New Centers Enhance Concept of Jubilee
Episcopal News Service. November 23, 1983 [83219]
NEW YORK (DPS, Nov. 23) -- With the affirmation of five new Jubilee Centers throughout the Church, the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church has once again lifted up this new collaboration in ministry for the Church's scrutiny and adoption.
Meeting at the Episcopal Church Center here Nov. 16-18, the Council affirmed the judgement of five dioceses that ministry centers within them met the criterion of service and advocacy and were potential models for other centers of outreach in the country.
The Jubilee Ministry concept was endorsed by the 1982 meeting of the General Convention as a means of bolstering and sharing methods of ministry to oppressed and powerless people in both urban and rural settings. To be designated, a center must be engaged in both service delivery and advocacy ministries and be willing and able to share their results, learnings and financial planning around the Church. Centers are designated by dioceses and that designation affirmed by the Council.
One of the most unusual Centers designated at this meeting involved an entire diocese. Utah Episcopalians, being a tiny minority within that state, have developed a concept of uniting all congregations in their service efforts. The coordinating center is the Bishop Franklin Spencer Spalding Center in Salt Lake City and the diocesan social concerns committee. Advocacy work is carried out through a non-profit state wide organization called Utah Issues while the services are directed (sometimes in coordination with Utah Issues) to the elderly, the poor and Native Americans.
Although the circumstances are unique (Utah develops its budget through Colalition-14) the planning process which has proceeded this work and the clear relationship to the diocese's Total Ministry strategy may well be of help to others.
While Utah's programs necessarily involve a mixture of urban and rural concerns, the remaining four demonstrate effective ministry in heartland cities of the country: Chicago, Louisville, Wichita, Kans., and New Orleans.
The St. Barnabas Urban Center serves an impoverished area of Chicago centered around a housing project in which more than a third of the people are receiving public assistance and only slightly less than a third are youths. Linked to St. Barnabas Church, the Center attempts to serve through classes, food pantries, domestic violence counseling and advocacy and training for unemployed youths.
Venture House in Wichita, although a project of the Southwest Convocation of the Diocese of Kansas, shares housing and some programs with the Methodist Urban Ministry and plans more of that in the future. Groceries, housing, cash assistance and a hot meal program are available at the two-story dwelling in the inner city. These are staffed by volunteers who also handle much of the counseling and referral that are the basis of the advocacy work. In future, the two programs hope to expand to similar ministries on other sites.
In commenting on the Christ Church Cathedral, Louisville, program, Dean Alan Bartlett told his fellow councilors that the broad outreach ministries had had a tremendous effect on unifying the racially and socially diverse congregation and raising a sense of ministry and mission. The center-city cathedral is home to an ecumenical clothing center, street ministries that include feeding, shelter, prescription and transportation assistance and the Louisville Area Council on Peacemaking and Religion.
In downtown New Orleans, the congregations of the deanery have clustered together to carry out mother/child programs, recreation, refugee services, and work with abused families and exceptional children. Working as a cluster, the four parishes are able to share resources and meet the peculiar needs of their neighborhoods while developing a common identity through the deanery. Thousands of people are reached through this method that can include trading off space or skills for financial support.