Acts Of Faith Around The Country, Churches Are Helping Poor With More Than Holiday Food Drives

Tammy Spencer was out of jail and off drugs. Sandra Padron was away from gangs and her ex-boyfriend’s regular beatings. But neither woman had pulled her life together, not yet. Both were still on welfare, not sure how to find good housing, get a job or stay away from trouble.

Then local churches stepped in, matching each woman with a team of volunteers.

“They’re like a crutch to hold onto,” Spencer said. “I’ve never had anybody encourage me to do anything.”

Aiding the poor is nothing new for America’s churches, which have historically been there with hot meals, clothing drives and homeless shelters. But now, in pockets around the country, churches are adopting a new approach.

They’re acting as mentors: helping the poor find and keep jobs, arrange day care, budget their money and keep their fragile lives together.

“We’re asking them to look at the total person, where in the past they were just helping for Thanksgiving or maybe Christmas,” said the Rev. Ronald Moore, field coordinator for Faith and Families in Mississippi, which has matched 485 families since 1994.

Mentors offer support and practical solutions to everyday problems. They hear about job openings and know who can fix a broken-down car.

Spencer, who moved to Austin, Texas, after being released from a Denver jail, got control of her bills and developed a budget with her team’s help. They encouraged her to move her three children out of a gang-infested neighborhood and helped her apply for housing aid. With their support, she decided to go back to school.

A religious woman whose answering machine implores callers to “have a glorious day in the Lord,” Spencer, 28, had been on welfare her entire life. Last summer, after staying off drugs for a year, she left the rolls.

“My mom raised us on welfare and then the minute I got pregnant, I got on welfare,” she said. “Now I can hold my head up high.”

In Michigan, Padron’s team helped her find housing for her family, including two young children and newborn twins. One volunteer tutored her for the high-school equivalency exam. Another helped her get a car.

“They’re like my family now,” said Padron, 24, who lives in Holland, Mich., the first place in the nation to put every able-bodied welfare recipient to work.

Soup kitchens and clothing drives still far outnumber mentoring programs, but this sort of one-to-one assistance is catching on. Statewide ventures are under way in Mississippi and Texas. Smaller programs are operating in Michigan, Maryland, Virginia, Indiana and a few other states.

“The landscape is changing. We’re aiming now towards solutions to poverty rather than just service,” said Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners, a Christian political and cultural magazine.

Church interest in mentoring has grown with welfare reform. Like the new welfare paradigm, with its emphasis on work over subsistence, mentoring tries to change people, not just help them survive.

“Churches were not really transforming the lives of the families with this traditional money-for-rent, money-for-utilities, soup-kitchen stuff,” said Amy Sherman, who studies mentoring and runs a small program at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Va.

Conservative churches, which lobbied for welfare reform, feel obliged to do more now that the rules have changed, said Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals.

“We’ve been quick to criticize but we haven’t been so quick to put our hand into the plow to help people,” he said.

And churches that opposed the 1996 welfare reform law, which ended the six-decade national guarantee of aid for the poor, feel compelled to help patch the safety net.

“All around the country you’ve got people trying to scramble quickly to put into place some kind of alternative,” said Wallis, who is leading an effort to unite liberal and conservative churches on this issue.

In most cases, mentoring programs are run or financially supported by government. And that reflects another change in welfare policy, as barriers between government and religion break down.

With increased pressure to move people off of welfare and into jobs, government officials are more open to help from wherever it may come. And the 1996 law made it easier for religious groups to qualify for state funding, eliminating the requirement that they remove religious elements of a program.

Some fear the change erodes the wall between church and state.

“A needy person shouldn’t have to walk up to a church with hat in hand looking for help,” said Robert Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

But volunteers - and participants - say mentoring programs have nothing to do with coercion.

“It’s surrounding families with unconditional love,” Wallis said. “From Torah to Gospel to Koran, the issue is how you treat the other, how you treat the stranger, how you treat those who are on the edges and fallen through the cracks. The answer to poverty is including people into our lives.”