Repairing Broken Walls

Your perpetual ruins will be rebuilt; you will reestablish the ancient foundations. You will be called,

Repairing Broken Walls A walk through two Christian communities that are transforming their urban neighborhoods with creativity, courage, and commitment.

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PRISM Magazine

, ‘The one who repairs broken walls, the one who makes the streets inhabitable again.’ Isaiah 58:12

From Ramshackle to Shalom

An Indianapolis church turns a vortex of foreclosures into a neighborhood on the mend

by Zoe Sandvig Erler

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large board covers the front door of 403 North Gray Street. Chunks of the white brick porch are missing, and brambles from a dead tree swallow up half of the front view. It’s difficult to tell how long the house has been vacant.

Just six doors down, Belinda Ellis’ front porch twinkles with icicle lights and a bold Christmas wreath. Inside, her cozy living room is lined with family photos, suede couches, and children’s bicycles. Ellis proudly shows off her home, pointing out pictures of her eight grandchildren. She flings open the back door onto a spacious red deck and even more spacious backyard. That yard is the main reason Ellis lives at 428 North Gray Street.

The house was under renovation when Ellis first saw it in 2007, right after she got out of prison. “I just fell in love with it,” she explains, “’cause I knew it had this huge backyard.” The yard has since become a staging ground for her grandkids’ football games.

It’s unusual for former felons returning to Indianapolis’ Near Eastside to find quality affordable housing, but Ellis’ home was made possible by Englewood Christian Church, and Englewood isn’t known for following the norm.

The fall of Near Eastside The church stands at the corner of Rural and Washington Streets, on the edge of Indianapolis’ Near Eastside and just half a mile from Brenda Ellis’ home. The 200-member congregation continues to work out the kinks in a 15-year project to live out the gospel of Jesus Christ in a community ravaged by crime, unemployment, and an overwhelming number of home foreclosures. Although it hasn’t been officially confirmed, most Near Eastsiders claim that their zip code—46201—led the nation in foreclosures in 2004. It wasn’t always so.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Near Eastside boasted a thriving business district, several prominent schools and churches, and a popular amusement park. Families started, grew, and left legacies. During this time, Englewood Christian Church exploded its population to more than 1,000 regulars, gaining a reputation as a cornerstone congregation in the city and in the nation. But despite its prestige, the church concealed its subtle horrors, including the hushed history that some members held Ku Klux Klan meetings in Englewood’s austere building. These wounds have now turned to scars that the church no longer tries to hide. After all, it has long since acquired a new identity and celebrates God’s desire to redeem our past and turn our scars into character.

Englewood persisted in its fashion of abundance and prominence until World War II, when Near Eastside suffered a dras-

Belinda Ellis is the proud owner of her house, which was renovated and financed by ECDC. (Photo by Beverly Saddler)

tic demographic shift as families began moving out to the suburbs to purchase newer homes. The exodus escalated in the 1960s and ’70s as houses were increasingly subdivided into rental duplexes for more transient tenants. Other homes were abandoned and eventually forced into foreclosure.

Suburban flight took with it important assets; neighborhood grocery stores and other retail operations closed, forcing the remaining residents to shop outside of the neighborhood.

According to the 2000 US Census, the population declined by 19 percent between 1980 and 2000. Crime climbed and schools suffered. As current Englewood pastor Mike Bowling recalls, Near Eastside had disintegrated into a “no man’s land.”

Many churches headed to the suburbs, too. But Englewood remained, now one-fifth the size of its original booming congregation.

When Bowling arrived at Englewood in 1993, he faced a congregation unsure of its identity and uncertain of its mission.

Within just a few years, Bowling, who had previously served in an urban ministry in Pittsburgh, teamed up with several other social-justice-minded members of the congregation to begin a new phase in Englewood’s story: transforming their struggling neighborhood by reversing the housing crisis.

It all started in 1995 with a single mother and a little house on the verge of collapse.

