The Episcopal
Church USA recently "affirmed and designated" five parishes and one
agency of the Diocese of Bethlehem as Jubilee Centers.
Bill Lewellis
Diocesan Life, January 2002
Grace Church
in inner-city Allentown, the Cathedral
Church of the Nativity, Trinity
Church and New Bethany
Ministries, all in Bethlehem, Trinity
Church, Pottsville, and St. Stephen’s
Church, Wilkes-Barre have taken their places "among a special
and select group committed to a ministry that reaches out to the poor
and oppressed, that attempts to empower people, that is willing to
advocate for them and dares to share the Gospel and the love of God
in an unconditional manner," according to notification received from
the national church’s Jubilee Ministry Office.
Among the criteria that office lists for such
recognition are: (1) An Episcopal congregation, ecumenical cluster
with Episcopal presence, and/or an agency with connections to the
Episcopal Church engaged in ministry programs among and with poor
and oppressed people, (2) One or more of the following: (a) a human
rights advocacy program, (b) a human service program, (c) a lay leadership/empowerment
program.
Cathedral Church of
the Nativity and New Bethany Ministries
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
"reaches out and engaging its community and the world with its people,
facilities and financial resources," according to dean and rector
William B. Lane.
In addition to serving as headquarters and
program center for two community ministries, Share Care and
South Side Ministries, Nativity houses programs all year round
for children under the care of South Bethlehem Neighborhood Center
and South Side Ministries and soon a new computer lab for
young people.
Civic, community and religious groups use the
facilities for meetings, training sessions and socials. Community
dances for teenagers are held monthly.
The Cathedral provides $150,00 to $200,000
each year for the mission of the Church in the diocese and nationally.
Ministries from South Bethlehem to Afghanistan benefit from the financial
outreach of Nativity.
Cathedral lay and clergy persons engage in
mission as members and leaders of community service agencies and organizations,
including New Bethany Ministries, Center City Ministries, South
Bethlehem Neighborhood Center, South Side Ministries and several
community development groups and ministries of the Bethlehem Area
Council of Churches.
The time, talent and energy of a full time
staff person are given to ministry in the South Side community. Canon
Joel Atkinson is known throughout the South Side as a representative
of the Cathedral. People from all walks of life in the community turn
to him for counsel and prayer. This ministry has benefited for the
past three years from the financial support of the Bishop.
New Bethany
Ministries was founded 19 years ago as a faith based nonprofit
corporation "to organize and operate housing and social ministries
with related services in the geographic area of the Diocese of Bethlehem
for the care and relief of the needy, poor, displaced and other distressed
persons." Current programs include (1) nine single room units of short
term (six months) transitional housing for homeless families, (2)
ten apartment units of long term (24 months) transitional housing
for homeless families, (3) 34 single room occupancy units (20 in the
Columbia Hotel in Coplay) for mentally ill low-income adults, (4)
seven apartments for low-income graduates of its transitional housing
programs, (5) a Drop In Center and Ministry for homeless and mentally
ill individuals that includes an emergency pantry, a clothes ministry,
showers, employability training, and various life-skills programs,
(6) a meal center where volunteer teams provide a hot midday meal
for about 100 people daily. (7) financial case management of about
50 mentally ill adults through a Representative Payee program, and
(8) spiritual care of the poor who are served by the agency.
The programs involve hundreds of volunteers
and congregations, especially the Cathedral Church of the Nativity,
in the ministry of this agency. The Diocese of Bethlehem encourages
volunteer service and provides financial support and various staff
as consultants.
During the last fiscal year some 150 volunteers
donated over 3,600 hours to serve almost 19,000 meals at the Drop-In
Center . The Representative Payee Program served 48 individuals. In
the Single Room Occupancy Program, 36 rooms were constantly filled.
The Transitional Housing Program served 25 families whose average
length of residence was 107 days.
New Bethany’s annual budget is $725,000. Some
$300,000 of that comes from fees, contracts, rents, and the United
Way. The balance, about $425,000, is direct community support from
individuals, religious communities, corporations or foundations.
Trinity Church, Bethlehem,
is home for many local and worldwide outreach ministries
The Soup Kitchen at Trinity Church, Bethlehem,
began in 1981 when several women of center city churches made
a huge pot of soup for the growing number of street people in downtown
Bethlehem. They put the pot in the back of a station wagon and set
up service on a street corner. The ministry found a permanent home
at Trinity where several churches from various denominations volunteer
on a rotating basis.
Open 52 weeks a year, Monday-Friday, including
holidays, the Soup Kitchen receives its main financial support from
an anonymous grant from a local foundation.
