wfn.org | Church's Shalom program to mark 10th anniversary

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Nov. 12, 2002	News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville,
Tenn.  10-31-71BP{513}

NOTE: Photographs are available with this report.

By Frances S. Smith*

LOS ANGELES (UMNS) - Ten years after a civil uprising rocked the Los Angeles
area, the United Methodist Church's response to the tragedy continues to
bear fruit in communities across the United States and in the African
countries of Zimbabwe and Ghana.

Following the acquittal of four white Los Angeles police officers charged in
the beating of black motorist Rodney King, people took to the streets to
vent their frustration. The resulting destruction, coupled with years of
poverty and neglect, cried out for a response.

The United Methodist Church, at its 1992 General Conference, created a
"Shalom Zone" in Los Angeles. It also expressed the hope that the Shalom
Zone concept would be a prototype for "proactive ministry" in other places.
A National Shalom Committee was formed, and the United Methodist Board of
Global Ministries was assigned responsibility for the national Shalom
Initiative. It offers to annual conferences and local sites initial
training, start-up funding, technical assistance, a newsletter, brochures
and videos, and biennial Shalom Summits.

The program, now known as Communities of Shalom, focuses on geographic areas
where churches collaborate with local organizations, businesses,
institutions and residents to transform the conditions that affect people's
lives - to change negative forces within the community to positive actions
for shalom (peace).

This year, the 10th anniversary of the General Conference action, "Shalom
Summit VI" will bring together leaders from most of the 40 annual
conferences that are participating in the program. They will gather at the
Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington Dec. 12-15.

Through Communities of Shalom, United Methodists and others are serving the
homeless, helping troubled youth, providing job services and doing countless
other ministries in urban and rural communities around the United States. In
1999, church leaders in Zimbabwe established the first Shalom community
outside the United States, in an impoverished suburb of Mutare known as
Sakubva Township, where crime and HIV/AIDS are prevalent.

Shalom ministries are under way in about 40 U.S. annual conferences,
Zimbabwe and Ghana. Inquiries about the program also have been received from
parts of Europe and the Philippines, says Lynda Byrd, who staffs the Shalom
initiative as assistant general secretary/director of development for the
Board of Global Ministries.

Where it began

A visitor to Los Angeles would find some of the first Shalom communities
still active in South Central Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, Koreatown, Long
Beach and the East Valley.
 
"When the Shalom Zones were designated, the clusters began to meet and
develop plans for effectively impacting their communities," says Jim Conn,
urban strategist for the California-Pacific Annual (regional) Conference.
"Some plans were realized more than others, and some never developed."

Conn points to four that he terms "the strongest outgrowth of the Shalom
program in the Los Angeles area."

Zaferia Shalom Zone Agency, operated by Wesley Church in Long Beach, has
linked Wednesday morning Bible study with its food ministry. People waiting
in line for food are invited to engage in Bible study led by the Rev.
Cherrye Cunnigan. 

"We've had some interesting discussions," she says. Some 25 percent of those
in the class have started attending Sunday worship, and 15 percent have
joined the church. New members help in the kitchen, serve as ushers and
greeters, and take leadership in church committees. From an all-white
congregation, the church has become racially integrated. 

"Yes, there has been controversy," Cunnigan says, "but we've taken time to
discuss differences. New members have the same rights as old members."

CASE (Creating a Safe Environment) is the center's domestic violence
prevention and education program, run in partnership with Interval House. To
reach the African-American community, CASE is going through the faith
community. Workshops for pastors explain what domestic violence is, how to
discuss it with victims and resources to prevent recurrence. The 40-hour
program, "Domestic Violence 101," uses state resources. Eventually, two lay
people from each congregation will be trained to serve as resources.
    
"We've been able not only to provide services but to offer a church home for
people in the community who would not have come to worship otherwise,"
Cunnigan says. "The community is calmer, less violent."
 
Rakestraw Community Education Center in South Central Los Angeles
illustrates a major principle of Shalom philosophy. "We provide a place
where members of the community can come together, assess the community's
assets and decide what they want to do," says Addie Clark, a volunteer at
Rakestraw since 1990. 

In addition, the center enables the community to access resources from a
variety of places. These include such city services as transportation,
pothole repair and tree planting. DarEll T. Weist, head of the United
Methodist Urban Foundation, has trained 40 community leaders in asset-based
community development. Rakestraw brought existing block clubs together with
the police to work on neighborhood safety. AmeriCorp workers do after-school
tutoring. The California Youth Authority sends young men doing community
service to clean up after weekly food and clothing distribution.

