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MARCH 31, 2008

DisciplesWorld: A Journal of News, Opinion, and Mission For the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ

Ministry calls attention to farm workers’ need

By Heidi Bright Parales, DisciplesWorld contributing writer

INDIANAPOLIS (3/31/08) — The Disciples Farm Worker Ministry is calling people to harvest justice for farm workers during Farm Worker Awareness Week, March 30 through April 5.

Agricultural workers include women, men and children who move from crop to crop and state to state without any social or economic security.

Disciples Home Missions had been supporting farm worker ministry programming until 1993, when DHM began reductions in staff and budget, according to Garnett Day, retired Disciples minister.

The Disciples Farm Worker Ministry (DWFM) began during a 2005 Portland Assembly breakfast event, according to Jim Burton, a retired minister and Disciples representative on the National Farm Worker Ministry board. DFWM works to keep congregations informed of farm workers' struggles to obtain economic justice, according to Millie Slack, retired Disciples minister in St. Louis.

The 2007 General Assembly adopted a resolution for Disciples to reconnect with our food and the natural world, acknowledging that "our industrialized agricultural system of food production... threatens the well-being of many of those who grow and harvest our food."

DHM currently supports DFWM through liaison Jennifer Riggs, director of Refugee and Immigration Ministries for the denomination.

“I have concern that all people be treated fairly in their employment,” said Riggs. “There is an underclass of people in this country who are treated with unfair circumstances. We need to be more respectful of their efforts in making our lives blessed.”

Disciples have a long history of ministry to farm workers. In 1920, several churches in New Jersey began taking food and clothing to migrant workers who had arrived to work on farms. Churches also provided Sunday school and worship services. This ministry quickly expanded to 15 states and continued for 40 years, according to Slack.

“During the mid-60s, as Cesar Chavez was forming a union for farm workers, Disciples and other church members were faced with the decision of supporting or not supporting this movement to bring economic justice to farm workers who had been excluded from minimum-wage laws and decent working conditions,” she said.

Many Disciples chose to support the self-determination and economic rights of farm workers and not just provide "spiritual" and band-aid ministries, she said. “A new era and new consciousness called for a different kind of ministry. In 1971, as support of the unions were seen as valid ministry, Disciples and other denominations founded the new National Farm Worker Ministry.”

NFWM is an interfaith organization that supports farm workers as they organize for empowerment, justice and equality.

Due to the successful efforts of farm workers to unionize, working and living conditions for a minority have changed dramatically, according to Day. “These improvements involve gaining union contracts with growers that bring about increased wages and various improvements in housing and work conditions.”

Ministry with farm workers has been a vital practical ministry among Disciples. “In many ways it has been the most significant thing the church has done because it has given hope and help to those who are the poorest and most forgotten among us,” he said. “Many vital gains have been accomplished during the past 50 years, but it’s only a scratch on the surface of the problem farm workers face daily.”

Farm workers remain the most oppressed, exploited and poorest of workers in the United States, Day explained. They toil in back-breaking work for long hours under conditions that none of us could tolerate, being exposed to abuses by crew bosses, and all for the meagerest of wages.

According to Virginia Nesmith, director of NFWU, less than five percent of the nation’s nearly 2 million farm workers are covered by labor agreements. Most face shameful conditions, ranging from low wages or pesticide exposure that causes rashes, burns and birth defects to slavery cases with workers locked in vans and deaths in the fields.

David Bell, on staff at Yakama Christian Mission in White Swan, Wash., also likened the farm-worker conditions to slavery. “Slave holders will feed their slaves so they can do work; give them enough housing so they are out of the weather; enough clothing so they can be out working, and just enough health care so they can work. (They) create a system that does not allow the slave to leave.”

Every time we sit down to eat, we will eat something planted, grown or harvested by modern-day slaves, Bell said.

The multi-billion-dollar fruit and vegetable industry in the United States is 85 percent hand-picked and wouldn’t survive without the men, women and children who work in the fields, added Nesmith.

As Christians, she said, “we lay claim to a God who knows no borders, who loves all equally, and in that loving, calls for all to be treated with respect for their inherent dignity.”

The support of the faith community in particular has been critical because of its moral voice, the strategic benefit of access to a large constituency, and because its presence offers the workers hope and affirmation for the risks they take, said Nesmith.