Translating social justice In 1995 Donna Spurling—a cancer survivor, single mother, and Englewood congregant—was looking for a new place to live, but she couldn’t pay much in rent. Meanwhile Englewood folks noticed that a house across the street from the church looked as if it was about to fall down.

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So Pastor Bowling and a few other Englewood leaders got creative. They pooled their money and bought the house at 212 Rural Street, a duplex, for $5,000 and began rebuilding it, employing the skills of a few handymen in the congregation.

Spurling contributed $350 a month in rent, $225 of which the church put into a savings account for her. Through that account, Spurling saved up enough to fully furnish her remodeled home.

After a few more impromptu rehab opportunities—including fixing up a house for a large family who had been evicted from their previous dwelling—Bowling and friends decided they needed a more organized way to tackle such projects. They filed for tax-exempt status with help from a local nonprofit law clinic, and in 1996 launched Englewood Community Development Corporation (ECDC).

To date, Englewood has rehabbed almost 50 properties within a mile of the church and provided affordable housing for approximately 150 people.

“If the world is going to understand what we’re up to and not just cast it as religion, we need to name this thing with language that they’re going to understand,” Bowling explains.

“And they understand community development corporations.”

Planting in urban soil One block over from Rural, on Oxford Street, Da- ECDC’s David Price stands outside the Care Center, vid Price, 41, rises which is being reborn as a 32-unit supportive housing complex. (Photo by Beverly Saddler) before 4 a.m. every day so he can fit his two jobs into a 70-hour work week: teaching in a homeschooling co-op, of which his two daughters are a part, while his wife works as a nurse, and overseeing ECDC. The executive directorship pays very little, and even that Price usually “loanates” back to the organization, something he says

many of Englewood’s members do to help cash flow at ECDC. “We’ll hopefully see these funds back,” says Price, “but we will see. At Englewood, we believe that the church is the transformative agent in culture and that God is redeeming all things through his people. We do not necessarily believe that the church is a conglomeration of employees or volunteers. We believe strongly in the reality of church as the body of Christ.

Our decisions about career, how we live, and how we spend our money are not private decisions but are submitted to the body.

While we are not a common-purse community, we value the submission of all that we have and all that we are to God and, by extension, the body. So my service here is part of my submission to our local body, since I have some of the skills and current availability to work for ECDC. My ‘paycheck’ is being a functioning part of the community of Christ in this location.”

Predominantly a corridor of rentals, Oxford was plagued with troublemaker tenants and vacancies when Price moved in. The first of Englewood’s members to buy and rehab a house, Price purchased his place 10 years ago for $20,000.

After clearing waist-deep trash out of the house, he sunk in $60,000 worth of improvements.

“It’s not a good investment,” Price admits, adding, “Most of us have put more into our houses than they’re worth, especially now with the downturn.”

But making money has never been the impetus behind Englewood’s actions. Around 1996 and the launch of ECDC, many Englewood members—in addition to Price and Bowling— made a choice to stay put in the neighborhood in order to focus on serving those around them. A few others decided to move from the suburbs back to Englewood. To date, threequarters of Englewood members live in the neighborhood, mostly within one square mile of the church, on Rural, Gray, Dearborn, and Oxford Streets.

“If you’re going to be in the neighborhood, then be in the neighborhood,” Price says.

Dwelling in close-knit community comes with benefits— accountability, friendship, safety. It also comes with its annoyances.

“We have a lot of generations living here,” Price explains.

“It’s so much easier to belong to a church that’s a new church plant and is a bunch of people who are a lot alike.” Some neighbors are very committed to Englewood’s vision of common life—others, less so.

Over the past 15 years, Englewood has started a publishing company, launched a top-notch daycare center, fed the hungry with vegetables from their community garden, and recently helped start the area’s first food co-op.

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Formerly homeless, today Candace Maximoff works in administration at Wheeler Mission Ministries (which helped her overcome her drug addiction) and owns an ECDCrenovated and financed home.

