For the past 20 years a handful of Alabama Baptist churches have partnered with other churches from across the southeast in a ministry project focused on Perry County, Alabama.
The project is called Sowing Seeds of Hope (SSH). Samford University and Judson College also joined the partnership. Judson is located in Marion, the county seat of Perry County.
A recent article noted that “in partnership with SSH, Judson students now work in local schools tutoring students, remodeling classrooms and distributing children’s books.
“Students also volunteer in SSH’s home repair projects and health fairs, as well as assist parents in enrolling their children in AllKids, Alabama’s state-sponsored health insurance,” the article said.
Judson College helped bring the first dialysis clinic to Perry County and is now trying to bring the county’s first hospital to Marion.
Needs are great
According to local leaders, the people in Perry County don’t focus on what they lack. Instead they celebrate what they have. But that does not hide the fact that Perry County is one of the two poorest counties in Alabama. It has the second lowest per capita income in the state — a little more than $13,000 annually. Forty percent of the people live below the federal poverty line, and more than 30 percent of Perry County residents are food insecure.
The leader of a SSH partner ministry called Communities Empowered and Transformed (C.E.T.) said of Perry County, “A lot of people are hurting. The first need I saw was nutrition, which plays a huge part in people’s lives and in education, period. I saw homes deteriorating. I saw elderly people not being attended to, youth that were lacking academically. I noticed that our community has gotten used to receiving and has forgotten that the true blessing is in the giving.”
Now C.E.T. Ministries sponsors a “displacement center” for women fleeing domestic violence and families who have endured fires or eviction, a free clothing shop, bagged lunches and job training programs to empower people to earn a living through employment.
In 2017 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights visited several places in the United States to focus on poverty in the developed world. After visiting two Black Belt counties, the UN representative was reportedly “shocked at the level of environmental degradation in some of rural Alabama, saying he had never seen anything like it in the developed world.”
The result of what the UN representative saw in some Black Belt counties was the return of parasites like hookworms, a parasite common in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa but thought to have been eliminated in Alabama a hundred years ago.
Hookworms are dangerous and can result in stunted physical growth and mental development. E. coli is another disease re-emerging in parts of rural Alabama.
Another startling statistic involves infant health. Nine out of every 1,000 infants in Alabama die before reaching their first birthday, placing the state’s infant mortality rate higher than places like Bahrain and Sri Lanka.
In Black Belt counties the infant mortality rate is much higher. This and several other health indicators place the area on par with Third World countries. All of this is part of the tangled knot of rural poverty, sometimes generational poverty, for which no one has found an enduring answer.
As Alabama Baptists, we have a missions field in our own state. Part of our state suffers acute poverty. Part of our state lives with abnormally high food insecurity.
Part of our state lacks local access to proper health care. Part of our state endures extremely inadequate housing and sanitation. Part of our state offers substandard education. Part of our state provides little opportunity for employment.
This part of our state is the Black Belt.
Sowing Seeds of Hope is coming to an end after 20 years. What would happen if Alabama Baptists picked up the mantle of ministry to help Perry County and expanded the program to all the Black Belt counties?
What if Alabama Baptists repaired leaky roofs, installed handicap ramps, remodeled bathrooms and helped with other housing and sanitation needs? What if Alabama Baptists provided medical and dental clinics and, more importantly, helped make local access to health services possible?
What if Alabama Baptists supported improved educational opportunities? What if Alabama Baptists encouraged job training and used its influence to help bring job opportunities to depressed areas?
Would that not be a wonderful platform from which to share the gospel — to tell people about the love of God through word and deed and help them grow as Christian disciples?
No one argues that God has called His people to care for the hungry, the sick and the needy.
‘Hand out’ vs. ‘hand up’
Too often the church has understood that to mean by offering a “hand out” through charity rather than providing a “hand up” through community development. And along with these ministries goes sharing of the gospel. The two go together. They are inseparable. It is never a choice of one or the other.
The needs are great — greater than any local church can do alone. The opportunities demand a massive response. If Alabama Baptists were to catch a vision of service like the women of Judson College have, perhaps the vision of a statewide missions and ministry project could be translated beyond the Black Belt to some of the poverty centers in other parts of our state.
Personally, I am proud to be an Alabama Baptist. We are a missions-minded people. We give and we go to the ends of the earth.
In our giving and going, we dare not overlook the needs and opportunities in our own state. We need to care for the needy people in Alabama as we care for the needy people of distant lands.
After all, Jesus commanded us to minister in Jerusalem and Judea as well as to the ends of the earth.
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