Six Month Mission Trip Next Door

This week KB is asking its writers to choose a country we would work in as missionaries for six months.

I wouldn’t have to go very far.

We live in a quaint village along the historical Eire Canal. Three seasons a year, I can walk along the canal, soaking in nature, crew teams, pleasure boaters and lots of shops and restaurants. My teenage daughter can walk home from school and spend a Saturday afternoon at the local Starbucks or the library. It is idyllic.

But not nine miles from us is the crescent of Rochester, New York, a swath of geography across the city, east to west, throbbing with violence, drugs, and poverty. The high school drop out rate is the highest of the largest city school districts in the state: 45.5%. In our town, 98% of students graduate from high school, and most then attend college. Rochester is known as one of the ten smartest cities in the nation because of top colleges, yet its public schools are fraught with problems.

To live in the crescent would be out of my comfort zone. I like knowing my family can go to sleep without bullets flying through the walls, and not having to address the issue of a crack house next door. But the problems of our nation’s cities, like Chicago, Hartford and Rochester, require a radical mission.

There are many churches in the city, including Brighton Presbyterian where my husband and I work and minister. But the problems of neglect, drug abuse and poverty can’t be fixed just by Sunday church attendance or even a weekly Bible study. Something more radical is required: ongoing prayer, mentoring, dedicated outreach and perhaps a live-in situation.

Nearly two years ago, I met a couple who are not only living in the city, they have dedicated two decades to raising other people’s children in a Saturday program called Bethel Express, which they now base at our church. Its focus and mission is on what its leaders call the "S Factor: Spiritual Strength, Social Stability and Scholastic Success." Children can begin the program between the ages of 6 and 12 (but no later) and the volunteer leaders feed and mentor them every Saturday until they graduate from high school. The program has a nearly 100% graduation rate. The adult volunteers love, encourage, and pray for these children for years.

Another couple I know established an inner-city healthcare ministry called His Branches 35 years ago, choosing to live just two blocks from their medical practice. The neighborhood has drug dealers, robberies and the occasional shooting. Eighty percent of HBI clients are at or below the poverty line.

We also know of three families who have made the decision to live in a tough area to make a difference in the neighborhood, and to be part of their church’s efforts to “re-neighbor” broken communities: 441 Ministries.

I do have a dream missionary trip (Ireland; Bible studies in a pub). But for me, the radical mission next door causes me to tremble.

It's all because of my Dad

It’s interesting that this was our topic this week.  On Sunday, the sermon was about boasting.  It was an interesting take on the passage in 2 Corinthians 5:12.  In some interesting homiletical work, the pastor tied this in to how our father’s (it was Father’s Day last Sunday) would boast on us.  He said that we should recognize the impact of our “fathers” and boast in their impact on our lives.

I’m going to follow that advice.  My father was not an educated man.  However, I think he probably was brilliant.  I recently looked at the 1940 census and saw that he listed himself as having finished seventh grade.  My mother often said that she doubted he got that far as he “went to sea” at the young age of 13 or 14.  By the time I came along, he had a job as a night janitor at a major bank in NYC.

My father stressed education.  I don’t remember specific conversations about college nor do I remember pressure about my grades.  But somehow, the idea that we needed a college education was impressed on my brothers and I.  Of my two brothers, only one graduated high school by finishing the 12^th grade.  The other, like me, got a GED (equivalency diploma).

But this is not about my brothers.  This is about me.  This is about my boasting on the imprint of my father that led to something of which I am very proud.

If you’ve read my blogs either her on Kingdom Bloggers or on Sounds of Hope, you know I am working on my doctorate.  You know that education is very important to me.  If you’ve read Sounds of Hope for a long time, you know about my early marriage at the age of 16, becoming a mother at 17, and you know about my childhood, etc.  For those of you who haven’t, here it is in a nutshell.

I married at 16.  I became pregnant immediately.  By the time, I was to enter my senior year of high school, I was dealing with first trimester exhaustion.  I quit school.  My peers graduated and I changed diapers on a beautiful baby boy.  The next fall, I tried again.  I tried to finish my senior year.  I remember falling asleep in class.  I couldn’t do it.