DisciplesWorld

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Published on Thursday, June 21, 2007

Yakima Herald Republic

Building a future
By Ross Courtney
Voices Staff Writer

HARRAH -- Boys who first learned to swing a hammer and operate a chop saw from the Rev. David Bell five years ago are now men helping him build a house.

ROSS COURTNEY/Voices

Yakama Christian Mission apprentice David Lemus, standing at right, watches as David Nelson, a volunteer from Oklahoma, pulls nails out of a foundation mold at a Harrah house being built by the White Swan congregation.

Bell, one of the pastors of the Yakama Christian Mission, has been teaching construction techniques to Yakama reservation youth for seven years. Many of his apprentices still work for him.

This summer, they have been working on a home on Pioneer Loop in Harrah with the help of visiting mission groups.

"Now, we get kind of to be in charge," says Estavan Mora, 22.

The home is intended for a low-income family.

Bell, a minister with a construction background, started the apprenticeship called Youth Educational Services in 2002. It was featured in Voices of the Valley at the time.

At first, Bell taught the boys on smaller projects, such as remodeling a bathroom at Campbell Farm. Later, they began helping to construct churches around the Valley and on mission trips to North Carolina and Texas.

This is the first house they have built from scratch.

"It's a lot smaller," says Elias Mena, 21, who coincidentally lives right across the street.

Plus, the young men like "knowing you're helping someone," Mora says.

Bell, who once owned a contracting business in California, does not know how long the home will take. However, even a slow-moving project will finally provide consistent work for his young trainees.

If it's done by the end of summer, they will start on another house. If not, at least he has a work site for his kids to visit every day after school.

Bell expects the home to sell for $90,000, which is $20,000 to $30,000 less than other homes in the neighborhood because he relies on volunteer labor. He hopes future houses will be even cheaper when suppliers catch wind of his projects and donate more materials.

"This will be the most expensive home we ever build," he says.

Bell says it will sell like a traditional home with a mortgage, but church staff will visit the bank with the buying family.

The approach differs from Habitat for Humanity, a nondenominational organization that has built 112 homes for low-income families in the Yakima Valley since 1984.

Habitat involves the family, which must meet low-income standards, requiring 500 "sweat equity" hours during the construction. The family also pays a mortgage into a fund that Habitat uses to build future homes for other families.

Bell consulted Habitat leaders about his house but chose to blaze his own trail to emphasize his apprenticeship program.

His young pupils participate in all stages of construction, including drawing blueprints, applying for permits and working with banks when it comes time to sell.

After about 150 hours of volunteer work, the apprentices are paid.

ROSS COURTNEY/Voices

The Rev. David Bell, right, and apprentice Elias Mena remove a board from the foundation mold.

On a breezy day last week, Mena, Mora and David Lemus, 22, led a collection of about 20 youth missionaries -- mostly teenagers -- from Oklahoma and Kentucky in pouring and cleaning a foundation.

The young men showed them how to trowel cement, cut boards and pull nails without disturbing the wood molding -- not as easy as it looks.

Among the volunteers was Salvador Suarez, 14, of White Swan. The extent of his construction experience is building toy cars out of a wood block at the church's summer camp.

Suarez plans to spend most of the summer helping the three apprentices, much the same way they helped Bell six or seven years ago.

"At the end of summer, I'll master most of what we're learning," he said.

The three-bedroom home plus a garage is modest for both practical and symbolic reasons. At 1,100 square feet, it's the size of what would have been an average four-member family home in 1957. These days the average is more than twice that size, he says.

Using those statistics, Bell aims to teach a lesson about American excess to the scores of out-of-town volunteers who will help him this summer. As a matter of disclosure, he also tells the volunteers that he and his wife live in a 1,400-square-foot manufactured house.

Bell also likes to brag about the front porch, another symbolic component that he hopes will nudge the world ever so slightly closer to the culture of the 1950s, when neighbors knew each other or at least could see each other from their rocking chairs between sips of lemonade. Since that time, subdivisions have included patios and decks in the backyards behind fences.

His church has an option to buy two more adjacent lots and he envisions all three with front porches facing each other.

"Will it work?" he asks. "I don't know. Unless we build houses with porches again, we won't find out."