According to an article on the Trinity
website -- where much more information about Trinity’s many outreach
ministries can be found -- "running a soup kitchen is like running
a restaurant with a volunteer staff, government red tape, a questionable
food supply and an uncertain amount of patrons each day. The meals
we prepare, for some, will be the only meal they will have that day,
so must be filling, nutritionally complete, varied and taste good.
Our volunteers always rise to the challenge."
The Soup Kitchen’s mission statement says,
"The Trinity Soup Kitchen is pleased to serve the homeless, the temporarily
unemployed, MH/MR clients and those who are economically disadvantaged."
Soup Kitchen coordinator Liz MacMillan Miller,
wants to see that the oppressed do not stay oppressed. "The purpose
of the soup kitchen for clients," she says, "is to get them out of
the soup kitchen. We want to understand how they got into the situation
that brought them to the soup kitchen and help them out."
Though that might seem enough for any
parish, Trinity’s list of local and worldwide outreach ministries
is daunting.
Trinity Housing Ministry provides apartments
for six single mothers and their children.
Trinity’s Prison Ministry works with
inmates, focusing on life skills such as family literacy and parenting.
ABC Quilters, an ecumenical group that
started at Trinity, makes quilts for HIV babies.
Victory House, a project of Center
City Ministries of which Trinity was a founding member, is a shelter
and treatment center for the homeless located in South Bethlehem.
Integrity/Bethlehem, the diocesan chapter
for ministry of and with lesbian and gay Episcopalians, families and
friends, makes its home at Trinity.
The Mothers’ Support Program provides
emergency needs for young mothers with infants and small children
in Bethlehem.
Trinity parishioners Dan and Maggie Land have
fostered a sister parish relationship with All Saints Cathedral in
Mbabane, Swaziland.
Since 1991, Trinity parishioner Dr. Ned Wallace,
has spent four months each year coordinating a medical education work
and service program in an overcrowded rural hospital in the tiny Southern
African country of Swaziland. Bishop Paul Marshall named him diocesan
medical missioner to Swaziland in 1999 when Ned decided to make AIDS-related
activities his main focus there.
Recently, Trinity played a major role in collecting
some 700 comfort packs from local churches, business and Rotarians
for the Swaziland Hospice at Home program.
Over the past two and a half years, Trinity
has experienced a growth spurt over the past two and a half years,
according to Father Nick. "Sunday attendance has more than doubled,
from an average of a bit over 100 people to around 225."
Montessori, AIDS Outreach
and the Food Bank at Grace Church, Allentown
Grace Episcopal Church, Allentown,
is a downtown church of some 70 families near City Hall, the Courthouse,
the Art Museum, the Baum School of Art, The Morning Call and Lehigh
County Prison.
Principal outreach ministries include Grace
Montessori School, a unique onsite preschool program that provides
scholarships to inner-city children, Grace Community Foundation,
a food bank plus that serves 200/300 families every month and AIDS
Outreach, a community-based organization that provides nonmedical
services to persons and families affected by HIV/AIDS.
The church budget is approximately $150,000.
The combined budget of the church and the three outreach ministries
approaches $500,000.
Food, fresh fruit and vegetables, diapers and
personal items, soap and toothbrushes are provided in an atmosphere
of hospitality and friendship every Friday and two Saturdays each
month. Clients and volunteers are ethnically diverse. Clients include
the elderly on fixed incomes, the disabled, working families who earn
minimum wages, people who stay at home to care for children or sick
parents, the poor and the disenfranchised of our community.
At Thanksgiving, families receive a turkey
(for larger families) or a chicken and all the fixings. At Christmas,
a ham.
Grace purchases food and personal items through
Second Harvest for 14 cents a pound or less.
Thirteen years ago, parishioner Linda Lobach
Gallagher answered a recurring dream to come to the aid of God’s people
with AIDS. AIDS Outreach has grown from a small ministry into a community
based organization working in partnership with Lehigh Valley Hospital
and recognized throughout the Lehigh Valley and beyond for its creative
problem solving and as a ministry of compassion that provides transportation,
emergency financial assistance, pantry services, emotional support,
advocacy, childcare and pastoral care services — myriad support —
to people who would otherwise be unknown and whose needs would go
unmet. Staff and volunteers worked against the cultural grain when
more than 90% of their clients were gay men. AIDS Outreach continues
to work against the grain. Today, more than 90% of its clients are
the marginalized inner-city poor.
At Grace Montessori, little children --
white, African-American, Latino, Asian and Arabic -- including those
from inner-city families who could not otherwise have dreamed of a
Montessori education, experience the inner dignity of their person
through their interaction with experienced and Montessori-trained
teachers and the other little people they eyeball.