My dad, who was still living at the time, consoled himself with comments about how I always loved my dolls and seemed destined to be a mother.  By 19, my father went home to Jesus and my second child was born.  Still no diploma.  Abuse, abandonment, divorce, remarriage to the same guy, and another pregnancy followed.  Five months pregnant, he beat me for the last time.  The day my first daughter was born was the same day as graduation at the University of Missouri.  Three kids, one in the ICU nursery maybe dying, living on welfare and alone, I cried as I watched my peers stream out of commencement with their caps and gowns.  However, by this time, I had gotten a GED.

Three and a half years later, I finished college.  Something rose up within me that day as I cried and grieved over my life.  Yes, it was God but it was also my dad.  It was all those times that he instilled in me that education was important.  I was so proud.  Three kids and three and a half years later, I had a Bachelor of Science degree.  My only regret is my dad didn't see that day.  When I walk with my doctoral tam and academic regalia next May, I hope he's looking down from heaven and saying, that's my girl!  I knew she could do it.

Sorry Tanya Tucker...Texas is definitely not as close as I've been to Heaven.

 One thing I made sure of during my time in the Marine Corps, I went to every available speciality school I could get an officer's slot to attend. With that being said, there aren't a lot of  'adventerous' type items on my personal bucket list.

Sure...I'd love to leave the back of a helicopter for a low-level jump just one more time or dive in deep, open waters alone to prove my mustard at underwater navigation, but I'm smart enough to realize those are the games of the young and a major part of the reason for the aches and pains I feel while getting out of bed each morning.

So, what's on my bucket list? The top five?

While my ambitions may be far less physical in nature this days, there are still no doubt a great deal of  challenges:


1.  Publish a novel. Note, I didn't say write a book. That's the easy part for some people. Being a published author is a peer group I've longed to join.

2.  Speak a foreign language effectively. Like a lot of folks, I know my fair share of phrases in Spanish, Italian and Russian. Could I go to a country where one of those is the primary language and effectively communicate? Don't think so. (No cracks about living in a country where Spanish is the primary language already either)

3.  Go to China on a missions trip...or two. Why China? I'm still asking God that question myself in a Jonah-like manner.

#2 and #3 probably go hand-in-hand too. Seeing that I work with a gentleman from China....yeah...I know. God's obviously doing His part to make these two happen. Good thing I don't live by a large body of water.

4.  Finish my graduate degree. Hearing Joyce address the challenges of finishing a doctorate, I'm not sure why this one is on my list, maybe I want a reason for my kids to address me as 'The Doc.'

5.  Take my whole family to Hawaii.  I've lived there. My wife and I honeymooned there. But, I'd like to take the whole crew for a two week stay in my second favorite place to live in the world and renew my wedding vows with my beautiful love.  Maybe that's what I'll do with the proceeds from my book sales...Lord willing.

God bless and have a great weekend everyone!!

A view from a window

For those of us who know Jesus, probably life’s most defining moment is coming to faith in Christ-that moment that we first begin to understand that Jesus has forgiven us.  We are newly born into the Kingdom of God.  I heard a sermon this morning about baptism.  I thought how much is wrapped up in that act of baptism.

I don’t have a story of I was lost and then found Jesus and all was changed.  Oh, I have been lost and have found Jesus and my life has been changed.  However, my journey is just that, a journey of growing understanding of faith and relationship with Jesus.  I got “saved” many times as a child and youth.  Each time it was part of the saying yes to Jesus in increasing ways.  For me, a defining “moment” is hard if I think of the most important thing in my life, my salvation and relationship to Jesus. 

There was an event, a “moment” that truly changed my life forever.  It all happened because of Jesus.  But it wasn’t when I came to faith.  It was when the spirit of God caused something to rise up within me.  It was that moment that I realized that God could give me the strength and grace to change my life through education.

