Prayers for the City

In the coming weeks, Motown Mission's website will be releasing an art project that is the symbol of all of the work our volunteers have been doing this summer. At the end of each week, we ask the groups to join into a collage of prayer. When they are all done, their prayers make up a house, a symbol of the work that they've done. On the site, we've compiled many of these prayers into a virtual collage.

Check it out here

Each prayer represents a hope for the future of the city, the individual, and the love that God brings to the world. Many have brought insight and inspiration to my life, and so I've compiled a few for you. The following is a look at some of my favorites:
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"Dear heavenly father, this trip has reminded me of why I became a part of this church. I know now that I can’t do it without you because I’ve tried and it never worked. Lord I thank you for this week, it really refreshed my faith. “when the world hates you, remember that it has hated me first"

"I pray that the hope we have ignited burns long after we leave... and the change in our hearts spreads awareness of those who need us to be God's hands and feet"

"Father, your children here are hurting. Let them feel your presence surround them and your love hold them. Give them the ability to hold onto hope of a future better than they have dreamed. Christ have mercy."

"Just Peace and Love."

"I pray for Detroit. I pray for all the lives we touched this week. But I also pray for the lives here we did not get the chance to touch. I pray that their lived will be touched soon. Changes are being made. I pray things keep changing. I pray for each child and parent we helped by making it safer. I pray for all the things that got done and also all those that didn't That they will be done soon. You are changing things. Thank you."

"Thank you for the unity of Spirit that took place with the team."

"Lord, pour out grace and healing upon Detroit."

"Holy Spirit, restore the city to its place of prosperity, that the glory of the Lord falls upon us. Lord break the spirit of poverty, fear and shame within its walls."

"Lord, use the Church to bring your light into the darkness."

"Thank you for this week. You have been doing so much in this city and love this city. Thank you for putting it on the hearts of those in charge to put on this trip so we can visibly see what difference one person can do. We were able to be your hands and feet, serving others. It didn't seem like much work for us - but to those living in the neighborhood it made a difference and brought hope. Thank you for Brick. For his sister and family - for the refreshment we were able to bring them in simply cleaning a yard. Let him know you through that. He saw you though us. Thank you that we were able to be You to him. Thank you for our group who came, for those who grew this week and know you more because of it. Let us not forget what we have learned and experienced this week."

"Lord, a house is broken, a house is in disrepair, a house is ugly. Your love, Your servants changed a house that's fixed, a house repaired, a house that is beautiful. Your love changed our hearts, your love changed the hearts of those with the house, Your love made a garden grow without weeds, your love made people happy and gave them hope."

"Here in Detroit there are wounds, deep cuts that are leaving deep scars. So even though I believe that we touched so many people in this week, all of the people need assistance not just a select few. So please God love these people and send them your strength, so it will help heal this city. This city is all so filled with hopeful people. Please give them courage. Love. Love. Love."

"Help us to remember that through you, we can be the hands and feet, the light and hope for a world in need. Give us the courage and strength to stand up to and fight injustice wherever we might find it."

"I pray people realize how beautiful the city of Detroit is already, and how wonderful it can be."

"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace - let me be an answer to someone's prayers, as Detroit has been to mine."

"Your love is all we need to change a life. Thank you Lord for Your abundant love."

"I pray for great communities, strong families and places of love and safety."

"Every kid in this city has a place to come 'home'"

"Detroit is Your city and thank for reminding me it's my city too! When we work with you we can make a difference in a big problem. Help is to keep making a difference and help everyone living here to have hope and have your love and peace guide them."

"I pray that the joy I saw in the people of Detroit will be contagious; that it will spread throughout the neighborhoods and among the people, young and old. I pray they will have hope. Enough to take action to carry on the work I now have to leave. I pray for an army of joyful, hopeful people who are energized to recreate this beautiful city - and make it better than its ever been."

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I want to thank each and every person who has been a part of Motown Mission this summer. Your work and love has made a tremendous difference in the lives of so many people. We all hunger for to be closer to one another, to something or someone that can anchor us in when the world seems to slip away. By participating in Motown Mission, you become that anchor for someone else, a beacon of light to the love of God. I can only hope that ministries like this will continue to grow and foster real relationships with God out of love and bravery through the abundant need of God's people.

Witness

You can drive down any block in the neighborhood that I work in and find a mixed bag. The average block has about 6 abandoned/foreclosed/burnt-out houses for every twenty that exist. Some have far more, some have far less. The Cody-Rouge neighborhood is on the West side of Detroit, just south of Brightmoor and just north of Dearborn. The average income is around $5,000, and the state of the economy and rate of joblessness isn’t helping. The stories that I hear from folks are all the same: “We were doing fine, but now that I’ve lost my job, I’ve got no where to go. We’re stuck, and the bills and repairs keep piling up.”

