a place of belonging, it's a place of purpose. It's not just the place that you fall into when life didn't go the way you want it to.
Speaker 2:Sounds fantastic, matt 77 years Fresno Rescue Mission being in place. Obviously you have a physical place that it's been over the years. You had a piece of property that you lost through eminent domain, gave you some resources to invest in the city center. Sounds like it's a one-stop shop, so to speak, for everybody resources, a sense of community which speaks loud and clear. Here Is Fresno Rescue Mission still at its location, where it's been for a number of years now. Is it planning on relocating to the city center? How does this intersect with what you have in the community already of Fresno and then what you're building out here so that it is yeah? How do we understand that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so Fresno Mission still has its location in kind of the downtown, your kind of traditional, I would say, like inner city, like homeless services center, the high-speed rail. We had a property that was on two sides of a city street and they took one side of it, kind of the main building that had been kind of the main Fresno rescue mission. You know the historic Fresno rescue mission. But I would also say probably did us a favor. You know, as you go around to different places, a lot of missions, a lot of shelters were built. You know started with a property they might've built in the fifties or the sixties and that means you know, 60 years later, 70 years later, they look like they were built in the fifties and sixties. And you know, and a lot of those, and you know many CEOs we go through this right now like they have one of those buildings and they're like trying to decide do you renovate it or you just tear the whole thing down? Right, that building was in that vein of buildings, whether you tear it down, push it down or tear it down, or push it down or renovate it. So High Speed Rail did do us a favor, but we still had the opposite side of the street, and so we actually ended up building kind of a larger campus there with some temporary structures and structures that we owned, and right now we're actually going through the process of trying to determine whether what we do with that campus. We also have another 10 acre campus that we call Rescue the Children, which is another 10 acre beautiful campus. It's another part of the city, um, that's more of a resort type of campus for long-term recovery, um, and so we have these when you have city center and it has this. You know, city center is like, looks just like, unlike anything else in the nation, and you have another campus it looks like a nice resort, and you have another campus that looks like it's the lipstick on a pig. You know the the place that doesn't look, it's not really in brand conformity.
Speaker 4:And, at the same time, one of the things that's happening in our community is that our city, because of state budget cuts, is losing a tremendous amount of shelter, and so we operate about 25% of the shelter space 25 to 30% of the shelter space in uh fresno, but the other 60 percent is largely going away.
Speaker 4:Um, it was funded through temporary resources from the state and federal government. Those things are going away, uh, and so they're closing. Uh, the city has 800 shelter beds and it's closing um 720 of those, and so we're actually kind of facing this crisis in the next six to 12 months where the city is losing all their shelter beds and we're going to be crazy impacted. And so right now, we're actually kind of facing this crisis in the next six to 12 months where the city is losing all their shelter beds and we're going to be crazy impacted. And so right now we're trying to figure out, like, how do we respond to meet that need, when we were feeling for a while like, hey, we're okay, there are some other providers here that can operate. We don't feel the need to have to do everything. We can focus on some of these other areas. And now we're back at a place of trying to evaluate what we should be doing.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, just a lot of questions here. Okay, City Center other agencies are coming in working with you. Do you envision creating more shelter space at City Center that is operated by Fresno Rescue Mission? Or how does this cooperative look?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so we do envision building more at city center, and so the shared campus works where. So we build space, we built space. So we have about 20 to 25 different organizations that are currently on site that we work with. I will say I really understand why Jesus only had 12 disciples, and I think when I started this process, I liked the idea of having, oh, we have 50 partners and I'm like, oh, I see why Jesus only rolled with 12.
Speaker 2:Because working with people is— Getting a hard time with the 12 from what we can read. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and, and so I always go back and forth of whether or not you know, more is better or less is better. But we do have that many and, and so we we identify partners that we thought would be a good fit from the beginning. For the most part it's worked out with those original partners, and so some of the partners we have include one, the Central California Food Bank, which operates a free grocery store, opened up a charter school that specialized in homeless and foster youth. On our campus we have a medical care, a medical clinic, a free medical clinic. It's about 7,000 square feet. We had a mental health care provider, a mental health care provider that brought counseling services. We had organizations that specialized in parental interventions. We do a lot of workforce development, so we moved that kind of department here. We have two organizations that specialize in human trafficking and different kind of areas of need. We have foster care organizations. Casa is also one of them.
