Bethlehem Centers seek to be ?beacons’ in inner city
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A UMNS photo by Linda Green The Bethlehem Center in Nashville helps families meet their basic needs and creates opportunities for growth.
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The
Bethlehem Center of Nashville, Tenn. is one of eight across the country
helping families meet their basic needs and creating opportunities for
growth, healing, self-determination, empowerment and success. The
centers are institutional ministries supported by the United Methodist
Church. A UMNS photo by Linda Green. Photo#06-645. Accompanies UMNS
story #342. 6/8/06 |
June 8, 2006
“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the
same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there
are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in
everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”
1 Corinthians 12:4-7 (RSV)
A UMNS Feature
By Linda Green*
Bethlehem Centers across the United States are
providing healing, hope and wholeness to people with many needs and few
advantages.
The centers began in African-American neighborhoods in Southern cities in the
late 1800s, offering a variety of education, recreation and health care
opportunities. As inner-city populations have changed or become multiethnic and
diverse, the centers have adapted to meet new needs.
“Our mission is the same today as it was yesterday, when the first center began
in Augusta, Ga.,” said Jerald McKie, director of community and institutional
ministries for the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. “It is helping
families meet their basic needs, creating opportunities for growth, healing,
self-determination, empowerment and success.”
Bethlehem Centers were started by women of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
South, as places within the church where African Americans could receive the
same services that their white counterparts received at Wesley Centers and
Wesley Houses. No longer segregated today, the centers are supported by the
United Methodist Board of Global Ministries and its Women’s Division.
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Jerald Mckie |
The centers “serve as a beacon of light across this country for individuals who
may not know about the United Methodist Church, (but) when they step into one of
these places, they find out immediately what our church is all about,” McKie
said.
They are still addressing issues of poverty, as well as challenges posed by
development and encroachment by businesses and others moving into the community,
McKie said. She noted that as cities have grown, the Bethlehem Center sites —
many of them dating back more than 100 years — “have become more the center of
town than say, the outskirts of town.”
While contending with such problems as drugs and alcohol, gangs and violence,
the centers offer after-school child care, arts and crafts, training to develop
young people’s self-esteem, and other positive activities for youth and young
people.
They still have an educational focus and work with a variety of ethnic and
immigrant populations. They also perform needs assessments and strategic
planning. Boards of directors are now incorporated, and centers hire their own
executive directors as opposed to when the United Methodist Board of Global
Ministries sent staff — often deaconesses — to lead them.
Of the 103 institutional ministries supported by the board and United Methodist
Women — ministries such as community centers, schools and colleges, residential
treatment centers, women’s residences and the Red Bird Missionary Conference —
eight are Bethlehem Centers.
Building futures
The Bethlehem Centers of Nashville is three facilities working as one. Along
with a youth camp, the three sites work together to “promote self-reliance and
positive life choices for children, teens, adults and families in Middle
Tennessee by delivering and advocating quality programs and services,” said
Joyce Searcy, the executive director. Founded in 1894, the centers were
dedicated to young mothers and their children in Nashville.
During the past 112 years, Bethlehem Center, Wesley House and Centenary Center
evolved into one multi-service agency, with a mission to reach all
poverty-restricted infants and young children, teens, women and senior citizens
in neighborhoods surrounding the centers. The agency also runs Camp Dogwood,
which was started in the 1920s as the first location in Middle Tennessee where
African-American youngsters could attend camp.
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Joyce Searcy |
Working under the theme “Changing Lives, Building Futures,” the centers serve
people and families from three of the poorest areas of the city, with 97 percent
of the clients living at 90 percent or below federal poverty guidelines, and
attempts to make them self-reliant. “What we do is change lives and build
futures for our families, children, youth and adults,” Searcy said.
Kim Parks, 42, said the center’s motto has been a testimony about her life. She
was a client of the center for six months, and she is now a dental student at
United Methodist-related Meharry Medical College. Recalling her “time in the
wilderness,” she said, the Bethlehem Center helped her remember that she is not
alone and could rely on the “village.”
“While going through the crossroads of my life, I am so grateful that Bethlehem
Centers was my village.” The center enabled her to create resumes for her job
search, and the staff provided a listening ear. “Most importantly, everything
was free,” she said.
As a dental student, she has been existing on a “shoestring budget,” she said.
The center “lightened the load at times and became a guiding light.”
According to an agency fact sheet, nearly 90 percent of the children and youth
served are in single-parent households, and 100 percent of the elderly served
receive various forms of public assistance.
Helping children
Searcy offered United Methodist News Service a glimpse into Nashville’s centers.
“We are serving children as young as 6 weeks old. It is very important that as
brains are developing and bodies are developing, that moral values are developed
in those children.” She outlined the various programs that impact women,
children, teens and adults, noting that the ministries provide empowerment,
advocacy, substance abuse prevention, job training and hunger assistance.