Cody-Rouge is a neighborhood that is struggling to keep its head above water. The good news is that it is succeeding, but not without its share of struggles. The other day I sat down in the JSCDC office to review applications for the next week’s projects. One of the hardest parts about the work I’m doing right now is that there are so few funds to spread around. When I looked through the enormous stack of applications I was overwhelmed with the size of many of the projects. My job was to pick a few that a group of unskilled volunteers could work on, that could be priced out at around $500 a project. Unfortunately, most of the projects required massive roof work, or plumbing, or electrical. The roof work is incredibly expensive and the plumbing and electrical require skilled labor. Many of the applicants will be left waiting until those gaps can be filled. This was the first time I was able to actually take a look at this seasons applications since I started working for Motown Mission in June. I knew the need had been great, but I was finding myself overwhelmed with the information in front of me. Each application is filled out by hand, so each one is incredibly personal. There is a lot you can tell about a person from the way they write, what they ask for, and how they ask for it. Each application is a hope, a prayer, a chance at a better reality. Each application represents a real person, who had committed the unforgivable crime of falling on hard times, only to look up and find no one there to help out. JSCDC is often a last line of defense in some parts of the neighborhood, the only barrier that is left between a real community and an abandoned section of city property. 

That’s why the work that the volunteers do here is so important. Every day that they are out working, breathes new life into the community. Every day that they are mowing a lawn, painting a house, playing with some kids, mortaring new front steps, painting a swing set, praying with a homeowner, planting some corn, or trimming an overgrown bush, awakens neighbors to the realization that there is something about this community worth saving, worth fighting for. Just today while the group was sitting out in front of the house, taking lunch, three different folks walked or drove by and thanked us for the work we were doing, saying how much they appreciated the difference we were making.

Part of my job over the next few weeks will be to review how we can improve over the next couple of years and help connect those folks with some greater needs to some folks with great heart. As we finish up this summer, the pile of applications still exists, and it keeps growing. But the neighborhood has come alive, and for every application that comes in, more hands from around the block come out to help. If that isn’t the power of the witness of God at work, then I don’t know what is.

New Beginning

This past week I was working with a group of high school students on a house that had been firebombed in February. The homeowner, Ken, had thought he had made a good investment for his daughter and himself when he bought that home, only to have it burn up on him. There are limitations to the work that we can do, mostly due to budget constraints. So for Ken we were told that we would be able to insulate his house, put up drywall, paint, and add some kitchen cabinets that were donated. The problem was that the entire house needed to be redone because it had been stripped after the fire. When groups arrived to work, the home was nothing more than a shell.

However, Ken had faith that his house would be reborn. Our first group put in all of the insulation, the drywall, and two exterior doors. Things were looking pretty good and, when we got our second group in at the beginning of the week, we were excited to get to work. As our group pulled up to the house, a different story was beginning to unfold. The doors were gone. As well as a bunch of tools and the kitchen sink. As Ken put it, "they took everything, including the kitchen sink." 

This is the hard part of this job, knowing that sometimes, no matter what your intentions, there will be someone who does not care, who chooses not to see the good in the neighborhood. (That same week, with that same group, a few young guys walked by and told the group that white people weren't welcome and their help wasn't needed.) It was tough watching Ken and his daughter pull up to the house, knowing that once again he was getting knocked down. Ken was noticeably upset by the situation but after a few moments by himself in prayer he was back to his old self, helping out and joking with the group.

A little later in the day Ken was able to find another door and that's when the good news started rolling in. JSCDC decided that Ken's house would be a perfect example house because it was a complete rebuild. That means that funds that were previously unavailable for the regular jobs were now open. Ken would be receiving an entirely redone home. 

That's the beautiful part of this job, knowing that, no matter what, God will care, God will see the good in the neighborhood and choose to do something about it. I'll be working on Ken's house more this coming week, trying to finish more of what we started, and I know Ken is grateful for a new beginning.