Speaker 4:Most people are familiar with CASA because it's a national, you know, kind of a national organization, organizations that focus on youth mentorship, and so uh, and you know, uh, several others. And so what we did was, you know, we create the space, create the space and then allow them to operate and do their work here. We require everyone here to be a direct service provider. Uh, meaning, um, you need to be able to provide help in some way to the people that are coming through the front doors. So sometimes organizations, they provide help, but it's like external or remote or other places, or like they're the convener of the help as opposed to you know, they're kind of like the center point of the wheel as opposed to being the spoke, and that's not a partner that we're looking for here.
Speaker 4:So Matt go ahead, yeah, and so, yeah, we went forward with that process. One of the other unique things about City Center is its highest priority are our youth and families, and most of the time when you're dealing with homelessness, there's a prioritization towards that guy who's been sleeping underneath an underpass for five years and kind of the kid is an afterthought. Here our longest waiting lists are really for people with children. About half the people sleeping on one of our pillows tonight is under the age of 18. And so, whereas most, I think homeless centers or social services centers are focused on that single adult, we city centers largely focus on the family and then the youth, then the youth. Even though different people can come here to access services, Single adults certainly can come here to access services.
Speaker 2:Matt 20 to 25 agencies at this point and direct service providers growing. How did you sell this to them? Everybody was doing their own thing before this. They just didn't decide to do a medical clinic of 7,000 square feet somewhere else. They had to invest, obviously, in being able to bring all that, and that's a very expensive operation. What was the goal? What was the end game here? You talked about the sense of community relationships. From your standpoint, it's faith-based in regards to relationship with Jesus. Based in regards to relationship with Jesus. I'm assuming not everybody that's in City Center shares that same portion. So what was the? We can do this and the outcome will be what.
Speaker 4:Well, I think, the outcome. So if you asked each of the individual organizations, they will have their own desired outcome, right? So, for example, the food bank's outcome is not gospel transformation in people, right? My wife is CEO. She's obviously very supportive of faith and all that.
Speaker 2:Her goal is to feed people who are hungry. Yeah, yeah, and that's their outcome, which is totally fine.
Speaker 4:And so one of the things that we've said, one of the things that we've said is that, like, we're not asking people to change, and so like in each of our documents, like and so kind of like a common thing, and we actually heard this from saying that Dan Rogers from Cherry Street said, you know, hey, we don't. You know we go to the city college and say, hey, you don't teach about jesus and we won't teach people about welding, right and so like. And so, as long as we're doing that, we're good. And so in each of our agreements with our partners we have, we have something in there.
Speaker 4:For, you know, some are faith-based but some are not, and you can be part of it, as long as you don't do anything that's, um, against our statement of faith or antagonistic to Jesus. And so somebody can be here and not have to say anything about Jesus, and that's totally fine. Just don't say anything against them. Don't say anything against them, right? We wouldn't allow certain things on this campus that would be antagonistic to our faith, right, and so that's happened before you know. So that's happened where you might have a group that wants to do something that's maybe from another faith, right, and we're like that's antagonistic to our faith. So we're not, you know, just don't do it, and so there's some things like that. But you know, I tell people all the time, if I was starting a church, a traditional church, today, I would put a grocery store in the middle of it, because even though the grocery store in and of itself is not a faith-based endeavor.
Speaker 4:every single person that comes to that grocery store is in some form of crisis, in some need, and I can tell you we have people that line up. They'll start lining up the day before at 4 or 5 pm to get access to the grocery store at 8 am the next morning. And then we have hundreds of people that come in once it opens and sit, and we have people that are there talking and meeting and serving them. And just this last week we baptized a woman in our church that she got connected with us through the grocery store while she was waiting to get food. And so I tell people all the time, if I was going to start church today, I would put in a grocery store before I put in a big video wall, because it brings in so many people and every single one of those people has something going on in their life that is in need of some sort of relief.
Speaker 2:Sounds like in the city of Fresno, this is beginning to transform how you approach. Need, obviously, your 20 to 25 different partners see their role in this of doing it different, doing it better? They wouldn't be doing it. They just stay right where they are, where they are. How has this impacted not only the community of Fresno, but how has it impacted this church that you were beginning to view as we could do this different? Are they jumping on board? Are they getting it? Are they just going? Okay, matt's down there doing his thing in the city of the center, we're going to do our own thing. Or has there been some transformation within the local body of believers in Fresno?
