Southwood Presbyerian Church in Huntsville, Alabama, offers a holistic ministry in the Lincoln Mill Neighborhood called
Lincoln Village Ministries.
Lincoln Village Ministry
A Model of Holistic Community Care
centered around work in
the Public School and Collaboration with other Churches
Church Name:
Southwood PCA
Location:
Huntsville, AL
Web sites:
http://www.lincolnvillageministry.com/http://www.southwood.org/Compassion Ministry:
Lincoln Village Ministry
Church size:
Southwood PCA 1,200
Ten to fifteen churches of various sizes and denominations
have significant partnership and leadership in this ministry.
Key Audiences:
Suburban or Rural churches desiring significant community impact
Churches looking for spiritual development in members through service.
Churches wishing to engage in schools for significant transformation.
Churches interested in partnering with others to have community impact.
Key Lessons:
Cast vision through exposing extreme poverty.
Partnering with others extends the work further and faster.
Credibility and accountability are key to working with schools.
God-led endeavors and holistic solutions produce impressive results
From Internally Focused to Externally Focused:
Exposure is the word that best describes the catalyst that launched the staff and members of Southwood PCA into serving the poor and needy of their community. Mercy Ministry Director, Mark Stearns has a history of helping the needy, including years with Young Life, Prison Ministry work and Harvest, a farming ministry helping provide food for the poor. “The Harvest ministry was going well but was not challenging to me any more. I wanted to get back to ministry that forced me to depend of Christ to work. I was restless and wanted a real challenge.” Mark was searching for a new area to serve when he came across a neighborhood next to an old textile mill that had shut down. “It had suffered 30 years of neglect. I simply began walking around and it was evident problems existed.”
But nothing had quite prepared him for what he encountered during his first visit inside the homes of Lincoln Village. “One day I met a young lady and her daughter. As I talked with her she asked me to come into her house. When I went into her house I noticed holes in the walls, in the floors. The electricity didn’t work with any consistency and the plumbing had not worked for some time, but they continued to use the bathroom. My first thought. ‘Oh God, I can’t believe this child is living in a situation like this,” says Mark Stearns. The stench in the home was nauseating. Mark felt as though he had stepped into a third world country. “I cried and then drove straight to our pastor’s house,” says Mark.
Mark proceeded to put Senior Pastor, Mike Honeycutt in the car and take him to the house. “I could tell the smell was really bothering him and he began to sweat. After several minutes, Mike said ‘Mark, I’ve got to go’,” says Mark. Not knowing what the pastor’s reaction would be—one of anger or compassion—Mark had simply prayed that his pastor would suffer and that his heart would break like his own. After a breath of fresh air outside, Mike said to Mark, “This is where the Kingdom of God needs to be.” To which Mark simply asked, “Turn me loose over here.”
Southwood PCA did turn Mark loose and quickly learned that the problems of Lincoln Village were extensive and even beyond just what their church could handle alone. Four years later, the Lincoln Village Ministry and the Lincoln Village Restoration Project have grown deep roots of restoration and revival in the homes and school of this neighborhood. by engaging hundreds of volunteers from Southwood PCA, 12 area churches and numerous other professional and business partnerships. Together, they are engaged in physical restoration, tutoring, medical, legal, emotional and spiritual aid to this community. Southwood has established a food pantry and a clothes closet; has supported the Lincoln Elementary School through a student tutoring program and upgrading the school library and greenhouse. Other ministry tasks have included home repair and supporting a volunteer medical clinic.
Ministry Context:
Huntsville, Alabama is a mix of professional and working class people. It is home to extreme poverty due to textile mills closing their doors. At the same time the professional industry has boomed in this city that is home to The Boeing Company and NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center. There are 250,000 residents of Huntsville.
Southwood PCA is located in beautiful Jones Valley in Southeast Huntsville and is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America. Over 1,200 members worship together each Sunday morning during their one worship service. Just miles from the church and various upper class neighborhoods is the community of Lincoln Village, where families live in extreme poverty and inadequate living conditions. Many single mothers and widows are trapped in the cycle of poverty in this neighborhood with no way out. Some face legal troubles—sometimes for simple tickets. These scary legal troubles cause families to hide and not receive even proper medical and financial help, for fear of filing paperwork that would expose their legal fees and troubles.
Lincoln Village Ministries on Mission
Lincoln Village Ministry is the community service arm of Southwood PCA and is a non-profit organization established that engages in a holistic approach to ministry. The first stages of the ministry began in
Lincoln Elementary School. They began to provide financial and personnel support to this school. A tutoring program was developed allowing church volunteers to come alongside the school and provide additional help in improving the state required standardized test scores and build relationships. “There are 170 students at Lincoln School and 50 in the head start program. We work with all these children and their families,” says Mark. When Lincoln Village Ministry first got involved, the school’s achievement overall was in the 11 percentile of all pubic schools in Alabama. Today, Lincoln Village has made improvements that are nothing short of miraculous. The school now performs in the 91 percentile in reading and 89 percentile in math. “The school has already hit the standard they needed to achieve by the year 2011 in the national No Child Left Behind Act,” says Mark.
Not only has LVM been instrumental in bringing test scores up, they are helping students connect with a future and to dream big with the completion of a state of the art science lab. They took an old building behind the school and transformed it through vision and partnerships. “Our local churches have engineers and scientists. We asked them to come alongside in this project,” says Mark. They also hired someone to teach in the lab four days a week and a local PetSmart donated animals, giving the lab life and hands-on learning and observation experiences. School principal Christy Jensen says, “If God hadn’t sent the support of Lincoln Village Ministry, I don’t think I would have lasted past the first year.”
