Last night I had the opportunity to attend a fundraising dinner for a community organization with which I have been sometimes joyfully, sometimes frustratedly, but always blessedly associated for quite a few years. For a long time, the biggest part of my association consisted of writing a check at church and dropping it in the offering plate, to be accounted for and passed on without really having to think much about it. It was easy and made me feel good, and community organizations always need funds, so it was a win/win for everyone. I had given of my blessings to others, I had forwarded my bounty to the less fortunate, and I felt that I had, in a small way, made a difference.
Then, a few years ago, when time was in greater supply than money, I got involved on a more personal level by volunteering my time and talents, giving myself in a practical way to a cause that I believe in and think is worth supporting. The organization is called Community LINC (Living In New Community was the original name, until some copyright issues came into play, long story, anyway....) and they work with homeless families to put them on the road to success.
The Community LINC program is not, by any standard, an easy path. While people are pulled out of homelessness and given fully stocked apartments and a lot of other help is offered, they have a contract they must fulfill, with the organization, and ultimately, with themselves. They have an imperative to change, to evolve, to make themselves better people, and it is not optional, because the very foundation of the LINC program is making more effective choices, and teaching children good life choices, so that they will never find themselves in the midst of disaster like that again.
There are, sadly, a fair number of failures in the program, which means they drop out of the rigorous course they must follow, and they are asked to leave. The most difficult part, for the staff, is knowing that when they go, the children will once again be homeless, without stability or even a place to lay their heads. But it is not against the law to be homeless in America, and you cannot save a family that will not save itself, no matter how much you may want to.
Resources are, for these organizations, extremely limited. They do not have nationally funded budgets, supported year after year by huge corporations who use it as a way to blunt the impact on their bottom line, and as a way to present themselves as model citizens in their communities.
These small charities who work in the urban core making a direct impact on families in dire straights are, for the most part, shoestring operations, making a budget that barely exists stretch to unbelievable lengths. They spend the better part of their administrative days begging for money from everyone with whom they come into contact. So when you are faced with a family who cannot or will not follow the path set out for them, the one that will allow them to lift themselves from the poverty, you must cut the tie in order to try and save the next family who is willing to do what they must to succeed. It is a harsh reality, and a heart-breaking one as well, but it is the only choice, when your resources are barely enough to fund the basics.
The desire to work at a place like Community LINC is a labor of love, something that comes from the heart, because the success feeds something inside the soul that cannot be bought any other way. When Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves, he was not talking about superficial matters. He was talking about loving them enough to brave being rebuffed, and to come back and try again. He was talking about pulling people from the precipice and giving them the chance to make good, not only for themselves, but for their children. He was talking about giving people who have no chance the opportunity for something better by sharing what we have with those who have nothing at all. That is what the staff faces on a daily basis, and while not a lucrative calling, it is a fulfilling one.
I am fond of saying that if Jesus were on earth today, he would not be found in my suburban neighborhood, or in my multi-million dollar church building. I believe I would find Him at 39th and Troost, where C-LINC is to be found, amongst the people for whom he openly acknowledged he came to earth - the sinners, the outcasts, the hopeless. People, whom but for the grace of God, could be me.
My volunteer work at C-LINC is of a practical nature. I help, once or twice a year, to refurbish the apartments that families move into when they arrive, ready to work at changing their lives. It is an almost insurmountable task, at times, because the buildings are ancient, and, as should be expected, not in a part of town where maintenance is the norm. Rehabbing one of these apartments is much more than painting a wall or washing a floor. We tear things down, pull things apart, rebuild and redo and install new, in order to make a difference, not for the moment, but hopefully for the long term, to gift not once, but over and over again, the families that will live there.
The buildings themselves were a sort of gift several years ago, and it was a huge, but very expensive undertaking to move from the temporary place they had worked out of previously into this permanent location. There are six buildings, in a row, on Troost Avenue, which, for people who live around me, is known primarily for the crime rate, not it's upscale housing. If there is a murder in Kansas City, it is, unfortunately, all too often in the area of Troost where these apartments are located. It is a gang culture, a world of violence and fear that mostly reigns down there, and the C-LINC housing is a stalwart in the midst of the chaos that is all around it.