Speaker 4:Well, I think that I think anytime you do something new, you're going to have 80 percent of people are going to think it's great and 20 percent of people still want you to. You know, when churches switched from pews to padded chairs, there was 20 percent of the church that got upset about it.
Speaker 1:Some of them still are that got upset about it right.
Speaker 4:Some of them still are. So, you know, do we get a portion of the population that's mad that we don't require someone to attend chapel service before they eat? Yeah, there's still those people, right, and what I tell them is like, yeah, we used to have chapel services and now we have a church. Why is that? Chapel services are transactional. They're rotating speakers. Come and go, hear a message, get something leave. Churches are relational. They're supposed to be a faith community and that's what we're trying to support Things that pursue that facilitate relationships, not transactional, not things that are transactional. Facilitate relationships, not transactional, not things that are transactional.
Speaker 4:And so city center has become, for lack of a better phrase, a point of pride, I believe, for the community, because we're in a poor area, and when you're in a poor area, you don't have very many things that you can look at and say we have the best of this right. You know we're not. You know we're not a community that is, while there's amazing and tremendous natural beauty where we're at, we're at the base of the Sierras, where Yosemite is at, we're an hour and 20 minutes from three. You know national parks, we have lakes all over the place, but our community is not known for its architectural beauty. It has a lot of areas, neighborhoods that are of high poverty, right. But when you create something and people see that this is something that no other community has, or they feel like no other community has what we have here, it's become like a point of pride. And I think that one thing that I always try and communicate as part of the network and this is kind of something that we say in our staff and it's kind of a driver for us it's easier to it is better to inspire somebody than convince somebody.
Speaker 4:And so when we build, when you come into City Center, when people come into City Center, one of the things that we say is nothing is tasteful gray, so we don't do something if it's tasteful gray. You know you walk in someone's house and it's tasteful gray. It doesn't mean that it looks bad, it's tasteful, but you don't remember it because it's just tasteful gray, it's just tasteful. But if you can get to a point when people walk in and they are emotionally impacted by what they see, that it's so beautiful, it's so over the top, it's so unique, it's so innovative, that they it inspires them, and people that are inspired are much easier to get engaged or to support you, because now they become your advocates. They become, you know, if you walk into someone's house, it's tasteful gray. They don't leave saying let me tell you about this place, I saw it was tasteful gray. Don't leave saying let me tell you about this place, I saw it was tasteful great.
Speaker 4:You would not believe the shade of gray that they used on their paint. You know, amazing. But they would go. I can't. You got to go check this place out. It has a life-size giant dinosaur. That's a playground. You know, a life-size giant. You would not believe this place, right? Or you would not believe their free grocery store what it looks like? Or you would not believe what it looks like. And so what's happened is, when you inspire people, they become your advocates and that momentum starts to be felt elsewhere. Matt can.
Speaker 3:I ask you on that same line how do you balance the inspiring with nimbyism, like? I feel like we can't really, and I don't know if it's something I need to do differently. I'm not sure, but we continue to be stuck in. We can't even dream, we can't even be motivated. We're struggling to really even allow our hearts to be inspired by all the what ifs, because we keep saying we don't care how pretty it is, we don't care how good it is, we don't care the research with it, we don't want it in our backyard.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and so I faced NIMBYism when we started and I remember the meeting when I had with, like the community Right, and I will say this we don't. The city center is not focused on the chronically homeless. That carries like a different element to it. Now, do you receive people? There are chronically homeless that come through, but it doesn't feel the same way as maybe our downtown campus and so there's that part of it. But I will say this, like I remember the community meeting, but we do have you know, a lot of people here are homeless. Right, when we had our community meeting and I went and described to them the vision and what we were trying to do and how it was going to look, and when I showed them stuff, people came in with pitchforks and by the time the meeting was over I could have asked them to write a check.