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APRIL 2007

SEATTLE UNIVERSITY - School of Theology & Ministry: STM BULLETIN

YAKAMA CHRISTIAN MISSION
Spring Break Service & Learning

During spring break, four STM students traveled to the Yakama Christian Mission for the first annual STM Learning and Serving Retreat, which provided an experience of ministry and theology in a new context. The Yakama Christian Mission (www.yakamamission.org) is a Homeland Mission of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) which provides immediate services to the communities of the lower Yakama Valley and serves the larger church by offering Learning and Serving Trips. The retreat provided workshops in which we explored racism, poverty, education, exploitation of resources and the participation of the church in these systems. This included an examination of the historical and the contemporary practices of the church. The communities in the valley provided a concrete framework from which we could reflect on these issues. “In our classes at STM, we talk about multicultural issues and social justice, but I wanted an opportunity to go deeper, to embody those Christian ideals,” said Kara Markell (Disciples, MDiv).

Part of each day was spent working on projects for the mission: caring for goats and sheep, laying irrigation pipe, and building a covered porch. This time of manual labor built community while allowing us time to reflect individually. We
cooked our own meals and ate together, sometimes with the Mission staff or community residents. One afternoon a community member came to teach us how to prepare posole, a traditional Mexican stew. “It gave me the chance to learn about the specific people I live with in Washington State as a whole, people who have a long history here,” exclaimed Kate Fynn (Lutheran, MATS). Each of us planned and led an evening worship service that reflected our ecumenical diversity and our varying gifts.

Though this was a retreat, it also stretched us, both physically (wrestling goats and nailing rafters in place is hard work!) and spiritually. “It took me out of my comfort zone and reminded me of ways in which the system we live in is not justice-minded,” noted Linda Greer (Roman Catholic, MAPC). The experienced Mission staff presented us with many new and difficult perspectives which really challenged our classroom and book learning. This was a retreat that addressed real and complex problems in their actual context. The staff demonstrated remarkable ministerial presence and created a safe space for our theological reflection. Martha Tanner (Disciples, MDiv) remarked,“These are some of the best conversations I’ve had since coming to STM. They really get at the practical issues of ministry.”

The trip received funds from Northwest Region of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Week of Compassion, and the Graduate Student Council. Watch the Fall 2007 STM Bulletin for information about the 2008 retreat (March 23- 28)!

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MARCH 15, 2007

DisciplesWorld: A Journal of News, Opinion, and Mission For the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ

Mission centers face financial struggles without DMF funding

By Rebecca Bowman Woods, DisciplesWorld news editor

NDIANAPOLIS (3/15/07) — Four historic Disciples mission and ministry centers must find additional funds for the work they carry out on behalf of the church.

Disciples Home Missions (DHM), which had allocated a portion of its Disciples Mission Fund (DMF) income to the mission centers in past years, announced March 8 that it was forced to eliminate the funding due to the church-wide decline in giving to DMF.

The centers — All Peoples Christian Center in Los Angeles; Inman Christian Center in San Antonio, Texas; Kentucky Appalachian Ministry (KAM) in Lexington, Ky.; and Yakama Christian Mission in White Swan, Wash. — have been in existence for decades longer than the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

DHM President Arnold Nelson said the decision to cut the funding was “excruciating.” With declining income, DHM has made cuts to its own budget for the past five years. Its board recommended eliminating the mission centers’ funding five years ago, but until now, DHM was able to trim its budget elsewhere, Nelson said.

DHM’s unrestricted income fell by nearly one-third over the past six years, from $3.2 million in 2001 to $2.3 million in 2006, said Lonna Owens, DHM’s vice president for finance.

While distributions from the United Christian Missionary Society provide additional income, those have decreased by over $300,000 in the last six years, Owens said.

Representatives from the mission centers knew DHM’s own funds were declining and said they don’t blame DHM or Nelson for the cuts.

“Yes, the mission centers fall under the care of DHM, but we are mission and ministry centers for the whole church,” said Lon Oliver, director of KAM.

Dave Bell knew funds were limited when he and his wife, Belinda, came to Yakama eight years ago. At the time, DHM told the Bells there was enough money to operate for three more years.

