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Churches Supporting Churches (CSC) - A Katrina Response
This introduces the Churches Supporting Churches (CSC) National Working Group. This project is a comprehensive strategy to assist a small number of African American congregations in twelve areas of New Orleans, where Katrina destroyed or seriously damaged their facilities, to “Restart, Reopen, Repair or Rebuild the Churches in order for them to be agents for Community Development and to Recreate their Community”.
The Katrina catastrophe exposed again the triple evils of poverty, racial injustice and militarism in this region of the US identified by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. nearly four decades ago. This Kingian Legacy is the context we need to address the moral and practical challenges to address these conditions. This was King’s vision and is our vision.
The strategy and project is designed to step beyond the food and shelter issues and to focus on expanding the capacity of these congregations to rebuild their communities. The National Council of Churches has agreed to be the fiscal agent for contributions to the Churches Supporting Churches project. We seek foundations and major contributors who share the goal for justice in the rebuilding process. We're also seeking partner congregations in the north to help with this process.
Three Fold Strategy
This three-fold strategy is first, to strengthen the health and unity of the pastors, spouses and members as they try to return to New Orleans. The meetings (October 12, November 7-8 and February 13) with New Orleans pastors identified the need to process the trauma and destruction of their churches and homes in order to be able to help their members deal with reality as they return. They need resources to reconnect the pastors with their members scattered across the US. We have asked the Lilly Endowment’s Pastoral Excellence program to provide a stipend and underwrite the expenses for a residential program for pastors and their spouses.
Second, the strategy is to rebuild the bricks and mortar and spiritual life of these congregations and to make the pastors and their members socially active agents for meeting present and returning peoples’ human needs in each community. In the first fourteen congregations to be selected, the un-met need aspect of these re-building costs will approach $10,000,000. This aspect of the project is designed to partner 36 congregations in New Orleans with 360 local congregations nationally on a ten to one ratio over the next three years to accomplish this goal. It is a vision beyond the important food and shelter issues.
Churches Supporting Churches, concerned about the total Gulf Coast, sees the NOLA project as the beginning and a model for work in other areas of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. The CSC includes the Bishop for Louisiana and Mississippi African Methodist Episcopal Church, American Friends Service Committee, Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, Church of the Brethren, Every Church a Peace Church, Mennonite Church USA, National Council of Churches and the Progressive National Baptist Convention represented by their First Vice President.
Third, the strategy extends and expands the capacity of the historical role of the African American Church as the key agent for community. Most of the churches are committed to social activism and community organization. Funds are needed for continuing local and regional advocacy actions and leadership development, community organization and outreach, and community planning and development. It’s designed as a comprehensive strategy in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King’s strategy for nonviolent democratic social change.
This project is an out-growth of the Plowshares Conference in Indianapolis September 8-11 with the Historic Peace Churches. At that conference Damu Smith (Black Voices for Peace), Dr. CT Vivian (former Executive Staff with Martin Luther King, Jr. and mentor of five decades of nonviolence leadership for civil and human rights) and David Jehnsen challenged the participants to engage in the war on poverty and race (poor people and minorities uncovered by Katrina) as well as in war at an international level. The result was a written challenge promoted by Every Church a Peace Church that has grown to the current state of the Churches Supporting Churches project chaired by Dr. Vivian.
Contributions and Further Information
Contributions can be sent to the National Council of Churches, on Memo designate it for Churches Supporting Churches, % Rev. Leslie C. Tune, Washington Communications Officer, NCC USA, 110 Maryland Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20002 Tel. 202-544-2305 Fax 202-543-1297 ltune@ncccusa.org
For more information contact:
Dr. CT Vivian, Chair, Churches Supporting Churches National Working Group, Tel. 404-505-8521 Fax 404-505-0472 dvmorse@bellsouth.net or ctv@comcast.net