Speaker 4:The biggest advocates, some of the biggest advocates when we were building this project, have been our community, and the reason is I'll tell you this the reason is is because our facility actually has improved. The area has actually improved. The area has actually improved the area. We went to a somewhat blighted area but we took a building of a campus that was dilapidated and we transformed it to be the best-looking property in all of Fresno all of Fresno. And so we took something and we made it so good. We put in community park, we put in an urban soccer park. We put in the best outdoor basketball court in Fres urban soccer park. We put in the best outdoor basketball court in Fresno that everyone wants to go play on is here. We put in things that they could access. So we built a campus that actually enhanced the value of the surrounding community.
Speaker 4:And it's actually kind of funny, like one of the things that's happening. It's kind of by this business corridor where there's a lot of homeless things that's happening. It's kind of by this business corridor where there's a lot of homeless and there's a few other shelters that are in that corridor. They're in close proximity and there's all this political and, you know, media fodder and the business association is upset. But it's kind of funny and all these articles and all these like and all these, uh, you know all these things. They always criticize the others and then they always say, but not Fresno mission or but not city center. We're okay with them and, and it's really kind of funny, we even got a request yesterday for the big like meeting of, uh, all the business owners and the people that are upset about the homeless on this business corridor you know that's a block or two blocks away they asked if we could host a community meeting here at our campus. And so what's so funny is like all the people that are angry about the homeless being in their area that don't blame us at all are asking can we have our big community meeting where we're going to get all fired up at our campus? You know they don't have a problem with us and so.
Speaker 4:And so I will say like I think that it's hard for people to understand what they haven't seen before, but it is not true that a that a homeless service center or social services center has to be a drain on the surrounding, on the surrounding community. Most missions or most shelters that I look at around the country are not in a high rent district, right, right. And so you look at it, they're complaining. You're like, yeah, man, dude, but your warehouse next door is, you know, ain't pretty at all either, right, and so I do think that there's an opportunity to build things that are beautiful, that actually enhance the surrounding community. Um, that will be a value add will be a value add and I and when we were building this place, I visited several of those places and I think when you build a place that inspires people, you just get a lot more traction.
Speaker 2:So that's a really good advice, and I really appreciate the difference between inspire versus convince. I think that that is something that is always good to keep in mind, and there's a lot of things that we can do to inspire. Matt. I'd just like to spend the rest of the day listening to you, but obviously you probably got things to do there in Fresno. Do want to jump over. I do want to give Amanda an opportunity to say something before we close today, but jump into CityGate.
Speaker 2:You are the chairman of the board of the CityGate Network. You're doing all this stuff in Fresno. I don't know how you have time for anything else, plus your wife's defeating everybody. So talk about CityGate, why you're doing that. What's the value of CityGate Network? I think maybe one of the things we can say is what we're doing right now, having this podcast. We're sharing information back and forth, we're learning a lot from you in regards to what you're doing out there, and obviously that goes back and forth. But why did you jump into being the chairman of the board of such a massive organization 300 rescue ministers around the country? You're a volunteer doing that. What was the point of coming into that, being a chairman of the board of this organization?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So for those that don't know CityGate, I think it's one of the worst-case secrets in the country. Citygate is the association of faith-based service providers that largely serve people that are hungry, homeless, addicted or they're facing some sort of crisis. Traditionally, citygate has been about rescue missions, but now we have over 320 members that involve more than just your traditional rescue missions. There's all different types of human trafficking organizations and foster care organizations and feeding organizations, and so. But what it is is, I tell people, these are the organizations that are washing the feet of the people in our nation. These are the.
Speaker 4:When we assemble, I tend to think it's the greatest collection of feet washers in our country at that particular time, collection of feet washers in our country at that particular time.
Speaker 4:And so why I wanted to get involved in CityGate is because I do believe that it's really important, because you know you have a lot of organizations that are supporting maybe a denominational church, or whether that's the SBC or you know another denomination that's helping support churches that are associated with their movement.
Speaker 4:Citygate is not a denomination, but it is the association that's supporting the movement of faith-based parachurch ministries in their quest to transform people's lives with a heart for the gospel and to me, I don't think there's any higher calling, because when I read scripture, I think serving the poor, taking care of the vulnerable, was about the highest thing that Jesus was calling us to do, and so CityGate helps support and facilitate and advance the cause of these faith-based organizations, like the Topeka Rescue Mission or the Fresno Mission. I think what's really really cool is that last year we provided collectively $2.2 billion in resources to help people, and when you think that HUD, you know the federal government provided $3.2 billion and we provided $2.2 billion that was mostly just private. That's incredible to me to think the single largest funding source, because HUD's is not the most efficiently used money, but to think that the people of God provide $2.2 billion the largest single funding source to me, to help people that were facing homelessness and hunger, is pretty incredible.