Yakama received about $50,000 from DHM in 2006, and hoped for $38,000 in 2007. A $50,000 Week of Compassion grant will allow Yakama’s work to continue through 2007. After that, things are uncertain, Bell said.

In years past, when congregations offered direct financial support to Yakama, Bell encouraged them to give to the DMF Easter offering, which supports DHM.

While he doesn’t plan on approaching congregations directly, Bell “expects to be talking about Yakama, All Peoples, Inman, and KAM,” he said. Now when individuals and congregations offer financial support, he will tell them to designate their offerings to support the centers.

Oliver said KAM hoped to receive $22,000 — 15 percent of its operating budget — from DHM in 2007. In 2006, KAM received 17 percent of its budget, or $24,380, from DHM.

Without the money, KAM's ecumenical ministries and Oliver’s time with grass-roots Appalachian organizations will be cut, Oliver said. “We are determined, however, not to cut KAM's work with our congregations.”

Nelson and Kentucky’s regional minister, Greg Alexander, have been trying to find additional funding for KAM, Oliver said. The mission center is also looking for a one-time grant to help offset a student ministry position its board created before learning about the budget cut in February.

The $45,915 that All Peoples Christian Center received from DHM in 2006 represented less than 4 percent of its budget, said Saundra Bryant, the center’s director. Although All Peoples receives United Way funding and grants, the undesignated money from DHM paid for necessities that grants don’t include.

Week of Compassion is providing a grant to All Peoples, and Bryant hopes to avoid cutting programs or staff. In a heavily populated urban area where 85 percent of households have an income of $17,000 or less, the services it offers make a difference in many lives.

Gangs actively recruit elementary-age children, and All Peoples has a program to intervene. Several of its programs equip young people to become leaders.

One example is Youth Advocating and Education Health, a leader development program for young people whose parents are incarcerated. They train peer educators, ages 12–15, to conduct workshops for younger children who have parents in prison.

Bryant herself has been coming to All Peoples since she was a child. “I would not be a Disciple if it wasn’t for All Peoples,” she said.

A representative from Inman Christian Center was unavailable to comment on the funding cuts. The Christian Women’s Board of Missions played a key part in founding the Mexican Christian Institute, which is now Inman, said KAM’s Oliver.

All four mission centers “were supported and cared for by the whole church even before restructure,” he added.

As the denomination once again revisits mission funding issues and expresses a desire to become a more missional church, Bell hopes Disciples will return to being a “generational people.” It’s an idea he traces back to the biblical Abraham and rediscovered while working with the Native American and Latino populations in rural Washington state.

“Everything in our world says, ‘We need to see a return on our money in a three-year period,’” Bell said.

Being generational means thinking about the impact on our great-great -great- great grandchildren when we make decisions, he explained. “We need to quit reacting and acting for ourselves today, and act for those who will come 200 years from now.”

DisciplesWorld

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FEBRUARY 21, 2007

Northwest Regional Christian Church: List Server

Last week, Week of Compassion announced a grant of $50,000 to the Yakama Christian Mission. These funds represent the ability to continue vital ministry at the Mission and are your WOC Offering dollars at work. I encourage you to read the following Minute for Mission written by Dave Bell and make use of it in two ways:

The first is to allow this to stir your heart. Our world is moved towards wholeness by the generous giving that make such grants possible. What will you give to the Week of Compassion Offering this year?

Second, please be sure that this is announced in your congregation – we want the good news of this grant to be known in our churches that we might celebrate the joy of being God’s people in mission together.

The ducks came out of the southeast heading west. It was windy and their path brought them directly overhead. The wind was constant and the ducks were heading directly into it. A flock of smaller ducks, not so much quacking as making a whistling sound, probably Teels, their wings flapping for all they are worth and not making much headway. In times like these, it is a moment to stop and crane the neck upward and just stand. Stand, watch, and listen. Slow movement to the west and the opportunity to watch, in person, the movement of wing, the streamline head to body, the desire and determination to move forward.

Last week, Week of Compassion awarded the Yakama Christian Mission a partnership grant to help make the JustLiving affordable house build, a reality. This grant makes a core difference in the work of a rural mission center. Thanks to this support, youth and young adults will work together to design and construct a building that will become a home to a working family living well below the poverty line.

