Mandate eNewsletter, 2007 No. 1

BROKEN BUT BEAUTIFUL
by Tara Bryant, Seven Rivers Presbyterian Church

As the Community Ministries Director at Seven Rivers Presbyterian Church in Lecanto, Florida, I spent the first year to year and a half assessing our current ministries before I realized that we were enabling most folks and potentially harming them. I could not put my finger on the problem, so I started researching how I could become educated about actually "helping" the poor. I ran across some information from the Chalmers Center at the Mission to North America Mercy Conference in Atlanta two years ago and realized that they were just what we needed. I enrolled myself, some team members from my focus team, a pastoral intern, and a physician who goes to our church and has a heart for the poor in the Chalmers Center’s online course called “Foundations and Principles of Holistic Ministry.” The course was an eye-opener and exactly what we needed. The cost is unbelievably inexpensive. I have 3 folks--2 elders and another focus team member-- who took the course in August 2006 and 7 more who will take the course in January 2007. My goal is to educate as many leaders and key volunteers in community ministries as I possibly can. I will take the information and adapt it to teach volunteers in my ministry areas.

Covenant College intern, Amanda Morris, and Tara Bryant

This past summer I had the privilege of hosting an intern from the Department of Economics and Community Development at Covenant College, which is intertwined with the Chalmers Center. She helped us develop an Individual Development Account (IDA) Program. It is our first baby step in becoming more developmental rather than relief- oriented in our ministry focus. It is a matched savings program where the individual or family chooses an asset for which they want to save.

By taking the Chalmers course, I have been able to eliminate many ways I used to think I was serving the poor but was actually enabling them to manage their poverty. I no longer give money for utility shut-offs or rent payments or bus tickets. I feel like we are no longer victims to the whim of every needy person who comes in the front door. Our focus is not on how many boxes of food we can hand out at our food pantry each month. Now, we plan to use our money for development reasons not rescue. We still give out food through our Harvest Ministries, but our focus is on using that opportunity to build bridges to those who come for food whom we know are spiritually hungry. I am encouraging volunteers to develop relationships with Harvest participants throughout the month, to invite them for coffee, or to pick them up for church and get to know them.

Instead of having a "talking head" come and give a devotional each month, we now break up into small groups with Seven Rivers’ folks and Harvest participants together. We use "appreciative inquiry" questions, finding out what assets and gifts people have rather than asking them how broken and needy they are. Rather than trying to “fix” them we are engaging in relationships with them. In the process "we" are finding out how impoverished we are and how much we need "them" in order to see our own spiritual poverty. There is a real spirit of authentic community growing and more participants are beginning to come to worship. Members are picking people up and bringing them to church and are working with them on budgeting and finding jobs and best of all, just enjoying one another as friends.

I believe it is ever so slowly changing the culture of our church. We are beginning to look more broken but beautiful. I personally feel I now know where to lead because of the course. Before I took it, I just responded to the tyranny of the urgent. I have big dreams of transitional housing, job training and mentoring and even a free clinic, but that may be years from now. Meanwhile, I believe the first steps are to inform people of the root cause of poverty--broken relationships; with God, others, our environment, and ourselves. Our congregation hears the message of grace continuously, and they are hungry to serve. The problem has been that we do not know how. We do not know what to do with the guy standing on the street corner with a sign that says, "Will work for food." Something makes us want to rescue. It is easier and makes us feel good, but we know in our guts it is wrong. This course has given me a "foundation" and real "principles" that I can articulate and teach to others that are based on scripture that informs us as to what poverty really is and what causes it. Knowing those things, it has given me new insight and vision as to how we are to be part of the Kingdom here on earth.

I guess the words of some of our Harvest participants have been my biggest encouragement that we are heading in the right direction. One lady said, "I no longer feel like I'm just a number in the crowd. Now I have a face." Another said, "Even if I don't need groceries next month, can I still come?" We have begun using participants who come regularly as volunteers and they are delighted to serve. Last month one man said, "I feel like we're sort of a church within a church." A volunteer told me that a person he did an exit interview with said that what set our ministry apart from other food pantries was that we treated them with respect and as though we actually enjoyed them. This is just one of about 12 ministries under my oversight, but it is the one I think will be most transformed by implementing the things I learned through the Chalmers Center.

For more information about the Chalmers Center, visit us at www.chalmers.org.