After being involved with the students for a short time, they realized the need to expand their vision to include other areas of the community. They are now involved in as many areas of community life as possible, providing help with medical, dental, legal, clothing and nutritional needs of students and families. They helped bring a social service worker on site, developed a food pantry, clothes closet and a partnership with HEALS Health Clinic—also on site at the school.
Lincoln Village Restoration, the guiding non-profit entity for housing, has purchased approximately thirty-five housing units that are in the process of being renovated. Lincoln Village Restoration purchases the home and partnering groups provide labor and supplies. To date seven homes have been refurbished and re-inhabited: five by churches, one from the local Home Depot and employees and one from the local State Farm Insurance Company and employees.
Step One: Expose the Needs and Gain Support
Mark knew that to make a real difference, he would need his pastor’s and church’s support. So, as mentioned earlier, he began to expose people to the extreme conditions that existed in Lincoln Village. Senior Pastor, Mike Honeycutt played a vital role in the people at Southwood first stepping up to get involved. “Mike gave the first message and our church began to pour ourselves out as a drink offering. Mike is an advocate and he is still convicted that this is what our church should be about. He also keeps it in front of the session.” Mark Stearns also began talking and teaching Sunday school classes
Step Two: Go Get More Help!
“We began to see that the needs were way beyond our church’s ability. I started inviting others to come and see.” Mark spent a good deal of time during the first two years speaking to other churches and showing them that tutoring was a platform to get involved. “I saw and ocean of trouble and no one church could own this. Lincoln Village Ministry represents many different denominations all working together,” says Mark.
Mark’s team also got help from other fellow workers in ministry to the poor. “We brought consultants in from Desire Street Ministry, New Orleans to help assess and view ministry. The Lincoln Village team also went to their facility,” says Mark. They also visited ministries in Birmingham, Atlanta, Nashville, New Orleans and looked at various models. “We are always open to learn. We like to ‘glean’ from others,” he says.
Step Two: Assess the Needs and Gain Credibility
Visiting the school principal and the homes of people living in the neighborhood was the best assessment of all. One of the first assessments made was the church or another organization would have to own the homes in desperate need of repair. Almost all of the homes in need of repair were owned by three people. Lincoln Village Ministry would have to become landlords. “People were rooted there and we simply wanted to give them a safe, affordable environment to raise kids,” says Mark. The work of creating a board to raise money to buy the houses began and had eventually grown into its own non-profit.
Meeting the needs of the school children in the community was high on Mark’s personal priorities as well. “I suffered from not going to high school myself and I know how important it is for these kids to get and education and have a hope for the future,” admits Mark. In the first few weeks of Mark being “released” to go work in this neighborhood, he stopped in to visit with the school principal. “She gave me a tour and admitted that they were really struggling, but I could tell she was leery that I could really help. So, I think she tested me.” When Mark asked how he could help, she said that the school only had one working overhead projector. The very next week, Mark brought six new projectors to her and said, “OK, now what else do you really need?” That was the start of a great relationship between the school and the ministry. It didn’t take long for tutoring and room mothers to be enlisted as vital volunteers in the transformation of the school.
Sustaining the Outreach Arm:
They recruit volunteers through internal local church communications and staff use volunteer cards to promote opportunities, especially during speaking engagements about the ministry. Because of the relational connection people have to the children, tutors often bring their friends into volunteering with them. The ministry also has a quarterly newsletter.
To date, Lincoln Village Ministry has approximately 100 volunteers working every week (tutoring, room mothers, construction) in the school. Charlene Pinkey, who runs the tutorial program at the school, keeps a folder on each child and their struggles and study sheets for tutors to go over. “People are afraid, so we make it easy. Charlene gives tour of the school and neighborhood,” says Mark. The ministry also has an additional 500-600 volunteers annually who work in the school and in the Village with special projects and restoration. Lincoln village Ministry estimates that volunteer labor and donations have saved the ministry $750,000.
Partnerships with other churches is vital to the success as well as partnerships with local businesses and professionals. The ministry has doctors, lawyers, dentists of all kinds that offer their services to the ministry. Mark says, “Southwood PCA never planted our flag in Lincoln Village. This is a ministry that takes every one of us.”
The ministry operates on an annual budget of $110,000, which does not include some staff salaries. For instance, Mark Stearns salary is paid for through Southwood PCA. Funds come from various sources including special donations and general fund donations for participating churches. The only fundraising that is done is for the purchasing and refurbishing of homes. For example, they held a benefit concert in 2006 to help raise money for the Lincoln Village Restoration Project non-profit.
Challenges:
Mark admits that in ministry like this, one challenge is being patience. “Change is always much slower than you think.” One of the early challenges Mark faced was with volunteer retention. He could recruit volunteers, because people had a heart to help, but sometimes the shock of extreme poverty would cause them to back off and not fulfill their commitments long term. “People would come and volunteer and then be shocked by what they saw and not always come back. It made me angry. I realized they needed to learn how to stay composed in work with the poor.”
To help combat this problem of volunteer burn-out and check, Mark Stearns developed an 8-week class called Engaging the Enemy, where he helps individuals understand how Satan has attached people and helped them to be in their situation of poverty. He shows people the realities of extreme poverty and what it can be like to serve them. “It’s graphic, but my goal is to train them on how to fight to win,” says Mark. He teaches this course at Southwood and other churches.
Internal Benefits of an External Focus:
One of the benefits the church has seen is a renewed sense of purpose and calling for meeting the needs of the poor and living out Scripture. Southwood PCA will be expanding their ministry directly into the neighborhood they serve by planting a church in Lincoln Village in 2007.
The Lincoln Village Ministry has also produced a great sense of unity among believers in their city and in their own daily work as a staff. “(At Lincoln Village Ministry) we are loyal to the core. Problems are brought to our attention and the team work for each other. The enemy does not get a hold of our friendship and loyalty to this ministry,” says Mark.