Sometimes it is hard to imagine what a significant difference Week of Compassion giving makes. Think about it this way. A rural community like White Swan has roughly 2000 people living in a hundred square mile area, most who live in poverty. To make affordable housing a reality, locally, is impossible. When Disciples throughout the United States and Canada give to Week of Compassion, grants become a reality, and a family who could never have imagined owning their own home, do.

Many families, our neighbors, are flying against the wind. They work as hard as they can, remind their children they are the beauty of the earth, and still cannot make headway towards giving their children a healthy house. Week of Compassion giving means you change the course of the wind just a bit towards health, give families the opportunity to bank to the north, and enter into the wind stream of compassion.

Be Well,
Rebecca
Rebecca L. Hale
Northwest Regional Christian Church

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JANUARY 23, 2007

DisciplesWorld: A Journal of News, Opinion, and Mission For the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ

Goat gift gives back to young Disciples

By Beckie Supiano, DisciplesWorld contributing writer

SPOKANE, Wash. (1/23/07) — There’s just something funny about goats. That is what youth leader Edie Rice-Sauer discovered when she was planning a service project for the junior high and high school students at Covenant Christian Church in Spokane, Wash.

Rice-Sauer’s original idea was that the youth would raise money for an animal through the Heifer Project. Then she decided to have them do something tied to a local Disciples mission. Rice-Sauer talked with David Bell, who directs the Yakama Christian Mission in White Swan, Wash. Bell explained that the mission was in need of animals, and Rice-Sauer found her local focus.

Yakama Mission is a Disciples mission located on a reservation that provides services to the community, a mix of Native American, Hispanic, White and Asian American people.

Youth at Covenant decided to buy a goat for the Yakama Mission. They used a large paper cutout of a goat divided into sections to track their fundraising progress. They added a piece of the paper goat each time $10 was raised. The idea was “kind of goofy and creative,” Rice-Sauer said.

The congregation ended up donating $240, enough for two goats. This is remarkable given the small size of the congregation, Rice-Sauer said.

“When the kids got excited, the congregation was very responsive,” she said.

Animals are important to the Yakama Mission’s work. The mission currently keeps six sheep and twelve goats, Bell said. When they reproduce, females are kept to build the herd and males are used for meat.

Many people in the community cannot afford to eat meat on a regular basis, Bell said. But it is important to have meat at celebrations, especially for the growing Hispanic population. The mission is able to provide its animals to families for such occasions.

The animals serve another purpose beyond providing food. In the summer, learning and serving groups come from all over to work at the rural Yakama Mission, and they help with the animals. This helps them become aware of how food production works, Bell said. Many people who grow the food we all eat live in poverty, he said, and the groups that volunteer get to see this paradox firsthand.

Another facet of the Yakama Mission is the Just Living Project, which creates affordable housing. So far, the project has raised enough money to build one house. They are currently working on designs for the house and looking for land to purchase.

The mission is not in great financial shape, Bell said. “The serious thing about it is unless support goes up, the mission won’t survive,” he said.

Part of the problem is the long-term nature of the work, Bell said. In the past, mission work was about creating a self-sustaining congregation, he said. Now, the focus is on social justice and to “try and alleviate hurt where it occurs,” Bell said. If the goal is to build a new church, there comes a time when the work is done and the founders can move on. The social justice work takes longer, and its progress is harder to quantify.

Bell said that people often have “the business concept of expecting fast and measurable results.”

“Some of this stuff is not going to happen that way,” he said.

The reservation has a dark history that cannot be addressed overnight. For more than a hundred years, children were taken from the reservation and sent to boarding schools in an attempt to erase their culture, Bell said. They were then returned to the reservation as young adults.

As a result, including youth in reservation life has been an adjustment. Yakama Mission makes several programs available for youth and families who want to take advantage of them.

“In a community of poverty, the worst we can do is come in and have the community believe we’re here to make a difference and leave just as we’re getting started,” Bell said.

The youth from Covenant Christian Church will be traveling the four hours to the Yakama Mission this spring for an overnight. This will allow them to learn why they raised money for the goat, Rice-Sauer said.

When they are there, Bell is sure to give them the same challenge he presents to everyone who helps on the mission: to think about their decisions in a new light. Instead of focusing on how a choice affects one and one’s community, Bell asks visitors to look at how it impacts those in poverty and what the results will be 200 years from now.