When she arrived as executive director in 1987, she said she was most impressed
with volunteer spirit and dedication of one of the daily workers. That volunteer
inspired her.
“It was my vision to put programs in place here and have the agency do a better
job of serving the community, and if it was going to serve the community, then
the community would need to be more involved here,” she said.
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A UMNS photo by Linda Green Kim Parks, a dental student at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., examines Kayla Pierce's teeth.
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Kim
Parks, a dental student at United Methodist-related Meharry Medical
College in Nashville, Tenn., looks at the teeth of 4-year-old Kayla
Pierce, a student in Bethlehem Center's day care. A former student at
the center, Parks credits it for helping her succeed in school and life.
The Bethlehem Center of Nashville is one of eight Bethlehem Centers
across the country, helping families meet their basic needs and creating
opportunities for growth, healing, self-determination, empowerment and
success. The centers are institutional ministries supported by the
United Methodist Church. A UMNS photo by Linda Green. Photo#06-643.
Accompanies UMNS story #342. 6/8/06 |
During her tenure, she has introduced and expanded programs and incorporated
measurable goals. The center is ranked by the state as “Three Star,” which is
the highest rating a day care can receive in Tennessee. In addition, it is
accredited by a national association for the education of young children. “It is
like the national Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval to say you are the best of
the best,” she said.
Searcy wants the Bethlehem Centers to become a leader in the community. “I want
the agency to continue to produce community leaders, children who are educated
and people who are self-reliant, people determining their own destiny and giving
back to the community.”
Giving back is what Jessica Oldham, 25, is doing. A former recipient of the
center’s day care services, Oldham teaches day care students at the center
today. The experience, love and attention she received at the center made her
want to work with children as an adult.
“It is exciting. It is never a dull moment. Every day is different. The
Bethlehem Center is a place to be loved. It is a loving place. Everyone loves
everybody here.”
The center embodies the Christian principle of serving “the least of these,” and
no one is turned away, Oldham said. “It is a place that believes in families, is
Christian and believes in helping one another.”
Support needed
To promote the center and its work, Searcy speaks to a lot of church groups,
during worship services, and to United Methodist Women and youth groups.
“What I try to do is let United Methodists know that their foremothers founded
(Bethlehem Centers), and it sinks or swims on their involvement.” A large
portion of their funding comes through the local, regional and general
conferences of the United Methodist Church. The agencies also receive financial
support through the donations of individuals, businesses and churches, both
local and across the country.
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A UMNS photo by Linda Green Jessica Oldham reads to 3-year-old Jason Rhodes.
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Jessica
Oldham, a day care worker at the Bethlehem Center in Nashville, Tenn.,
reads to 3-year-old Jason Rhodes. As a child, Oldham received care at
the United Methodist-supported center, one of eight across the country
helping families meet their basic needs and creating opportunities for
growth, healing, self-determination, empowerment and success. The
centers are institutional ministries supported by the United Methodist
Church. A UMNS photo by Linda Green. Photo#06-644. Accompanies UMNS
story #342. 6/8/06 |
The center recently revamped its logo to include the Star of Bethlehem and to
express its ecumenism and interdenominational community outreach. “We don’t care
who you are, we want to bring the love of Christ to you,” Searcy said.
For its work in promoting abstinence and the prevention of substance abuse, the
Bethlehem Centers of Nashville is one of 13 agencies nationwide chosen by the
federal government to use a program called “Too Smart To Start,” to help ’tweens
— kids who aren’t small children but not quite teenagers — make decisions about
their future and say no to sex, drugs and alcohol.
McKie said the eight centers share in common the challenges associated with
racism and poverty. Impoverished people, even if they are trained and employed,
have a hard time juggling the costs of health care, child care and homeownership
— pressures that keep many people down, she said.
If the Bethlehem Centers and other mission institutions could eradicate the
issues stemming from poverty in their clients’ lives, “then we would see women
and children and their families being able to step beyond that issue and join
the rest of us who have been blessed and have been able to maintain a semblance
of a good caring environment for our families,” she said.
More information on Bethlehem Centers is available at http://gbgm-umc.org/cim or
by calling (212) 870-3843. Donations can be designated for Advance Special
#982149 and mailed to 475 Riverside Dr. Room 1544, New York, N.Y. 10115. Money
specifically for children’s programs, can be designated for Advance Special
#123456, which helps ministries with children at the United Methodist Church’s
National Mission Institutions.
*Green is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville, Tenn.
News media contact: Linda Green, (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
Audio Interviews
Joyce Searcy: Bethlehem Centers has been around since 1894.
Joyce Searcy: I would like to see us produce leaders in the community.
Jeri McKie: I think some of the challenges are associated with racism.
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Resources
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The Advance (PDF)
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