Grace Montessori began ten years ago when parishioner
Cathy Constantin turned a vision into a plan to provide early developmental
support for children of Food Bank clients. The ministry has grown
from six to more than sixty children.
Tuition for half-day programs is $2,500 a year
and $4,100 for full-day kindergarten. One-third of the families receive
tuition assistance. Grace Montessori and its related daycare operate
Monday through Friday, 8 am to 5 pm.
Almost all vestry members and 30% of the parishioners
are actively involved in one or more of these three ministries. Forty
percent of the board members of the three ministries are parishioners.
REACH at St. Stephen’s
Pro-Cathedral, Wilkes-Barre
Since 1984, at St. Stephen’s Church, Wilkes-Barre,
the Pro-Cathedral of the Diocese of Bethlehem, the REACH Program
has been "a community-based ministry of last resort for disadvantaged
families," according to Canon Donald Muller, rector at St. Stephen’s.
"REACH assists with basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. It
offers hope to children, youth and families in need. Its goal is to
move them toward self-sufficiency through case management services."
REACH targets indigent families who often fall
through the cracks of the social service system because they are unwilling
or unable to receive assistance from traditional social service agencies.
Services are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Clients learn about REACH through personal
contact and referrals from other community agencies, judges, courts,
police and schools.
REACH maintains a drop-in resource center for
family assistance, provides case management services for multiproblem
families, provides direct client advocacy and accompanies participants
through the social service and legal systems, organizes self-help
and peer support networks for women and men in transition from welfare
to work, and provides tutorial, enrichment and recreational programs
for at-risk youth.
Stefanie M. Wolownik is executive director
of REACH.
Based on a timeline review for a recent fiscal
year, some 700 families consisting of 2,185 people received services
from REACH staff and volunteers 15,000 times.
In addition to the provision of direct services
such as food, clothing, baby needs, personal care items, medical needs,
household needs, transportation and emergency loans, needs were assessed,
counseling was provided, clients were represented in the courts and
schools, tutoring and mentoring was provided, spiritual and emotional
needs were addressed, home visits were made.
During the same 12-month period, 105 children
from 35 families were kept out of placement. That represented a saving
to the community/country of some $1.5 million. Ten families were stabilized
for the return of 15 children from foster care.
REACH’s budget of some $300,000 is supported
by HSDF Funding, United Way, local public funding, St. Stephen’s Church,
the Diocese of Bethlehem, fund raising, and local businesses, churches
and people who donate money, food, household items, clothing, and
personal care items.
Also, an Interfaith Clinic, operating
one morning and one evening weekly in a cooperative venture with Mercy
Hospital, provides non-emergency medical care for those without insurance
or with inadequate insurance.
The parish has three clothes closets: Dress
for Success for women, All God’s Children Gotta Have Shoes
for children, and a homeless men’s clothes closet. The women’s
and children’s closets operate cooperatively with the Luzerne County
Commission for Women.
Seven self-help groups, including Alcoholics
Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Alanon, and Alateen, call the church
home.
Trinity Center
and Parish Nursing at Trinity Church, Pottsville
The Trinity Center for Children at
Trinity Episcopal Church, Pottsville, offers extended hours
of childcare, financial assistance for the needy, quality educational
experiences and enrichment in its Preschool Program and in
its After-School Care Program, according to Canon Charles H.
Morris, Trinity Church rector.
The summer camp is especially valuable to families.
The program also assists and counsels families in securing special
education and financial support from appropriate agencies.
The rector, wardens and vestry of the parish
are trustees for the Center. The rector serves also as chaplain, conducting
worship services and providing pastoral care. A volunteer offers Catechesis
of the God Shepherd on a weekly basis.
The parish provides financial support, administrative
services, donations to the scholarship fund, fund raising support
and volunteers.
The Parish Nurse Program provides multiple
services to care for and maintain the dignity of elderly Episcopalians
of Schuylkill County.
The program offers financial assistance for
such things as payments to assisted living centers, prescriptions,
hearing aids, medical bills, home nursing, taxes, food, and communication.
Parish Nurse Kathy Burda says the ministry
often involves sitting with a woman until her mother comes out of
surgery, speaking with someone about a living will, finding personal
care for a woman dying with cancer, helping a widower pack to move
into a nursing home, being there when someone needs you.
The program also offers assistance and counsel
in securing aid from government or medical agencies when appropriate.
Founded by a parishioner, Marion Price, to
care for elderly Episcopalians in Schuylkill County, the program is
funded largely by the Marion Price Trust Fund. The rector serves as
chair of the Trust Fund Board and is the immediate supervisor of the
Parish Nurse.
Trinity Church provides three parishioners
to serve on the MPT board, office space, volunteer service and fund
raising support.
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