Knox Area Rescue Ministries

Thank you for donating to Knox Area Rescue Ministries during the 2021 A Community Thrives campaign (sponsored by Gannett/USA Today). Donations from this campaign will be used for The Care Center.  Access to medical care is an overwhelming challenge for homeless men and women. The Care Center is designed to bridge this access gap--providing onsite, non-emergency care at KARM's main campus, located at 418 North Broadway in downtown Knoxville. (See more info below about The Care Center.)

Since 1960, Knox Area Rescue Ministries has sought to rescue the poor and needy of the Knox area by providing recovery services in Jesus' name. We purse this mission using our ministry formula of RESCUE + RELATIONSHIPS = RESTORAITON.

RESCUE at KARM focuses on providing basic needs—food, shelter and safety for those in emergency need. We meet people where they are...in all their brokenness...providing emergency shelter to more than 300 men, women and children each night who have nowhere else to turn—offering a safe place from the elements; rest; nourishing food; and loving staff and volunteers who listen, help, and pray with and for them. 

At KARM, we believe strong, supportive RELATIONSHIPS are vital in our mission to help men and women break the cycle of homelessness in their lives. We begin building these relationships the minute guests walk into our Crossroads Welcome Center, where we determine what brought them to KARM and what they need to walk out of KARM fully restored--with hopes, goals and tools for the future. 

KARM's main program areas are:

1. LaunchPoint: Once guests have their emergency needs met, our four-week LaunchPoint program helps them find hope and stability. In LaunchPoint, students continue to strengthen these important relationships with staff, volunteers and each other. They learn to take small steps that result in forward movement, and they begin to see that making wise choices can lead to a new life journey. On that journey, they can discover God’s purpose for their lives, develop a life plan with realistic goals, and learn to implement this plan in manageable steps. 
2. Berea: KARM’S 9-12 month Berea program has transformed KARM's main campus into a Work-Learn-Serve-Live campus environment, where students are either in class, working or performing community service, all while learning to live in healthy community with each other. Upon completion, students have realistic short- and long-term goals and Biblically-based plans for their future, supported by job- and life-skills training.
3. Serenity Ministries: For more than 30 years, KARM's Serenity has been a light in the darkness for women in crisis. Serving up to 33 women (and children), Serenity offers a 12- to 18-month biblically-based residential program for those seeking a safe place to find rescue; to understand the root causes of their problems; to recover and enjoy a restored life of freedom from addiction, domestic violence and homelessness. 

Our overriding goal is RESTORATION! We want women and men who leave KARM to enjoy lives that have been fully RESTORED--restored to God, themselves, their families and communities.

For years, staff at KARM have been concerned about a missing piece in our mission to "restore lives in Jesus' name"--access to medical care for our homeless neighbors in the Knox area. To address this gap, in the past several months, we have launched: 

Transitional Care Unit (with our partners, Covenant Health, and Trinity Health Foundation of East Tennessee) for homeless men who have been discharged from local Covenant hospitals; 

The Care Center (with the help of medical partners and volunteers from across the region), which provides onsite, non-emergency medical care to homeless men and women.