UMR Communications is offering the latest headlines in the RSS format.
Features
A safe place: Shalom Zones rebuild lives Bill Fentum, Feb 6, 2009
UMNS FILE PHOTO BY CHRISTINE KUMAR
Family members of murder victims light candles during a December 2007 service of remembrance at John Wesley United Methodist Church in the Baltimore-Washington Conference.
By Bill Fentum Staff Writer
In 1992, the acquittal of four police officers in the beating of black motorist Rodney King sparked citywide riots in Los Angeles.
Within days, the United Methodist Church responded to ease the tension by launching several Shalom Zones in the city. Named for the Hebrew word for “peace,” the concept was simple: Bring churches, parishioners, interfaith groups and social agencies together to rebuild neighborhoods.
The idea caught on, and Communities of Shalom—a program based at Drew University Theological School in Madison, N.J.—now oversees more than 200 Shalom Zones in the United States, Zimbabwe and Ghana. Plans call for adding more African sites this year in Malawi.
“Shalom heals communities from the inside out, and it needs our support,” said the Rev. Michael Christensen, the ministry’s national director. “The current global recession hurts more than our personal 401(k)s. Whole communities are in crisis.”
United Methodist churches have set up the zones in whatever context they are needed.
Just last year, for instance, churches in Baltimore, Md., started seven Shalom sites after the city’s murder rate rose to seven times the national average. The Baltimore-Washington Conference sponsored training sessions and commissioned leaders in October for each site. Grief counseling and summer-camp experiences were provided for children and youth who had lost family members.
Drusilla Bunch, a member of Unity United Methodist Church in Baltimore, spent a week at the conference’s West River Camp with her three grandchildren, a few months after her son was shot to death.
“I needed that time as much as they did,” said Ms. Bunch, who is now raising the children. “My 11-year-old grandson, I watched him walking around the camp like he didn’t have a worry in the world. I asked him what he liked about it and he said, ‘No drama. Everything here is OK. I feel safe.’”
Baltimore is also home to a Shalom site that serves deaf residents in the city and five surrounding counties. Deaf Shalom Zone, Inc. (DSZ), at Christ United Methodist Church of the Deaf, offers everything from legal aid for deaf immigrants to parenting classes for deaf adults at risk of losing their children to foster care.
Culturally deaf people—those who were born without hearing or lost it in early childhood—talk only in sign language and rarely read English well. Some DSZ volunteers interpret for them while others serve as mentors for deaf children and youth in an afterschool program.
“Social services for hearing people are great,” said Mary Gladstone, DSZ’s director. “But there’s a language barrier when you’re deaf, so we try to bridge those gaps.”
Yearly events include Deaf Tax Day, when tax preparers work pro-bono to help clients file their returns. Hearing teens are invited to participate in Hands On, a week in July devoted to learning American Sign Language and renovating the homes of deaf and deaf-blind neighbors.
But funding remains a challenge. Donations fell slightly in 2008, and it’s been harder to meet the needs of deaf clients for food and housing.
“This is a scary time, and I pray the church won’t forget people who are marginalized but still part of the body of Christ,” said Carol Stevens, a GBGM missionary who started DSZ in 2000. “It takes money to run a parenting class that’s very effective, or an afterschool program. You may have a lot of volunteers, but someone still has to pay for the graham crackers.”
The same concern worries Kelsey Parker, a member of Gatchel United Methodist Church in Des Moines, Iowa, who runs the congregation’s Shalom Zone for inner-city children. Four in 10 of households near the church live below the poverty line, and the recession isn’t helping.
Ms. Parker now sends the children home once a week with groceries, purchased at-cost by the church from a local store.
Each summer Gatchel UMC hosts two-week day camps for some 90 children, with meals, games and afternoon field trips. A back-to-school health fair in August includes free physicals, dental screens and eye exams for students in kindergarten through 12th grade, and tutors work one-on-one with children during the school year.
“Kids enjoy the fellowship and the respect they get while they’re here, and it’s reciprocated in their lives,” Ms. Parker said. “When they grow up, a lot of them come back as volunteers to help others.”
That makes sense to Jessica “Jayda” Jacques, a former gang member in Newark, N.J. At 24, she’s grateful she lived to see adulthood when some of her friends didn’t. So in early 2008 she launched a mentoring program for girls in their early teens.
First, she visited local schools and enlisted nine girls who hadn’t yet joined gangs to become charter members. At a citywide rally on street violence she met Drew University’s chaplain, the Rev. Tanya Bennett, and from there things happened quickly.
The group, called Nine Strong Women, is on its way to becoming a Shalom project; GBGM provided a seed grant, and they’re now looking for a permanent meeting space.
Ms. Jacques helps the girls develop leadership skills, social etiquette and better hygiene habits. She also intervenes when gangs try to recruit them, and keeps them away from drugs.
“When they’re tempted, we just talk and talk until the thought is out of their minds,” she said. “They have a real attitude, their hormones are driving them wild, they’re emotional, and a lot of people don’t like to deal with them because of those issues. But I’ve seen already seen change in them. I know it’s possible.”
The girls spent a weekend in November at the university, meeting with a group of Drew students from Newark who also know the pressures of inner-city life. “The weekend gave them a different vision of what life could be like for them after high school, and it helped them to envision a better future for themselves,” Ms. Bennett said. “Some of these girls grow up in a four-block radius, where they never leave those four blocks. That’s the reality of urban poverty.”
The Rev. David Cooper, an American Baptist minister in Richmond, Va., saw that reality first-hand 10 years ago, when he left a career in construction management to attend Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Ga. As an intern, he served at a faith-based urban center that served the poor and homeless.
“I came face-to-face with all the issues people face trying to right themselves in the city,” he said. “It was a real eye-opener.”
Mr. Cooper, now executive director of United Methodist Urban Ministries in Richmond, is launching Shalom Farm, a community effort to harvest vegetables for the Central Virginia Food Bank. Planting begins in April on two acres at Westview on the James, a camp owned by the Virginia Conference.
Besides feeding families, Shalom Farm will also serve an educational role. Mr. Cooper is partnering with three inner-city elementary schools to bring third-graders to the farm, to show them how foods are grown and harvested. The conference will also partner with Virginia Tech and Virginia State University to sponsor classes in nutrition for families in the area.
“That’s the Shalom approach to community development,” Mr. Cooper said. “It’s not only feeding people, but also teaching them how feed themselves.”
And that fits easily, he added, into Shalom’s type of ministry—a call to community action instead of words.
“I can see God’s emerging Shalom already at work in Richmond,” he said, “and if we’re obedient to our sense of calling, I’m sure things will happen that go beyond our expectations.”
UMNS FILE PHOTO BY CHRISTINE KUMAR
The same concern worries Kelsey Parker, a member of Gatchel United Methodist Church in Des Moines, Iowa, who runs the congregation’s Shalom Zone for inner-city children. Four in 10 of households near the church live below the poverty line, and the recession isn’t helping. 