The Destruction of Ignorance

I had spent a lot of time struggling with my calling. Not in the sense that I didn’t want to be called by God, but in the sense that I wasn’t sure if I could reconcile the two very distinct lifestyles that I have grown up in. On one hand, my life has been surrounded by wealth, prosperity, and a kind and loving environment. On the other hand, my heart has grown to love those who are surrounded by poverty, despair, oppression, and a suffocating and subjugating environment. I had a difficult time seeing where I fit. I have always been inclined to follow my heart, because I believe that that is where God speaks to me the most clearly. So I grew to be agitated by the decisions and prosperity of the people and area I grew up with. Part of me knew that if I were to pursue a particular track in ministry it would lead me to be a leader to people that I increasingly could not identify with. However, my experiences in my education and in the work that I have pursued over the past couple of years has reconnected me with reality and restored my patience. The conflict still exists, but the feelings of frustration and anger are far less intimately connected with a particular income bracket and are now directed at specific situations and circumstances.
For example, the volunteers that come to us at Motown Mission are all unique but they all share a similar sense of the unknown. Many groups have had people drop out at the last minute out of fear of the city. The ones that do arrive do so for many reasons, but the struggle for me has been to recognize that each person who comes, comes bravely. I have learned to recognize that each individual has had different life experiences and many of those experiences have not been so blessed as mine. So I have grown to see my role in ministry as one that rights the wrongs of a life of privilege. So many people live in blissful ignorance of the struggles that surround them. For me that focus has been primarily on the struggles of the poor and oppressed, but I have learned, from my fiance, that that ignorance can extend to a great number of things, including the environment and rest of God’s creation.
At Motown Mission we focus on the “slow motion Katrina” that is the economic disaster that plagues the city of Detroit. Within that we try to show our volunteers that the people they are serving did not choose this. The city did not collectively decide to become one of the poorest in the nation. What many of the neighborhoods have collectively decided is to reclaim what is rightfully theirs. In my eyes the city is like any other oppressed group of people driven to the brink. It is taking what no one will give it. There are neighborhoods in the city that have decided that they are fed up with the current system that exists, because that system treats them like they don’t exist. So neighborhoods take charge. No grocer will move into the city to provide fresh fruits and vegetables, so the people grow their own. No bank will lend to give them money to buy a vacant house on their street, so the block maintains the yard to keep the crime down. So few people want to help out with the task of, literally, cleaning up the streets that the job becomes impossible to handle, so when people do come out to clean up, local businesses offer discounts and a helping hand. There is so little money available that people can't afford goods or services, so some local business owners will barter the skills that are available.
It is because of all of that that I have loved working for Motown Mission. This job has given me the opportunity, every week, to help right the great wrong of privilege. This job has given me the chance to open peoples eyes, to see the world a little differently, to walk away a little less afraid, and a little more angry for all the right reasons.

Motown

For the past seven weeks I have been working for a non-profit organization called Motown Mission. I am the Project Coordinator, someone who arranges all of the work sites that our volunteers will be sent to, as well as work with Joy-Southfield Community Development Corp, assisting volunteers on site with construction and redevelopment. A much smaller part of my job has been to live in the community in which I’m working, so I’ve been living in a small four bedroom, one bath house in West Detroit, on Warren, with six other interns. Some of my house mates have jokingly called the area we live in Deartroit because of the close proximity to Dearborn. Our neighborhood is a mix of the Middle Eastern flavor of Dearborn and the often harsh realities of suburban Detroit.

My schedule has been crazy this summer, one that I had not anticipated by any measure. Every morning has been an “early” wake up call around 6 am. Closely followed by driving across the city of Detroit to Metropolitan United Methodist Church to prepare breakfast for our campers. After breakfast and devotionals I inform the groups of where they will be working that day. From there it is a drive back across the city to JSCDC to work with our volunteers on any of the construction jobs that JSCDC has planned for them. After working with the groups on the job site from 9 am until 3-4 pm, I have a break until dinner, when I drive back to Metropolitan eat, help out with the evening worship and whatever other activity is planned for the campers for the evening. Then it’s back home in West Detroit for a little relaxing before bed.

I’m entering into the last week of my job here at Motown Mission and I realized that there are somethings that should be said about the work that my coworkers and I have been doing. So I have rebooted this blog to share some of the lessons I’ve learned and experiences that I have had.

Coming Soon

I'm sorry I've been out for some time now, things have been extremely busy. This past summer I was living in Detroit and working as an Intern for Crossroads and Young Leaders Initiative. That experience has led me to fall in love with Detroit. There's a lot of work to be done in that city, but it's full of hard working, good people. I will be leaving for Poland on the 9th, a service trip through my college that seeks to reconcile the horrors of the Holocaust by keeping the memories of families murdered, during the Holocaust, alive. We will be working in a Jewish cemetery, clearing the brush and rectifying lost gravestones. This is important because the preservation and dignity of the body is very important to Jewish tradition. Since the relatives of those graves we will be working with have all been killed, no one who would normally care for the graves exists. To honor those murdered in the Holocaust we will carry out the task of maintaining that hallowed ground in their stead. I will set a link to the blog for that trip as soon as I can, and hopefully I will be able to maintain my own thoughts here. I will return from Europe on the 28th, and hopefully move in to Detroit shortly after. Stay tuned.