For those of you who have read this blog for a while, you know at one time I was high school drop-out.  You know I was deserted and abused by the husband of my youth.  If you haven’t read these stories you can go over to Sounds of Hope and read some if it by starting here.  The shorter version is that I had a husband who beat me, abandoned me, while pregnant with our third child.  In everyone’s eyes including mine, I had not hope, not future.  A single mom on welfare doesn’t have much going for them.

It was May 10, 1975.  I had a premature labor and delivered a baby girl whose future was uncertain.  Not just because of my circumstances but because she wasn’t expected to live.  Alone in the hospital room I walked to the window and saw a sea of caps and gowns as my peers came from receiving their degrees.  At first it was a cruel joke.  The loses I’d had.  The lack of hope I had contrasted to graduates clasping their diplomas ready for a bright future.  I cried. 

But that’s where the spirit of God rose up.  That’s where something I can’t explain stirred inside of me.  Somehow, someway, I would be one of those graduates.  Somehow, someway, I would find a way to get that education.   Three and half years later, remarried, pregnant with child number four, I clutched my Bachelor of Science degree from the same university. 

I can imagine what my life would have been like if that defining moment in that hospital room so many years ago had not occurred.  If I had never gone to school.  If I had never worked hard to make something of myself.  Most importantly, if God hadn’t given me the grace, strength, and fortitude to persevere, I couldn’t have done it.  Some people never understood my push.  Others came beside me and helped with love and comfort and tangible help.

Finding Jesus made all the other defining moments of my life possible.  Education gave me the chance to feed my family and to be equipped to work for the Kingdom.

Confessions of a Former Pharisee

The longer the live, the more I realize that the adage about the only thing constant is change.  If we don’t change, we also don’t grow.  It’s interesting that our blog this week is about changing our mind, not our heart.  That’s good because only God can change the heart but we can change our minds.  And let me tell you from personal experience, that distance from my head to my heart is usually the hardest and longest trip of all.

I had a professor at Trevecca who never gave me a grade.  That was because I bailed out of his classes twice.  He had this reputation.  The guy was brilliant.  I would start a class and then say NOPE, this is going to kill my GPA and I don’t need this and out the door I’d go.  Nonetheless, he actually influenced me a lot.  Several things he said to me during my interactions with him are things that will never leave me.  One of those things was 

education will change you whether you want it to or not

I realize that the term “social justice” is not the most well liked phrases in certain circles of Christianity.  In others, it is their favorite phrase.  I grew up in the camp where saying social justice was akin to saying you were backslidden.  We firmly rejected eternal security, so being backslidden could be an everyday, even hourly event.  Christians were classified as truly saved or not.  Those who spoke of social justice were in the not category.

Before I go further, let me make sure everyone understands me.  I do believe in salvation through the free gift of God through faith in His son Jesus Christ.  I do not believe that there is anything I can do to earn my salvation nor can I work off my sins.  But I have discovered much to my shock that social justice is not a dirty word.

As I plunged into Old Testament classes and as I plunged into the learning of Hebrew, I discovered a recurrent theme.  God cares about justice.  God cares about how we treat each other.  God wants us to take care of widows, orphans, the outcast, etc.  Then as I took the course in the gospels of Matthew and Mark, from an equally hard professor as the one I would bail out on, I saw that Jesus miracles were not for show – they were to meet the needs of real people.  There were people hungry and Jesus fed them.  There were people marginalized, troubled and in pain, and Jesus healed, delivered and fellowshipped with them.  It was about real people, with real needs.  It wasn’t some super spiritualized event.  It was about people… did you get that?  It was about people.  And it was about justice.  I was shocked!

When I was a girl I would go to the Salvation Army for Sunbeams, Girl Guards and Vacation Bible School.   I’ve written about this before, you can read it here.  I preached my first sermon during Girl Guards one Saturday morning.  I preached on John 3:16 and told my peers “you must be born again.”  I had this self-righteous notion in my head that the Salvation Army had become too liberal and was too concerned about social issues rather than preaching the gospel.  How foolish and arrogant I was for such a youngster.  I think I was about 13.  I remember the leader thanking God for reminding us of His salvation.  I felt so justified in my self-righteousness.  

