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Visionary graduate finds government
a crucial ally in meeting neighborhood needs

Pastor Donna L. Jones: A UTI graduate who's become adept at mobilizing discouraged believers.

When Donna L. Jones became pastor of Cookman United Methodist Church in North Philadelphia in 1993, she brought a lot of skills to the challenge.

She was a polished professional, having served as a medical writer for Dupont Pharmaceuticals and SmithKline Beecham. She had completed nearly six years of education at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, graduating from the Urban Theological Institute program in 1994. She was knowledgeable about Scripture and how to be a pastor in many important ways.

"But I was shocked about what I didn't know," she confesses. "I wasn't prepared to deal with the challenges of a large physical plant where the roof and boiler needed to be replaced. I really hadn't been taught to be an expert at mobilizing small groups of discouraged believers."

Jones outside of Cookman Church. Part of a new pastor's job: dealing with a leaky roof and an old boiler.

And there was plenty to be discouraged about. While Jones figures only about 10 percent of the residents near the 12^th and Lehigh congregation are homeless, the community is racked with prostitution and drug abuse. Many adults lack the remedial skills to hold a good job. For those who do hold meaningful jobs, child care is a great challenge. Before she had been a pastor long, welfare to work legislation in Pennsylvania began to shake up the lives of people around her.

"Welfare to work is a good thing in that it provides people with money for training and incentives to work," Jones says. "Unfortunately, the legislation didn't really give people time to acquire the skills they need to hold a good job." Jones notes that requirements to attend job skills training are stringent. "If you miss more than five days (of training) because of a death in the family or illness, you lose your benefits."

Before Jones could deal with the troubling issues in her neighborhood, she knew she needed to rally the congregation's waning leadership. "We really didn't do any outreach for the first two or three years. We had to deal with the grief and loss that comes with a downturn in the congregation." Only seven people were showing up to worship on Sunday at first, she recalls, and perhaps 60 were on the congregation's rolls.

But she looked on the bright side. "Most of the congregation was made up of younger people," she recalls. "And that was a help." A leadership retreat featured a bible study on the book of Matthew and the Great Commission to bring the faith to all people. "They were excited," she recalls.

Jones with model teens Allen Morgan, left, and Aaron Wells.

And that excitement has led to considerable outreach. Two of her young adult children, twin sons Mark and Robert, suggested forming a teen center where youths could "hang out" and study or receive tutoring support after school. The program has helped Cookman take on the tragic issue of truancy and school dropouts. "We were finding that the age of 14 is a critical time when teens may drop out or become truants," Jones said. The earliest teens to become involved have now become peer counselors who have the trust of other troubled youths. One of the early attendees, Victor (not his real name), is now 19 and intensely involved in peer counseling.

"Just about everything that could go wrong went wrong in Victor's life," Jones recalls. He was the product of a broken home. There was no father in his life. But Victor redirected his life through the program and has influenced others, like Charles, to be just as inspirational to others they contact.

And Jones has been big on collaborations and partnerships to fuel the church's initiatives. The church formed a program called "Neighborhood Joy Ministries" to deal with child care education issues. "We discovered that the children of prostitutes just weren't being consistently well-cared for." So in 1996 Cookman began to conduct child care classes and set up a kids café program to get children a balanced meal after school. "Most after school programs provide a snack, but we felt we needed to do more," she says. The Greater Philadelphia Food Bank was and continues to be a partner in the food delivery and preparation. Gradually, the effort spawned growing relationships with parents, people on the street and occupants of nearby rooming houses.

Doris Molina (foreground) has turned her life around thanks in part to home schooling offered young adults at Cookman. Today Molina is an administrative assistant at the church.

Passage of the Charitable Choice bill in 1996 put faith-based programs on an equal footing with others when it comes to applying for federal funds, Jones says. As a result of pursuing a Charitable Choice opportunity, the church was awarded a $200,000 Department of Public Welfare block grant to provide home schooling for adults to make them more job ready and to set up a job referral program to connect community residents to work opportunities. The funds made it possible to engage a program director and an outreach coordinator to the neighborhood to do needs assessments and make the community more aware of the programs at Cookman.

Several volunteers and counselors working at Cookman today are graduates of the home-schooling effort. And Cookman does many unsung forms of outreach. The congregation's parsonage is a halfway home for former Graterford Prison women inmates making a transition back into the community.

The latest news is that Cookman is one of eight North Philadelphia United Methodist congregations negotiating a $900,000 faith-based initiative grant to provide additional transitional employment and training for jobless residents. Currently 140 adults are involved in this kind of home schooling and training at Cookman alone. And the outreach initiative also includes a Spanish language component to involve all in the diverse community. On Cookman's growing list of partners are organizations concerned about chronic truancy and employment challenges in the community. The partners include the Philadelphia Youth Network and Citizens for Children and Youth.

Jones in Cookman's sanctuary. "People in our community really trust the church," she says.

Have these ambitious programs grown the faith community at Cookman? Women and youth especially have joined the church community as a result of the outreach. The congregation has 176 active members today. Jones notes that it takes years to develop the relationships that lead to such connections. But evidence of strong connections abounds even during a casual visit. A passer-by across the street shows a visitor which door among many to use to enter the church. And Jones clearly knows her neighbors with the greetings she exchanges in a walk around the church.

The Cookman pastor encourages church leaders with scant resources to be diligent about learning the needs of their neighbors and to take advantage of Charitable Choice opportunities. She knows of no other church receiving such funding, and she thinks deserving congregations overlook a wonderful funding option.

She's also concerned about the voices in Washington that wish to snuff out government funding of church-based programs. "They are concerned that such funds could be used for proselytizing," she says. "But their efforts are overkill. The fact is that people trust the churches in their neighborhoods, and they trust the church to help them deal with their problems." Should funding be cut off to visionary churches trying to deal with such pervasive problems as truancy, school dropouts and the need for teaching remedial skills to jobless adults, the government and the nation will lose crucial allies, she says.