As a small church, personpower is always the most needed resource. With a congregation of barely 200, a few people carry the heavily loaded infrastructure that is ECDC. Sometimes suburban churches want to help by donating funds or sending work groups down.

However, Price notes that Englewood prefers people who are willing to relocate to the city and donate their everyday lives.

Plumbing and paperwork Of the 50 houses ECDC has revitalized, approximately 30 have been rental and contract sales and about 20 have been rehabbed and sold. Properties came from foreclosures, firedamaged houses, and the city’s land bank, where ECDC was able to purchase them for between $2,500 and $30,000 apiece.

Foreclosures come in bad shape—and worse. Many houses come stripped of appliances, electrical systems typically need an upgrade, and “plumbing usually needs to be redone,” Price says.

Most of these repairs demand professional attention where volunteer labor used to suit (not because Englewood requires it, but because the government does). After running a private operation for more than a decade, ECDC applied for and was awarded $6 million in Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) grant money from the state and city governments to fund many of their housing projects. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) created these grants in 2008 to help stabilize communities deemed “most needy,” particularly those suffering from tragic rates of abandoned and foreclosed homes.

Federal funding brings its red tape, particularly increased paperwork and long-term reporting obligations. ECDC is learning to be more structured, which is enabling it to complete its most recent and largest effort to date: a 32-unit supportive and affordable housing complex in a former Indianapolis public school adjacent to the church. Dubbed the CommonWealth and a part of a larger effort in Near Eastside known as the Quality of Life Plan, the complex will provide housing for the homeless and for those with mental illnesses, as well as higher functioning members of the community who want to live in

closer proximity to their neighbors. In partnership with Adult & Child Mental Health Services and the John H. Boner Center, a local social service provider, ECDC is crafting the CommonWealth in such a way that it can become a place where the aging, the young, the needy, and the more self-sufficient can experience life together.

Unlikely tenants Relationships and restored lives make up for what Englewood has given up financially. Over the past 14 years, ECDC has purposed to offer housing to the least “house-able,” those who need housing most desperately but have the most difficulty qualifying for it, like citizens returning from prison.

In 2001, after more than seven years of incarceration, Melissa Benton was released from Indiana Women’s Prison (IWP) and began attending Englewood with her grandparents.

Despite her support system, Benton soon discovered how difficult it was to rebuild her life.

“With the time I did in prison...you see the revolving door,” she says. “When I got out and found out how hard it was to get a job and get your life back together, I couldn’t imagine how hard it would be for someone who didn’t have a support system.”

In 2004 Benton purchased a house through ECDC. A year later, motivated by her personal experience, Benton helped launch Women in Motion—a joint effort between Englewood, ECDC, IWP, and the Boner Center—to help women exiting IWP get back on their feet. Boner provided job assistance.

ECDC supplied affordable housing. And the church matched returning citizens with Englewood neighbors who would serve as their mentors.

During the three years that Women in Motion was active, 30 women cycled through the program. Although the program has been discontinued, five of the women still reside in the neighborhood. Brenda Ellis is one of them.

Before she was released, Ellis knew that ECDC was preparing a home for her. Purchased by ECDC in a tax sale, 428 North Gray was under construction the day Ellis got a tour. She remembers that the floors were bare, since the carpet had not yet been laid. But after she saw the backyard, she was sold.

ECDC took care of all of the logistics, including furnishing the house. “I didn’t do nothing but move in,” she says. “Put up the blinds.”

Last year, Ellis suffered a severe health breakdown, but she had two families by her side throughout the ordeal: her relatives and Englewood. “That’s why I love Englewood,” she explains.

“They stood by me the whole time.”

Servant landlords Although she never went to prison, Candace Maximoff took her fair share of hard knocks before settling into her cozy cottage at 207 North Rural.