That is not meant to overstate the situation, because there are good things happening there as well. There is a sort of urban renewal occuring in that area, one which, I believe, may have been fueled, at least in part, by the good work being done by community organizations such as C-LINC who have invested not only in that area, but in the people who live there.
These buildings were purchased by C-LINC for $1 each from a generous person who also probably wanted to unload them, thus fulfilling two needs at once. They needed to be gutted, at the very least, and probably should have been torn down and started over. But C-LINC doesn't have those kinds of resources available, so instead, they have taken every volunteer and donation and rebuilt and rehabbed and revitalized their little bit of the ghetto. It is anything but a perfect world, and we would be kidding ourselves to imagine that buildings which were too old to rehab 25 years ago are in decent shape today, no matter how many bandaids we may have applied.
The roofs all leak on and off. The stairways were decrepit, although a group of older men from my church who have taken to calling themselves The Atonement Carpenters has been gradually rebuilding them, and they are now in much better condition than they were. The walls all need repair, the basements are a dungeon, the flooring is a disaster - you get the idea. Most of the people I know wouldn't consider these apartments premium housing, but when you come from a homeless shelter with your children, you have a different perspective on what constitutes the minimum basic requirements.
The Carpenters are handymen from all walks of life who are, for the most part, retired, and once a week they come down to C-LINC to work on whatever need is most urgently pressing at that moment. They fix roofs, they mud walls, they repair and rehab and rework to make things livable for the people who inhabit these apartments and call them home. They donate not only their time and talents, but are unsung heroes who donate their money and their materials as well, and in much larger measure than almost anyone realizes, in order to leave this world a better place for their having been here.
There have also been some incredible donations from people around the city that have made a huge difference for the people there. Heating and cooling systems replaced. New windows have been installed. A children's center has been built. Computers are donated, books are donated, towels and kitchenware and furniture and other items are given by people from all over the city who want to participate in some way in the renewal of lives.
I have had people ask me, when in the midst of a month long project, why I would go down there day after day to work, and worry that it is too dangerous or that I might get hurt physically or emotionally. My honest, my only, answer is that it is where the need is greatest, so that is where I am called to be. You cannot take people out of their element and expect them to succeed. Instead, you have to light the candle in the darkness, and hope that by so doing, they will light a few more along their path, and thus, enlighten that world from within.
The families that enter the world of C-LINC are entering a different way of life, one which most of them have never known. They predominantly come from single parent families who have never known security, and for whom life has been a struggle since they were born. The point of the program to which they must adhere is not to simply lift them out of poverty for the time being, but to give them the tools to lift themselves up and stay there, a much harder, and much bigger, job, both for them, and for those whose mission it is to serve them.
They are provided with housing, and must attend classes in parenting, drug counseling, alcohol counseling, Al-Anon or mental health counseling for whatever issues they are experiencing, and weekly budgeting classes. They must attend school with an end goal, such as earning their GED, or find some kind of work, and the children must attend school and maintain certain grades and standards as well.
This is a family program, and every member of the family must actively participate and pull their weight. While there is support and aid for everyone in many different age-appropriate ways, in the end, the onus is on them to succeed, and they will be allowed to fail if that is what they are striving for. C-LINC is not a free ride for anyone, and if you succeed and reach graduation, it is because you have done the work to put yourself in a position to succeed in life.
The most impressive part of the program, to me, is the required savings that they enforce during weekly budgeting sessions. Most of the families come into the program unemployed, most of the adults do not have even a high school diploma, and they are in a pattern of hopelessness and despair that perpetuates their poor decision making.
Once they enter the program, the first thing they must do is to establish a savings account, and half of their weekly income, from whatever source it is received, must be put away in that account. No matter how pressing their bills, no matter if there is a birthday or something else for which they need money, they must put away that 50% before they can have any money to meet their immediate needs.
While you may feel that with housing and utilities already paid for, this would not be so difficult, you also have to remember that most of them have no money at all. They must buy food and supplies and the basics of life. Even if they ultimately are eligible for welfare, and in Missouri, those payments are not much, they still start out with nothing, and it is hard for them to put away half that money for a future that is unknown.