DisciplesWorld

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AUGUST 01, 2006

Week of Compassion : 2007 Planning and Resource Guide

Dear Week of Compassion,

How can we thank you enough for giving our youth an experience of a lifetime. Our youth were given an opportunity to learn how faith can improve their personal relationships with their family and their community.

The youth from Bakersfield and All Peoples had an instant bond, and we are continuing the dialogue and friendships that were made at Yakama Christian Mission.

Our youth worked on the community farm, and they also learned the history of Yakama Christian Mission. David Bell was an excellent facilitator. He allowed our youth to think about their own internal racism and learn how to change those negative images that they have about other cultures.

Once again, thank you for giving us an opportunity to learn about ourselves and learn how to give to others without expecting anything in return.

Sincerely,

Norma A. Altamirano,Youth Minister
All Peoples Christian Center
Los Angeles, CA

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Disciples News Service

YAKAMA CHRISTIAN MISSION: CHAMPIONS FOR ECONOMIC JUSTICE

The Yakama Christian Mission in White Swan, Wash., is a vibrant social justice and outreach ministry that works to enhance the opportunities of local youth through education and advocacy.

The kickoff for the mission's Yakama Pouch fundraising campaign will take place in Portland, Ore., at the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in July.

The Yakama Pouch campaign was created in an effort to provide additional funding for the JustLiving program. JustLiving is a self-sustaining program that provides affordable housing that can be purchased by low-income families. The program operates off of the premise that people need housing and that a commitment to economic justice compels us to provide that housing.

"The JustLiving program is designed so that once the first home is built, the program sustains itself," notes David Bell, director of Yakama Christian Mission. "Once the money is raised to build the first house, a family purchases the home and that money is used to fund the construction of the next home."

Patricia Evans, pastor of First Christian Church in Albany, Ore., and a member of Yakama Christian Mission's board of directors added: "The JustLiving program is an even more life transforming opportunity because it moves beyond charity to justice seeking."

Participating youth in Yakama's Youth Employment Services (YES) program play an integral role in the construction of the homes. The YES program was created in 2002 for youth and young adults up to the age of 25 and prepares them for employment or higher education. The youth also receive training in design and construction.

"Young people will use those new skills to join with volunteers to build much needed economical housing for low income families," said Evans. "Proceeds from the Yakama Pouches will establish a strong financial foundation for JustLiving and all the life transforming work being done at the mission."

Yakama Christian Mission is one of four domestic mission centers supported by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Disciples Home Missions. In 1920, missionaries from the American Christian Missionary Society traveled to Washington and established a mission and boarding house in order to educate and witness to Native Americans in the area. Through the years the focus of the Church in relation to the mission has evolved. In 2000, the mission was renamed Yakama Christian Mission to reflect a refocus on providing Christian social services to the community of the Yakama Nation on behalf of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
David Bell, Belinda Bell and Jill Delaney share the responsibility of ensuring that mission continues to positively impact the community in their roles as directors. The unique spiritual gifts and diverse backgrounds of the mission's three directors are a contributing factor to the programming changes that the mission has undergone over the past six years.

David Bell brings the gifts of administration, management, building design and construction. Belinda Bell comes from a social work background and focuses on the types of programming needed for people who are hurting and in need, as well as the implementation of such programming. Delaney provides the spiritual peace that keeps the group focused on the gospel and the local and global reasons and implications of their work.

Like many other mission programs, Yakama is experiencing a lack of resources, both financial and in kind. Lack of funding means fewer staff, fewer programs and fewer people served.

"Although our focus is on quality and not quantity, there are new programs that needed to be implemented decades ago but they simply cannot be done at this time," states David Bell. "We need Disciples across the country to make a commitment to justice and give of their money and time to ensure that current programming continues and additional programming begins."

The directors of Yakama Christian Mission have high hopes for the JustLiving program and look forward to the day when an entire neighborhood has been built. In the future they hope that they will also be able to provide housing for those who are homeless.

Evans believes that "this is an opportunity for Disciples all over the nation to make a huge difference in the lives of some of the poorest of God's people." "The impact of the involvement is the blessing of joy pressed down, shaken together, running over," declares Evans. "How can you resist?"