“I was addicted to drugs and alcohol before I ever left home,” she explains, perched on her couch across from a red brick fireplace decorated with a collection of figurines, fragrant

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candles, and framed pictures. This room—this house—she calls “her refuge.”

About eight years ago, she hit her lowest point: Her husband left her, she was evicted from her apartment, and she ended up homeless on the streets of Indianapolis. Welcomed into the Care Center—in the building where the CommonWealth will be—Maximoff surrendered her life to Christ, got clean, and found community. Three-and-a-half years later she was still living there and afraid to leave, until she learned that Englewood was renovating 207 North Rural.

Although Maximoff didn’t attend Englewood at the time, she knew the house well, having attended Saturday morning Bible studies in its living room when it was occupied by an acquaintance from a previous church. And then Englewood offered it to her, and she jumped at the opportunity. “I just thought it was the most darling house I had been in.”

These days, she admits that having her church as a landlord creates a closer dynamic than many would prefer to experience.

But she appreciates it.

“I have no doubt in my mind that if it became apparent to the people at Englewood that I was doing something I shouldn’t be doing, somebody would be calling me on it,” she said. “To me, having that accountability is a safety net. To me, it’s just one more layer of things that would keep me from going back to drinking.”

Since moving into her house, Englewood has never raised the rent and lets Maximoff reimburse them for utilities when she can.

When the church at large is doing what it was created to do, it will be responding to the great ills and desperations of its day with compassion, creativity, and action. In the 2nd century, Christians sacrificed their lives to tend to the sick during a plague in Rome. For Christians in 18th- and 19th-century England, this meant launching a full-scale attack on the British slave trade. In 21st-century America, where many neighborhoods have fallen into ruin over several decades of neglect, Christians—like those at Englewood—are repairing the walls, rebuilding and repopulating abandoned homes, and restoring shalom.

Maximoff concludes, “That’s part of what Christianity looks like today in this neighborhood—helping people find affordable places to live.”

Formerly a writer for Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship, Zoe Sandvig Erler is currently director of communications for Sagamore Institute, a nonpartisan think tank where she researches and writes about community development and social justice. She lives with her husband in Indianapolis.

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On Earth as It Is in Heaven A ministry’s integrated approach to community building transforms inner-city Albuquerque

by Helen Lepp Friesen

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lbuquerque’s International District at one time boasted thriving businesses and safe living conditions for its residents. But that all changed in the 1970s, when the construction of Interstate 40 through the heart of the city rerouted traffic from the neighborhood and when Kirtland Air Force Base housing was relocated. These two events brought with them the evacuation of businesses, a decline in home ownership, and a rise in absentee landlords.

Four decades later the International District still consists of highly transient and low-income neighborhoods, with the city’s highest rates of violent crimes, domestic violence, prostitution, and poverty. Although the multiplicity of languages and ethnic groups in the neighborhood can be an asset, it can also make communication difficult, and racial conflict complicates community progress.

Into this challenging scenario East Central Ministries (ECM) was born in 1999. ECM’s goal is to be “followers of Christ, committed to living out faith by partnering with vulnerable neighbors to cultivate solutions, development, and transformation in Albuquerque’s southeast International District.”

ECM was launched by John Bulten as an outreach of Fellowship Christian Reformed Church in Albuquerque, N. Mex., with the initial goal being to men-

tor families coming off welfare. Eventually the vision evolved into a more comprehensive neighborhood transformation approach. Today this holistic transformation vision has expanded to include an intentional community called Casa Shalom, a health clinic, food cooperative, two micro businesses, youth leadership development and tutoring, and a middle school.

ECM’s mission is to share “God’s good news of salvation through Jesus Christ to a hurting neighborhood, while addressing systematic neighborhood needs such as housing, employment, and family issues.” Here’s a quick look at how they are fullfilling their mission.

Escuela Luz del Mundo On a Monday morning a few days into the new school year, students at Escuela Luz del Mundo are already busy defining science, talking about social justice issues, and planning a Shakespeare unit complete with dramatization. Escuela Luz del Mundo is in its fourth year of operation in Albuquerque’s International District.