But isn’t that what the Pharisees did as well?  I was a little Pharisee.

Now I know better.  Now I know that the gospel is also about feeding people, making sure kids don’t go hungry nor do adults, giving a coat that you don’t use anymore so a child or an adult can stay warm, it’s about loving people.  If we could just get that love part right, the preaching of the gospel would be heard.  Social justice is part of the gospel.  I never knew.  I’m no longer a Pharisee now that I know better.

What about you?  Are you a Pharisee? 

It's NEVER too late

I’ve written a lot about my life journey.  I’ve shared the pain of being a single mother with no education.  I’ve shared that I was abused and abandoned.  I’ve shared that feeding and clothing my children meant food stamps, commodity foods, welfare food baskets and miraculous deliveries of food.  It was not easy.  It was something that if you met me now, you’d probably never believe.  You see now a confident woman who is working on her doctorate and you probably think I never had it rough.  You would be wrong.

It was May 10^th.  It was graduation day at the University of Missouri-Columbia.  I was alone in a delivery room (this was before they babies born in hospitals came into the world in a birthing room).  I was delivering baby number 3.  The baby would be Joshua if a boy and Bethany if a girl.  I was praying for a girl.  I had two boys I loved but in my mind, this was my last child.  This was my only hope for a daughter.

I had struggled all night thinking my pain was just the bladder infection the doctor had diagnosed earlier that day.  Around 2 a.m. I knew different.  I was staying with some friends from church who kindly let me spend the night there since I was not well.  My boys were at their aunt’s house.  The woman was a powerhouse Christian and prayed in the spirit all the way to the hospital, literally dodging black cats with her large white Cadillac.  Two hours later, there was an emergency.  The baby had aspirated before birth and in haste, the doctor pulled her out with forceps.  I saw flesh being moved from my body to the waiting pediatricians.  I asked was that my baby.  The doctor said yes.  I said what is it?  He said a girl.  Then he moved closer to my face and said, Joyce, it doesn’t look good.  Don’t get too excited. 

I didn’t see her again until I was able to walk to the NICU.  I had already been up in my room.  It was a large ugly cavernous room.  They put me in it because they feared I’d be mourning the death of my daughter.  They didn’t want me with a woman who was cuddling her baby.  With my IV pole, I walked to the sink.  With my untethered hand, I started washing my hair in the sink.  That did make the staff rather upset with me.  I guess I was supposed to stay in bed and not worry about my hair.  Then I walked to the large window on the other side of the room.

It was a beautiful spring day for Commencement at the University of Missouri.  The Hearns Building was abuzz with cars, and people.   Streaming out of the building were young scholars.  People my age, my peers, streaming out of that building with their caps and gowns.  I cried.  I thought that should be me.  I should be graduating college.  Instead, I have three beautiful children who depend on me and I am a welfare single mom.

I give all the glory to God for where I am.  I really do.  But I also believe in education.  It has been one of the tools that God has used to shape me.  It has not only shaped me but transformed me.  While on the inside, I’m still rather quite insecure, education has given me a sense of confidence.  I can appear as if I am ready to take on the world.  And you know what?  I probably could and do a great job with it.  And it is first because of grace and second because of education.

Trevecca's College of Education Logo

I didn’t care for school as a kid.  In fact, in Jr. Hi, I pretended to be sick most of the time.  In 9^th grace, I would be sick on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning – I’d return to school on Friday afternoon to work in the library ONLY so I could go out over the weekend.  I dropped out after the 11^th grade to marry and became a mom before I would have received my diploma.

Now, I have a passion for education.  It is so important.  I can’t say it’s about the job either.  I’ve had some very good jobs.  I’ve been somebody career wise.  And yes, I wouldn’t have been without education.  But it’s not about the job.  It’s about knowing. It’s about learning.  It’s about the transformation of a welfare mom to a doctorate.  I’m too old for this doctorate and I know it.  Everything says it was too late.  But then again, when I was young and cried as my peers graduated, everything said it was too late to go back to school.  I did it then.  I can do it now.

What about you?  What has education done for you?