Baptists aim to alleviate poverty in Perry County

Baptists aim to alleviate poverty in Perry County

Baptist churches have joined forces with officials in Perry County in declaring war on poverty in that area.
   
“Sowing Seeds of Hope” (SSOH)  is seen as a working partnership of community leaders and concerned citizens from Perry County, along with organizations and interested individuals from across the United States. The project’s aim is to create a coalition to challenge poverty in Perry County and its causes.
   
Wayne Flynt, a historian at Auburn University and member of First Baptist Church, Auburn, said a child poverty rate exceeding 50 percent and an unemployment rate higher than 10 percent makes Perry County an ideal location for Baptists to work in helping solve the area’s problems.
  
 “What better place, then, for Alabama Baptists to demonstrate two central elements of our common faith: ecumenical ministries with black and white Christian brothers and sisters and a commitment to social justice,” said Flynt.
   
Mart Gray, coordinator of the Alabama Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) and co-chairman of SSOH, said task forces will focus on several areas:
    –Economic development and job-skill training
    –Education
    –Health care
    –Housing
    –Spiritual and social development
    –Transportation
    –Tourism.
   
Gray said the project is designed so outside groups will work with — rather than for — residents of Perry County. “We’re wanting to deal long-term with the effects of poverty,” Gray said.
   
“Rather than trying to put Band-Aids on symptoms, we want to work with local people to find out what they think the answers are,” Gray added.
   
He said the project aims to “help transform the culture that creates a vicious cycle of poverty.” And in his opinion, it is appropriate for the church to be involved in such an undertaking.
   
“What’s always frustrated me is that, when people talk about community development, they talk about the church as a player,” he said. “What too often happens is the church doesn’t show up or it shows up with such a strident voice that it’s soon discredited.
   
“In a culture that increasingly asks the question, ‘Why is the church or the gospel relevant in my life?,’ we’re going back to an example that Jesus set in the Gospels, meeting needs as he found them, physical and spiritual,” Gray added.
   
In addition to being an area ripe for ministry by Baptists, Perry County also holds historical significance for the denomination.
   
Perry County was the original site of Howard College (now Samford University), The Alabama Baptist and the executive director’s office of the Alabama Baptist State Convention. The Domestic Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, now the North American Mission Board, was chartered in Marion. And Perry County remains the home of Judson College, along with the historic Siloam and Berean Baptist churches.
   
Flynt said SSOH is another chapter in the history of Baptists in Perry County, which he anticipates will extend well beyond this decade.
   
“We contemplate an engagement of at least a quarter-century, not of a few months,” he said. “We proclaim a vision longer than the span of our own lives.”
   
Flynt also reiterated Gray’s point that the initiative will be done with the people of Perry County, rather than for them.
   
“We act only as enablers, responding to what the people of Perry County themselves decide are the best ways to provide health care, better education, job skills, economic development and adequate housing,” Gray added.
   
To date SSOH has secured two $5,000 grants from the CBF that will be used for health care and to establish a Habitat for Humanity affiliate.