Dr. Rick Kitchen, longtime volunteer at ECM and full-time professor of math education leadership at University of New Mexico, manages the small Christian school. In conjunction with his research at UNM on effective schools that serve the poor, he worked for many years in public education. Escuela Luz del Mundo was born of the vision Kitchen developed during his research. Initially launched under the auspices of East Central Ministries, the school quickly became its own stand-alone entity. This year the school has 31 students in sixth through eigth grades.

Although the cost of education is $250 per month, the school charges only $50 per month, with the option of contributing sweat equity by taking on janitorial duties in those months when cash is especially short. School families are heavily involved in fundraising efforts. The absence of drug and gang activity and the presence of a Christ-centered and academically challenging program draws the parents, many of whom have no more than an elementary education themselves, to invest time and money in their children’s future. Both students and parents are responsible for the upkeep of the building.

One priority of the school is to instill interest in social justice issues, both globally—the students have been learning about the “invisible children” of Uganda)—and locally—students were recently part of a coalition that attended a hospital board of

regents meeting on the topic of budgetary decisions and policy that would impact healthcare for the poor.

Every Thursday the school hosts a community lunch featuring discussions on topics such as immigrant issues/ rights, healthcare access, and mental health issues (a professional counselor is available to help students cope with the challenging issues in their life). Because of these resources and opportunities to participate, students who might otherwise feel marginalized in their community realize they do have power to influence their situations.

“Escuela Luz del Mundo is not there to impose a better model of education,” explains Kitchen, “but to walk side by side with the students, recognizing that education is about more than just textbook learning.” Education is about connecting each student’s experience, sphere of influence, and responsibility to a wider community and world so that they become global citizens who contribute to the betterment of society.

The three current teachers at Escuela Luz del Mundo feel they’ve been called to the work. When funds are low they forego a paycheck until money comes in to cover salaries.

One Hope Centro de Vida Health Clinic Longtime ECM volunteer Azucena Molenar sees access to good healthcare as essential for many hardworking immigrant families who don’t qualify for healthcare benefits. It was her vision of a health clinic for the community that prompted ECM to organize its first health fair in 2003. That first fair led to others, which led to volunteer doctors seeing their first patients in a small room next to the food cooperative. Generous state and county monies led to the purchase of a building, and in 2006 ECM started the process of gutting and transforming the former jewelry store into a bright, welcoming space.

Today One Hope Centro de Vida consists of a clean, family-friendly reception area, three examining rooms, and two dental chairs. Its mission is to improve the total health of the community by partnering with neighbors to provide affordable healthcare, follow-up, education, and spiritual guidance. The clinic opened its doors to the community in January 2010 and

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now operates two days a week, with three doctors from area churches and University of New Mexico medical faculty who volunteer their time and expertise Based on capacity and volunteers, One Hope offers clinics on issues such as depression, asthma, diabetes, and weight loss.

Patients are charged a $10 copay for a doctor visit and, if they cannot afford that, are welcome to barter for the service by cleaning the clinic. In the clinic’s backyard, a shaded sitting area with comfortable cushioned deck chairs qualifies as the counseling room. In its first quarter of operation the clinic offered $40,000 worth of services to 80-90 patients per month. Word of mouth has been the sole marketing tool.

Food coop, micro businesses, an urban farm business The food coop opened in 2001. Using donations from around the city, 15 volunteer families organize the food, setting up the coop to resemble a farmers’ market where approximately 100 families come to select the food they need for the week, volunteering their time in exchange. Community members manage and operate the entire project. Excess or spoiled food is sent across the street to be composted at Growing Awareness Urban Farm, one of two micro businesses that ECM started to provide employment and much needed income to unemployed community residents.