If you are an engineer, an architect or possess other gifts that could be helpful in this type of endeavor and are willing to donate your time and talent to this project, contact Yakama Christian Mission at log@yakamamission.org

For further information on Yakama Christian Mission, visit the website at http://www.yakamamission.org

# # #

Contact:
Kenethia Jackson
Communication Ministries
kjackson@cm.disciples.org

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JULY 27, 2005

DisciplesWorld: A Journal of News, Opinion, and Mission For the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ

Disciples tackle poverty, immigration, suicide bombings

By Sherri Wood Emmons, DisciplesWorld managing editor

PORTLAND, Ore. (7/27/05) — Disciples gathered in General Assembly had a busy afternoon on Wednesday, tackling several sense-of-the-assembly resolutions.

Voting representatives adopted five such resolutions, addressing poverty, immigration, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, and ministry with young adults.

Resolution 0527, “On Ministry to and with Undocumented Workers,” asks the church to address the plight of undocumented workers — including, National Pastor for Hispanic Ministries Pablo Jimenez reminded voters, several Disciples licensed pastors — through advocacy and intentional service.

“There are hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers in this country,” Jimenez said. “They harvest our crops and they serve our food. Most work very hard, often without job security, benefits, or healthcare. They give to our churches, they support the Disciples Mission Fund and special offerings, and some serve as licensed ministers. They need to hear that our denomination is with them.”

Stephen Yarbrough, a member of Central Christian Church in Indianapolis, urged adoption of the measure “to support farmers affected by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) who no longer have a market in which to sell their corn and beans. So they have to send the best and brightest of their communities to the U.S. to find work and support their families back home in Mexico.”

After a suggestion by one voter that the document should refer to “illegal immigrants,” Robin Hoover, pastor of First Christian Church of Tucson, Ariz., and president of Humane Borders, responded, “No human being can be illegal."

[...]

Voters vigorously debated Resolution 0531, “Protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.” The emergency resolution was drafted in response to a recent congressional action that potentially opens a stretch of the reserve to oil drilling.

Speaking on behalf of the measure, Monica Myers Greenberg, pastor of Northwest Christian Church in Seattle, said, “Creation does not belong to us but to God. The region is a unique piece of God’s creation.”

“Dominion does not mean careless domination,” she added, noting that studies have shown there is less than a six-month supply of oil in the area.

Irv Blake, from First Christian Church in Dallas, on the other hand, argued, “This document is not any kind of a fair presentation. The previous speaker talked in terms of massive oil development and minimal oil supplies. There’s enough oil there to prove 1 million barrels of oil per day for thirty years.”

He then said, “This resolution is a product an aggressive and radical environmental movement.”

In response, David Bell of Yakama Christian Mission in White Swan, Wash., said, “Even if there was enough oil to last us 100 years, we have an obligation to be a generational church, to worry about the generations that come after us. We may be a radical people, but that’s what our faith calls us to be.”

The measure was adopted by a wide majority.

[...]

The General Assembly concludes tonight with a worship service, during which the new general minister and president and moderators will be installed.

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APRIL 02, 2005

THE FIG TREE: stories of people putting their faith into action in the Northwest

Construction skills complement pastor's ministry with Yakama

David Bell incorporates skills from his first career—20 years in building design and construction—to open doors of employment and education to youth through the Yakama Christian Mission.

He and his wife, Belinda, came six years ago to determine if there was a viable ministry at the mission that started in 1920 on the Yakima, now Yakama, reservation near White Swan.

They found programs for preschool and grade school children, but little for junior high, senior high and post high school youth.

The Bells soon decided the mission for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) was to be present with the Yakama Nation, offering a social justice ministry to create opportunities for young people.

Based on interactions with the Yakama people, they offer retreats at the mission and off-reservation workshops on culture and injustices the people face.

Sunday worship services in the mission’s chapel draw people of varying faiths and others who “want to walk with God,” but few who identify as Disciples of Christ, said David, a 1999 graduate of Pacific School of Religion (PSR) in Berkeley. The mission is his first assignment as a pastor.

Belinda, who earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1996 in Redding, Calif., worked six years in a Shasta County school district that served some Native American and Hispanic students. She leads programs for children and women, as well as workshops on racism and poverty. In 2004, she earned a master’s in social work at Eastern Washington University.