Rakestraw's pride and joy is a new 17-by-92-foot mural on an outside wall
titled "A Beacon of Hope," with wording in Spanish and English. Neighborhood
matching funds made the mural possible. With a $200,000 grant from the Board
of Global Ministries' Millennium Fund, Rakestraw raised matching funds from
local foundations to refurbish its facilities, putting on a new roof,
replacing wiring and plumbing, and adding a new gym floor.

"Rakestraw illustrates how a combination of government and private resources
were put to use to bring blighted areas back into shape, with the emphasis
on service to young people and economic development," says Cornish Rogers,
retired professor of Claremont School of Theology and a member of
Rakestraw's board of directors.

Sepulveda Shalom Zone sits in a densely populated, drug- and gang-infested
area known as North Hills, northwest of downtown Los Angeles. The Rev. Jim
Hamilton works with police to keep children and youth in his neighborhood
safe. A basketball tournament, tae kwon do (passive resistance), a weight
room and free play night in the gym are all part of this effort. Shalom
summer camps provide kids opportunities for field trips and offer
instruction in conflict resolution.

Karen Rodriguez works with adults on housing and immigration problems, legal
rights, licenses for sidewalk vendors and shelter for the homeless. Three
Head Start sessions a day accommodate 180 children, and their parents attend
English-as-a-second-language classes (45 in the morning, 30 at night). 

The Soledad Enrichment Association staffs computer classes using new
computers donated by the Lauback literacy program. And tutors from Penny
Lane, a continuing education school, help students with homework. An
84-year-old woman and her helpers serve breakfast to homeless people three
days a week.

Another Community of Shalom in Long Beach is the Wilmore Urban Agency. "A
Movable Feast" is the name of its catering business, which trains single
mothers - some recovering addicts - and pays them for their labor. Profits
from the business underwrite a five-days-a-week tutoring program. Long Beach
is "a big convention town," according to the Rev. Paula Ferris, pastor of
First United Methodist Church. Thanks to word-of-mouth, the catering service
gets business from corporations and individuals - enough to keep three
full-time and 24 part-time employees busy. 

"4elements Teen Leadership" draws 60 to 200 young people to the Wilmore
center every Friday night for a teen-run program featuring music, dance, art
and the spoken word. The program offers an alternative to the pervasive drug
and violence culture, Ferris says. 

Fostering new ministries

Since 1992, the Shalom program has trained more than 5,000 people
representing more than 500 sites, Byrd says. About half work for systemic
change in their communities, and others provide services such as food or
clothes pantries and after-school programs. More than 1,500 churches inside
and outside the denomination are doing Shalom work.

When the program began, officials learned through experience that a top-down
ministry wouldn't work, Byrd recalls. "We put funding in and we identified
where we wanted to be in ministry, but we didn't enlist the commitment and
ownership of the people that we were seeking to be in ministry with." As a
result, some of the initial Los Angeles sites and all of those in Miami
folded. 

Now, Byrd says, the Shalom program meets with annual conference leaders and
interested churches before doing any training. It also ensures the presence
of an annual conference coordinator who provides assistance to the sites.

The program exceeded its goal of having 300 sites by the year 2000, but Byrd
says she's more concerned about quality than quantity. "My sense is that
where a Shalom site is very strong, it begins to mentor other ministries."
She emphasizes the importance of the program not becoming institutionalized
at the general church level. "Shalom belongs to the community. That's been a
real challenge to us as the church, to give it its wings."

Bishop Felton Edwin May, leader of the denomination's Baltimore-Washington
Annual Conference, served as the first chairman of the National Shalom
Committee, and encouraged the program's spread to Zimbabwe. "The beauty of
the Shalom concept was the eagerness of local congregations to coalesce with
social service and government agencies in their communities to meet human
needs," he says.
 
Adds Conn: "In the churches and communities where Shalom Zones realized
their goals, congregations have been changed, neighborhoods have been
changed, and lives have been changed. Jesus didn't ask us to do more than
that."	
# # #
*Smith, a retired United Methodist News Service staffer, is a free-lance
writer living in Claremont, Calif. Tim Tanton with UMNS contributed to this
report.

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United Methodist News Service
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