Growing Awareness Urban Farm is run by Matt Wilson, a master gardener, entrepreneur, and community developer with a passion for kids. He and his employees grow 20,000 starter plants to sell to a local nursery or to church youth groups and schools for fundraisers. With a US Department of Agriculture grant, Wilson expanded the farm to include chickens, bees, and composting worms that turn food scraps and “gray water” into

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potassium- and nitrogen-rich gardening soil that is sold to gardening centers; the worms are also sold to fishermen. Urban Farm is considering organic certification next year. A donated greenhouse waits to be installed. Wilson recruits middle and high school students to assist in the projects.

Another ECM micro business is based on the ancient method of olla irrigation. At the cutting edge of urban gardening, olla irrigation uses water that passes through terracotta pots that are buried in the ground with just their opening exposed to allow for filling. Employees make the ceramic molds

for the ollas, or pots, from actual gourds and squash, firing them at extreme temperatures but This page, below: A community that prays together leaving them stays together! Food coop volunteers share a prayer before work. unglazed to maintain their Right: Creation Park, built entirely by volunteers, porous texfeatures a mural celebrating the resurrection of the neighborhood. ture so they will slowly leak water into the ground. The micro business currently sells the ollas wholesale to nurseries in southwestern states.

ECM recently received a combination of $55,000 in grants and donations to build a playground and paint a mural in the backyard adjacent to the food coop. Local politicians, along with 140 volunteers, transformed an asphalt parking lot into a child-friendly recreation area in one day. Local artist Richard Brandt chose images for the mural that celebrate the resurrection of a neighborhood.

Opposite page, clockwise from top: ECM makes terracotta pots and sells them wholesale to nurseries. Matt Wilson runs Growing Awareness Urban Farm, where he works with community children like Juan to raise plants, chickens, and bees. Students roll up their sleeves for the community garden project at Escuela Luz del Mondo.

Casa Shalom For many years John Bulten nurtured the dream of community living in the ECM neighborhood but did not know what that vision would entail practically or how it would look. But the dream began to take shape three years ago when a property became available, just around the corner from ECM’s headquarters, consisting of one bungalow and 22 apartments. The buildings were purchased with the sole funding of private investors, and 14 families—including Bulten’s—decided to explore community living in the heart of the International District. Many of the families were already renting in the neighborhood and were eager to move into home ownership.

The 22 small one-bedroom units were converted into 13 larger townhouses to accommodate families. After the renovations—and many discussions about common values—families began to move in. Casa Shalom Housing Cooperative was born and is now an affordable, intentional community where resi-

dents of mixed ages, race, culture, and socioeconomic status share common values and goals, resources and responsibilities.

Sunday worship services are held in the common courtyard, which features picnic tables and landscaped areas. Moises, the community-appointed pastor, leads the service.

Challenges of community living include economic, cultural, multilingual, and immigration issues, but overall satisfaction with the living situation is high.

“My life has been radically changed by living at Casa Shalom with my family and my neighbors,” says Bulten. “Loving my neighbors has new meaning and so much more transforming potential when my neighbors’ hardships become mine and my brokenness starts to be revealed to them. We make commitments to our community members, and this has a way of breaking down our internal defenses and all the games and pretending we tend to do. It can often be ugly and hurts, but it’s really the only way that I see God in his loving grace working to transform us into his unique people. This messy process is

when God’s kingdom starts to really look like some good news to me.”

Under the leadership of John Bulten, ECM is rebuilding the ancient foundations and repairing broken walls. ECM’s vision to partner in the transformation of the neighborhood so that “God’s peace is present and all of God’s children can flourish” is being actualized. It continues to build a sustainable, diverse community as it equips, empowers, and partners with its neighbors; disciples through word and work; and educates and inspires others to delve into Christian community development.

Helen Lepp Friesen is a freelance writer who enjoys traveling, photography, jogging, playing hockey with her kids, and baking bread.

Learn more at EastCentralMinistries.org, GrowingAwarenessUrbanFarm.com, and ELMabq.org.

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