Three years ago, Jill Delaney, a Disciples pastor and 1998 graduate of PSR, came from Seattle to join them at the mission. She teaches women English as a Second Language (ESL), does pastoral care and works with Belinda in the clothing room, which also has health kits, layettes and school supplies.
Through the clothing room, they provide a ministry of presence—just being there when people come by and want to talk about family issues, personal concerns or social issues.

“In this ministry, I experience how social justice and scripture come together,” said David, who spent a summer in seminary doing a social services ministry in a Latino community in San Antonio, Texas.

An overview of the mission’s history gives background on the situation to which David, Belinda and Jill came.

In 1921, the mission built a cottage and dorm for rural Native children attending school. Another dorm was added in 1927, and a medical clinic in 1949. The mission provided religious services for the community.

In 1955, the Log Church was built. The clinic closed in 1958; a kindergarten opened in 1959, and the dorms were turned over to a rural community program in 1962.

Valley Christian Church began in Wapato, and Friendship House opened for community services in Toppenish in 1964. The mission office moved there in 1967, and the White Swan property was leased to an alcohol treatment ranch until 1983.

By 1991, mission programs returned to the Log Church. Two years later, the Toppenish and Wapato properties were sold. In 2000, the mission was renamed Yakama Christian Mission to reflect the new spelling of the Yakama Nation.

Seeing that some teens and young adults “dropped through the cracks,” David and Belinda began encouraging ninth to 12th graders to consider college, vocations and next steps in life.

They started Youth Education Services (YES) in 2002 for youth and young adults up to 25 years old. YES enables parents to help their children succeed as they pursue education.

“We spend time with young people so they see how English and math skills they learn in high school apply in the real world,” Belinda said.

David said that the YES program builds skills and confidence so young people can move into employment, trade school or college experiences.
High school youth help younger youth—preschool to sixth grade—with reading, recreation, games and field trips in a summer program.

Now there are students at the University of Washington, Central Washington University and Yakima Valley Community College, studying architecture, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, graphic design, cartooning and art, medicine and law.

“Most are the first in their families to go to college, so we encourage them to stay in touch during their college experience,” David said.

Through the YES program, David also trains youth in design and construction. Through that part of the program, the youth provide 150 hours of service to the community.

In the last few years, youth have learned about building design and construction, including computer-aided drafting, he said. They have designed and worked on buildings, including the United Christian Church of Yakama, Community Church in Harrah and Campbell Farms in Wapato.

After visiting a church site in Nebraska in March, David noted that the youth will develop a project budget and schedule for building a new church in Lincoln.

David charges for the services, so youth can be paid for their work done beyond their community service hours.

“The goal is to motivate youth to build their work skills so they increase their chance for well-paying jobs,” he said.

By summer 2006, they hope to begin building low-income housing they are currently designing. They will arrange for permits, help with the construction, and work with realtors and engineers.

The Yakama reservation is a multi-cultural community, Belinda said.
In the context of people of many races and ethnicities living together, the mission seeks to change systems outside the reservation through two programs to challenge systemic racism.

• They offer 24-hour Anti-Racism/Pro-Reconciliation training for church and community groups, teaching about culture, ethnicity and racism, and training people to listen to people from other cultures.

• Youth, adult and intergenerational groups and families come to the mission for Learning and Serving Work Trips, opportunities to work on projects and learn about building relationships with others who have different approaches to life than then have.

Some groups come for a week. Some stop by for a few hours or days. Projects, which fill half the time, vary—re-roofing, painting, building a handicap ramp, moving irrigation pipes, trimming goat and sheep hooves, moving hay or helping with construction projects.

Workshops each day present justice issues in a multicultural setting and help visitors understand what they see and experience in the community, on tours of the area, at powwows, in local churches and at the cultural center.

The mission offers the Learning and Serving retreats during spring breaks and from the end of May through the first week of August. Summer visitors come from congregations, high schools and colleges in the United States and Canada.

“Many learn for the first time how wealthy they are, seeing the poverty here. They realize that what they take for granted is not what everyone has,” David said.

For information, call 874-2824.
By Mary Stamp, Fig Tree editor - © April 2005

ABC

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