Peoples Church is a worshipping congregation in Bemidji that lives out its call to love and serve Creator God by opening its doors as a year-round overnight shelter and providing hot meals for the community every day. We are an Indigenous Ministry of the ELCA which means that we faithfully witness to the ways that Traditional Native American Spirituality and Lutheran Christianity are in harmony with one another. Because of who our community is, the Traditional Spiritual practices that we engage in come from the Ojibwe peoples.

Over the course of the 26-year history of Peoples Church, we have found that we have 3 core values. 

  1. Shelter- to provide overnight shelter to the least and lost in our region, we serve folks from all over the northwestern corner of the state. On average, we have 17 people sleeping with us and our max capacity is 24. 
  2. Food- we serve meals to about 40 people a day. We have hot meals 5 evenings a week and breakfast 7 days a week. Our community relies on our ability to provide food, not just to receive that all important meal, but also to have fellowship and community around the table together. 
  3. Dignity- every inch of this earth has been given dignity by Creator God who has called it all good. So much of the world tries to define who we are and label us as a number or a problem, but at Peoples Church, our call is to lift up the dignity that Creator has given to every person who walks through our doors. This is what makes us different from any ordinary shelter, we are a community who loves each other through the good and bad times. 

At Peoples Church you need not pretend to be anything other exactly who you are- with all your imperfections and quirks, with all your longings and failures, with all your hopes and visions of the future. Want to learn more? Come visit us at 3:00pm every Sunday for a feast and worship service, bring something to share if you are able! 824 America Ave NW, Bemidji, MN 

Birgitte Simpson serves as part-time Pastor at Aardahl Lutheran Church in Bemidji and as Mission Developer at Peoples Church. She was born and raised in South Minneapolis and always expected to be doing urban ministry. But she fell in love with rural life while on internship at a 4-point parish in Texas. Many different people and opportunities raised her up with the skills to serve at Peoples Church. She grew up doing construction with her dad, so you’ll often find her wielding power tools at Peoples Church. She worked on staff at site coordinator at Bay Lake Camp as a young adult, often working in the kitchen and stripping beds in the lodge at camp. She served as Pitt Boss with Love Grows Here, a community meal and gathering in East St. Paul where folks living on the margins gather weekly to find community and gather resources. She sang in the choir and helped to lead worship in her home congregation, St. Peder’s Lutheran Church in Minneapolis and in college at Augsburg University. Birgitte lives just outside Bemidji with her 2 dogs on the ancestral lands of the Ojibwe and Lakota peoples. She loves being in Bemidji and back near the Mississippi, a river that has held all of her stories since she was a small child. 

www.peopleschurch-elca.org

https://www.facebook.com/peopleschurchbemidji

https://www.givemn.org/organization/People-Church