Community Outreach - 8 Years Later

Actually it's more like 8 1/2 years later, mean't to write this in September but as usual I got distracted. But with some of the recent events thought now would be a good time to see how far we've come to keep things in perspective.

If you've seen my recent profile pic on facebook, you know that I got my pretty face busted up last night during church.  Here's a brief description of what happened.  On Wednesday nights we open the gym early and kids from the community come play basketball and hang out until time for Bible class. At class time some stay and go to class and some leave.  I was going over to see how that transition time was going.  Saw a group of kids in the parking lot beside the gym and realized that there was a fight. Fights do happen on rare occasions and are usually easy to break up.  I went to break it up, fight did not want break up and the crowd did not want it to stop.  When I realized I was not going to be able to stop it myself, I made a tactical error and pulled my phone out to call for help before removing myself from the middle of the crowd ( a lesson learned).  Someone took exception to this and blindsided me from the crowd. Interesting enough it did have the effect of breaking up the fight just not in a way I would have liked.

Fear is a powerful tool of Satan.  And fear for safety is an easy fear to prey on especially when it occurs someplace that you expect to be safe like a church.  It is a battle that we've had to fight from the beginning of this outreach.  I'm afraid that I've inadvertently fed into that fear by posting my pic from the event last night.  I just thought it was a good pic and would get some interesting comments.  While there are some safety issues that need to addressed my fervent prayer and hope is that there won't be an overreaction to this incident.  There are too many opportunities and live's being touched for that to happen.

In addition to the fight last night we've had a number of recent break-ins at the food pantry.  We joke about someone breaking in and stealing stuff that we give away for free and will bag it, carry it to your car or even give you a ride if needed but it is disappointing, disheartening and discouraging when things like this happen.

On September 1st, 2004 we started our first class of 8 kids with Brianna, Brittany & Brandi Holmes, Kayla, Shareka & Ashley Hart, Keonna Holmes and Ashley Turner.  Marco & Michael Pope and friends soon followed and the rollercoaster ride began.  To get a very biased account of our history you can start here.


Jump to January 2013.  Here's a look at where we've come from that first class of 8 kids.

As part of our Community Outreach we hold 3 major events each year:
Community Day - A day each spring where we invite the community to come spend an afternoon with us.  This past spring was our 4th one I believe. We had around 500 attend.  We've moved from a day of food,fun & games for the kids to day of service to those in our neigborhood's while still providing the food, fun & games for the kids.  We added a grocery drive this year and provided groceries to over 100 families.
School Supply Night -  The first year we did this we gave school supplies to 155 kids.  This past fall on our third School Supply Night we gave back packs and supplies to 408. We also fed over 500 people.
Christmas with Santa - This has always been our small easy event until this year when in conjunction with the Food Pantry we added a Coats & Warm Clothing drive. There were 200 pics taken with Santa, 300 + people attended and were fed.  Gave coats & warm clothing to over 60 families.

Wednesday Nights 
Gym Time - As I wrote above on Wednesday night's the gym is opened early to let kids come play basketball and hang out.  We probably average between 40-60 kids from the area each Wednesday. The number that stay for class varies from week to week.  A number of these kids have gone on to become involved with the youth group. On most Wednesday nights a crew from Silver City Church come play basketball and attend class. They have been a huge positive influence.
Kingdom Express -   Kingdom Express is not officially a Community Outreach program, it's our elementary age bible classes.  From very early in the Community Outreach ministry we realized that our current Wednesday night classes were not adequately serving this new influx of kids from the community or the kids that were already here.  A number of folks involved in the education ministry and community outreach ministry worked together to develop a new program that would benefit all our kids.  I believe this has been a tremendous success.

New Stuff
Mentoring Program - One of the ideas that Jessie Stacy brought with him from his work at Silver City Church was a framework and passion for a mentoring program.  Each Monday night a group of about 20 kids meet with a mentor for help with homework, bible study, fun and just a chance to get to know each other.
Food Pantry - This past June, Levy got back into the food pantry ministry.  Developed and run by Emily Taylor and Latisha Young (proud to say my youngest daughter).  This food pantry is setup more like a grocery store and is open every two weeks and is by appointment only. Each family gets to shop and get food based on their family size.  This allows for a lot more interaction and a chance to get to know them better.  Over 120 families have been served so far.

Looking back at where we came from and where we are now, I think what GOD has blessed us with is worth the occasional busted up face.

Final Thoughts -

A few years ago we had Bill Ehlig come do a seminar on what Every Church Member Should Know About Poverty.  During our discussions we asked how other churches in similar situations had been successful, He told us he didn't know of any that had been, that the ones he knew had given up by the time they'd reached the point we were at. Told us we should write a book when we figured it out.  Don't believe we're ready to write a book yet but here are some good basic principles to follow:
1. Pray
2. Never Give Up, Never Give Up, Never Give Up
3. Embrace 1 Corinthians 13 4-7
4. Repeat Steps 1 - 3
5. Expect failure, frustration, disappointment and despair.  But that's alright, GOD can work with those.
6. Rejoice in the successes. To often all we see is number 5 and we forget the good.
7. Expect to lose members, volunteers and kids. It's going to happen some members will be unable to move out of their comfort zones and will leave. Volunteers will burnout especially if you can't do number 9.  Kids will move in and out of your lives. It will break your heart.
8. Don't be afraid to make changes.  Not every thing you try will work, move on.
9. Involve as many people as possible. To succeed and be sustainable it must move outside the core group of volunteers otherwise burnout is inevitable.
10.  Pray some more.

Mark Deal