Workshop looks to serve people in need

Saturday, February 24,2007
By Clayton Hardiman
chardiman@muskegonchronicle.com

A number of ministries have spread across the Muskegon area -- food trucks, clothes pantries, meal sites and other relief ministries -- to make an immediate impact on the lives of the poor.

But what if there were another way?

What if there were a deeper, more lasting way to help poor people change their lives than handing out food for their next meal?

A growing number of people of faith suspect there is, says Sarah Rinsema-Sybenga, director of Sacred Suds.

Now a two-day traveling institute is on its way to Muskegon to help them investigate that very approach, she said.

It's Part Three of an educational series devoted to the subject, called "Beyond Charity" and hosted by Sacred Suds, a local community ministry. Its purpose, says Rinsema-Sybenga is to look behind the crisis-relief approach to ministries of empowerment and development that "have deep impact on the lives of the poor in our community."

The institute, consisting of a pair of workshops, will bring nationally known speakers to the Hackley Hospital Auditorium in Muskegon.

Among them is Robert Lupton. The author of several books about Christian community development, Lupton is also the founder and director of Family Consultation Service Urban Ministries, a community development organization that focuses on a quartet of adjacent neighborhoods in urban Atlanta.

Lupton will lead a March 9 workshop called "Empowerment." Rather than focusing on handouts, it is designed to look at creating opportunities for people to break out of poverty and dependence.

Also headed for Muskegon are Barbara Williams-Skinner and Isaias Mercado.

The one-time executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, D.C., Williams-Skinner is the president of the Skinner Leadership institute, which she and her late husband, the Rev. Tom Skinner, founded together in 1992.

The institute evolved from Tom Skinner Associates, the ministry founded by the former gang leader, author, motivational speaker and professional sports chaplain. Tom Skinner, who spoke in Muskegon on numerous occasions, died in 1994.

Mercado is a key leader in the Chicago-based Latino Leadership Foundation. In 2003, he founded La Casa Del Carpintero, a bilingual church in suburban Chicago.

Williams-Skinner and Mercado will co-lead a workshop March 10 workshop titled "Reconciliation: Bridging the Racial Divide." It is billed as an "honest look" at the attitudes, misconceptions, systems and structures that block the way to biblical reconciliation, as well as an acknowledgment of the idea that the church should be the greatest advocate for racial, cultural and economic diversity.

Both workshops are organized through the institute program of the Christian Community Development Association, which, according to founder John Perkins, is intended to "equip and educate people of faith all over this nation on how to redeem their communities and eradicate poverty for the glory of God."

The opportunity to examine such concepts is "extremely exciting," said Norma York-Bremer, board chairperson for Sacred Suds.

In a sense, it reflects the approach that Sacred Suds has taken in its four years of existence, York-Bremer said. It began as a ministry to offer laundry and shower services to those who needed them. Now it includes a variety of programs from a community garden to a computer center to an English-as-a-second-lanugage class and other services.

"We're a laundry -- and in the beginning, we were just a laundry," York-Bremer said. "But then we started talking to people, asking, 'Why are you coming here?' We started going out to the whole community."

In the same sense, people of faith "need to have an outreach" to the poor that goes beyond the traditional relief approach, York-Bremer said. "We need to get beyond that."

The first two parts of the "Beyond Charity" series demonstrated there is an interest in such approach, Rinsema-Sybenga said. The initial workshop, held in November, drew more than 30 people from 15 faith communities. The second, held in January, drew 40 people from 17 faith communities.

"We have been inspired to see and hear a new sense of excitement that a growing number of people of faith feel around creating ministries that go beyond charity," Rinsema-Sybenga said.