Last February, Roger Bain noticed someone had jiggered with the fencing along the bottom of the big air-conditioning unit behind the First United Methodist Church.

“I put it back the way it was,” he said. “And then I saw some cardboard back behind there and some coats and some trash bags. So I cleaned it up.”

A few days later, Bain, the church’s facilities coordinator, noticed the fencing was gone.

“This time, I looked under there and I could see the (coolant) tubes had been cut and the wires had been pulled down,” he said.

Bain called police after finding a homeless man sleeping behind the unit.

“They talked to the guy,” he said. “He said he’d been under there to get out of the rain; he said he hadn’t cut the tubes or pulled out the wiring. After that, it was like, ‘Well, what are you going to do? You can’t prove anything.’ So they let him go.”

The repairs ended up costing the church more than $4,500.

For the four churches located within a block of the Lawrence Community Shelter, 214 W. 10th St., instances such as this – and worse – are not unique.

Tracy Kihm, First United Methodist Church business administrator, surveys a damaged air-conditioning unit Wednesday outside the church. Kihm says after someone got beneath the unit during the winter and caused ,500 in damage, the church has since added additional protective fencing.

“We had a drunk man throw up in the bathroom,” said Tracy Kihm, business manager at First United Methodist, 946 Vt. “He had to be physically guided up the stairs and out the building.”

Others have been found sleeping in the church’s boiler room, wandering its halls and helping themselves to the sack lunches in the staff kitchen.

It’s not unusual, Kihm said, for a homeless person to fill a large, out-of-the-way window well on the building’s south side with clothing and bedding.

“They’ll sleep in there,” she said, “but they don’t realize there’s a drain in there. So when it rains, it floods the downstairs classrooms.”

Trinity Episcopal Church, 1011 Vt., recently banned the homeless from sleeping along the arched corridor leading to the sanctuary after church members had to step over sleeping bodies on their way to Sunday morning services.

A parking lot near the church has become a “public bathroom,” said a woman who works at the church.

At Plymouth Congregational Church, 925 Vt., women are told not to leave their purses unattended.

“We’ve had everything stolen at one time or another,” said senior pastor Peter Luckey. “We constantly remind people that we’re a downtown church and we have to be very conscious of leaving things out in the open.”

On occasion, Luckey said, people who are both homeless and mentally ill have wondered into Sunday worship services.

“We’ve had them walk through the choir, we’ve had them walk around the pulpit,” he said.

Though disturbed by the aberrant behavior, none of the churches’ leaders know what to do about how it.

“It’s a balancing act,” Luckey said. “On one hand you have to be concerned for the safety of your staff and church members, but on the other hand, as a downtown church, we feel called upon to minister to the unfortunate among us.”

All four churches – Plymouth Congregational, Trinity Lutheran, First United Methodist and First Christian Church, 1000 Ky. – are major supporters of the Lawrence Community Shelter and services for the homeless.

First Christian and First United Methodist are host to the LINK and Jubilee Cafe meal programs, respectively.

“They’ve always been responsive – even with all the problems, they’ve always said yes,” said shelter director Loring Henderson.

Like the pastors, Henderson said he, too, wasn’t sure what to do.

“We can meet with them. We can put up signs, I guess,” he said, pausing. “They can call police – if people are trespassing, they should be held accountable.”

Henderson said he’s reluctant to tell the homeless to stay out of the churches.

“Churches are places of refuge,” he said. “They’re places where no matter how many times you mess up, you know you will find forgiveness. That’s important.”

Of the four churches, First Christian appeared to have fewest troubles. It’s also the only one that locks its doors during the day.

“We installed a keypad a year or two ago – you have to know the code to get in,” said Jim Congrove, chairman of the church’s board of trustees. “We had people in the building who weren’t there for church business. This was our way of addressing it.”

A video camera alerts office staff when visitors need in but don’t know the code.

Last weekend, someone broke two basement windows and spraypainted graffiti on the outside wall that borders the alley.

“We don’t know what the solution is,” Congrove said.

At Trinity Episcopal, the Rev. Oliver Lee said the solution lies not with the four churches but with the community at large.

“This is a national problem that we continue to address with Band-Aid fixes,” he said.

Lee said despite the homeless having relatively easy access to shelter, food and clothing, little has been done to address the “deeper, psychological issues” that hold them down.

“As a church, we are here to help,” he said, “but the problem is we don’t know where to go for the help they need.”

Hubbard “Hub” Collinsworth, 59, has been homeless for two years. He blamed most of the trouble on a “very small minority” of people bent on taking advantage of services meant for the homeless.

“There are predators,” he said. “Anything that’s put out for or offered to the homeless, they will take advantage of it. They are a lot of the disruptive influence.”

Bill Sims, too, has been homeless or near homeless the past two years. More churches, he said, should install security systems like First Christian’s.

“The only thing I could say to the churches is, maybe, wake up, this is not 1950,” he said. “Secure your buildings, provide security.”