Good News Rescue Mission's Pastor David Honey has died

Pastor David Honey, who over the years met the spiritual needs of thousands of homeless people who stayed at Redding's Good News Rescue Mission emergency shelter, has died.

The man known simply as Pastor Honey was 65.

He died of complications from COVID-19, according to Jonathan Anderson, executive director of the Mission.

Next week, when Redding's only shelter holds its annual Homeless Memorial Service to remember people who died during the year, Honey will also be honored. He had been a driving force and public face for the mission's homeless memorial service for years.

During the homeless memorial ceremony held in February 2020, Honey stood at the podium at the front of the mission's chapel and gave an opening prayer. Later in the service, each person's name would be read aloud. Honey said he hoped "it may be a blessing to someone as they hear that name."

The Mission, he said then, strives to provide relationships and "a way to reach people so that they know they're loved, they're cared for, they're valuable and that they're viable. It's just something that maybe the community at large doesn't see."

Honey started at the Mission as its first guest services manager in 1998, according to a posting on the organization's blog in June.

"During those early years, Honey was doing pretty much everything that needed to be done," the post said. "And most of it, in one form or the other, involved touching lives beaten down by poverty, addiction and abuse."

Honey went on to become the Mission’s pastor in 2014 and took on an additional role outside of the shelter: that of a prison chaplain, according to the blog post.

"It wasn’t unusual for him to see some of the same people he had ministered to in jail come to the Mission for services, enabling the pastoral relationship he had established with the men and women at the jail to continue. He didn’t want them to feel spiritually stranded."

Anderson said that Honey began the practice of holding baptisms of between 20 to 30 Mission residents at Brandy Creek Beach at the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area just outside Redding two or three times a year.

Those baptisms were followed by a celebration barbeque, Anderson said.

David Honey is survived by his wife, Lilly, and children Melodie and Jason. The family's funeral plans were incomplete on Friday.

Michele Chandler covers city government and housing issues for the Redding Record Searchlight/USA Today Network. Follow her on Twitter at @MChandler_RS, call her at 530-225-8344 or email her at michele.chandler@redding.com. Please support our entire newsroom's commitment to public service journalism by subscribing today.

This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Pastor David Honey of Redding's Good News Rescue Mission has died