Part of the problem for most of these families is that the future has never been secure, so they think in short term mode all the time. There is no reason to put something aside for a future that will never come, especially when the needs are so great right now. But what they learn over time is that their future depends on what they do now. It is a change, not just in how they use their money, but in how they live their lives.
When they watch their bank account grow, they also see their future adding up. That money will be used for a down payment on rent, or even a home. It will pay for education or a car to get to work. It is small, by most people's standards, and adds up very slowly. But in the end, if they stick with the program, they will have enough to get a solid re-start in a life, a second chance built not on the goodness of strangers, but on their own hard work and willingness to make the necessary changes.
There are a lot of failures, of course. People do not change easily, and it is all too common to be sucked back into the cycle of poverty and despair that brought you there in the first place. There are many families who begin the program believing in the possiblities, but who, over time, simply lose their drive under the influence of negativity outside their own walls.
But there are spectacular successes as well, and it is for them that the faithful continue to work and volunteer and hope and pray and give. It is for those who believe in themselves enough to make the leap into a new way of thinking that we go down to 39th and Troost for a day or a week or a month to try and make a difference. Every life that we help to turn around is a candle that has been lit, and whose light shines far beyond the apartment that family inhabits. Our families inspire their families and their friends. If our families can do it, so can others. It is in that inspiration that hope is born, that change occurs, that the cycle is interrupted and hopefully broken for good.
Last night, at this fundraiser, attended primarily by people who have more money than time, and who gave of what they have with incredible generosity, we were allowed a brief picture inside the life of a person helped through their support. We were shown a powerful video, entirely unscripted, of a resident of C-LINC seeing her apartment for the very first time. It would be impossible to be unmoved by the experience, and most people wiped away a tear or two by the end.
I had the extraordinary privilege of being present on the occasion of the making of the video, because the apartment that she received was one that I had worked on, and we were still putting the finishing touches to the place when the very young woman arrived with her little boy. Although my heart is, I hope, always in the right place when I do that work, I do not do it for any recognition at all and have never expected any, I was given a tremendous gift by being allowed to participate unexpectedly in that moment when she saw the apartment into which I poured so much of my own heart and hard work.
She began to sob, loudly and unabashedly at the front door, and continued as she moved throughout the apartment, seeing what we had done for her. Her face lit up as she saw all that she was being given, and her most memorable words were that she had never lived in a place that was so beautiful. It is not, by the standards of most of the people I know, anything special - it is, on the contrary, a pretty minimal, basic place to live, but to her, it was a mansion of great worth, and she showed us how she valued it in her face and her actions and her words.
Her other memorable statement, one which I will never forget, because it was the promise I most value from her, was that, "I just don't know how to thank them enough but just to do right for myself." She gifted me with her gratitude, and it is the greatest gift a person can receive.
It is easy to get gifts from those we love, and who love us. It is a simple matter to write a check, or to hand over our used belongings that we no longer want. But it goes against my Minnesota upbringing to receive the recognition and the gratitude that I received that day. It was a life changing moment for me, when I was forced, by surprise, to accept her emotional thank you, and to confront, in that visceral way, the deep impact that we can have on someone we don't even know.
In our country today, there is a lot of talk about the poor, and meeting needs, but most people have never had a chance to put a face to the poverty, to put a real human being into the picture. It is a vague someone out there, not really associated with us, that is being affected, and it's easy to talk clinically about fault and responsibility and solution provision.
Today, for a few moments, I want to share with you the gift of gratitude that I received. I hope that you will know, whatever you do, however you do it, wherever you give, while you can't save everyone, it is worth saving the one. Whatever gift you share, whatever organization fulfills the mission for you, whether it be money or time or talents, know that it God's work you are doing, and that you are the embodiement of God to those whose lives you are changing. You are fulfilling the words of Jesus, when he said that whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me, also.
Jesus talked about leaving the 99 sheep to find the one. Please follow this link to see what one of his missing sheep really looks like.
http://www.communitylinc.org/Home/ClientsStory.htm