Speaker 2:Without saying anything negative about HUD, I would say another element here is that $2.2 billion was an opportunity to develop those relationships that you're talking about, that HUD doesn't necessarily have the capacity to do. They're very transactional. This $2.2 billion obviously is transactional feeding and sheltering and all that stuff but it's also very relational and that's the huge difference there.
Speaker 1:Yep totally.
Speaker 2:Yep, totally Well, we're about out of time here. We don't really have a time limit, but there is a time of the day here. Lamanda, anything else you'd like to share with, or ask Matt, and then I want to give him the last word ask Matt and then we'll give him the last word.
Speaker 3:No, I think you know, uh, matt. I haven't had the opportunity to get to know you, um, as well as I have some of the other people, uh, but I have watched you from afar and I just want to, um, not only tell you thank you for um being someone that transparently showed your pivot and personal priorities. That's inspiring for those of us who have done something similar but then are also going God, what are you doing? And can I do this? And so I appreciate just your leadership in that.
Speaker 3:I also, you know, we went through a big change with CityGate Network as far as leadership, and I just remember some of the updates you have given and I thought that those were well done and poised, and not just because of your own ability, but because I do think that you are a God-fearing man and a God-following man, and we can see that. And then I also want to thank you for your work that you do in DC. I know that. You know, sometimes people are one or the other right. People can be the empath leaders or people can be the change agents in the room, and, just from what I know, you're both, and so for those of us that are just kind of emerging in these positions and learning and navigating, I just want to thank you for your leadership and taking on all the many hats that you have.
Speaker 4:Well, thank you. Thank you for the kind words, thank you for the opportunity to meet you guys and look forward to maybe seeing you guys at the conferences next time We'll be able to put a face with the name and say hello.
Speaker 2:Matt, I want to give you an opportunity to say one last thing here to our listeners, but before that I do have one more question what keeps you doing what you're doing? This is not easy work. You've talked about some pretty shiny here, which we know it's not, and you had a honeymoon for six months being the CEO and then you didn't talk about the honeymoon anymore. So what keeps?
Speaker 4:you going? Oh, I mean definitely the paycheck, I mean those people.
Speaker 2:Way better than a lawyer, Uh-huh sure.
Speaker 4:They were just getting too big. And they're just getting big. You know, I think what drives me is is like the ability to change people's lives. I mean, I always say when I'm getting down, I'm super, super stressed. When you know you're going, all the things that you go through as a CEO in this job, like I use it as an opportunity to pause. I just go like walk around and talk to you know, talk to people, and you know it doesn't take too long before you run into something and know, hey, if God hadn't provided you a vision, or you're not doing what you're doing, or didn't raise that extra dollar, they wouldn't be able to get helped. And when you go and look at that and you see some kid that you know was sleeping in a laundromat the night before, or if you weren't there, that kid would be in a really bad situation. To me, those are the things that fuel up the tank.
Speaker 2:to go back at it, Staying grounded with what God called you to do, matt, anything else you'd like to share with us today?
Speaker 4:No, I just appreciate you guys, appreciate your work. Look forward to seeing you guys coming out there and checking you guys out one day.
Speaker 2:Well, we'd love to have you here and going to be looking at City Center and everything else. You're doing a lot more. We've heard from Matt Dildine, who is the CEO of the Fresno Rescue Mission, also the chairman of the board of the CityGate Network and an innovator there in that part of California Really appreciate this. This is what our community, our mission, is about is unpacking what's going on in the kingdom of God in so many incredible ways, and you who are listeners are part of that just by listening, and obviously many of you take listening into doing something and some action.
Speaker 2:You've heard today about a man who had a pretty good way of doing life and God was speaking to him, and so he listened and he made a big change in his life. I mean a big change and there's some big impact in not only California, throughout this nation, as well as for the kingdom of God. Thank you for listening to our community, our mission. If you'd like more information about the Topeka Rescue Mission, you can go to trmonlineorg. That's trmonlineorg. Thank you for being a part of our community, our mission.