Micah Mandate

Rachel Swann–

What used to be a vacant lot by yellow lined parking spaces for a school has been turned into a space that feeds dozens of low-income families organic vegetables. The lot has blossomed to be a source of fresh food and flowers for the people of the Chestnut Hill community.

Because of the dreams of a couple of Trevecca professors, the Chestnut Hill community, a low-income community, adjacent to the campus of Trevecca Nazarene University, has a green space for a community garden. With the helping hands of some students and faculty associated with the university, the garden has been planted and harvested by community members.

It is more than a place for them to grow food for their pantries. It is a place for the people to come together with a common mission to grow fresh food and plant the seeds of unity many in the community have been longing to have. Read the rest of this entry »

Shadaye Hunnicutt–

Everyday 60 to 100 veterans walk through the doors of Operation Stand Down Nashville.

“Some come for their mail, others just want a sip of coffee, but most are looking for work,” said Richard Eaton, who works the front desk of the service center at Operation Stand Down.

More than 840,000 of the 3.5 million homeless people in America are veterans. Many of them, experts say, have alcohol or drug addictions or suffer from mental illness. Others have both. Operation Stand Down Nashville (OSDN) is a key source dedicated to providing a multitude of services for honorably discharged veterans in Nashville.

‘Stand Down’ is a military term which describes the movement of soldiers in combat to a safe place. Operation Stand Down is an annual event that started out in San Diego in the 1980’s. Since then the event idea has moved across the United States and now takes place in 125 different cities. Operation Stand Down Nashville was one of the first to turn this part time action into a full-time organization. Read the rest of this entry »

Gang Leader For A Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sidhir Venkatesh (The Penguin Press HC, 2008)

Reviewed by Steve McNerney, guest contributor–

Sudhir Venkatesh has written a highly engaging book on urban life, poverty, and crime. Uninspired by dry statistics and ivory-tower analysis, Venkatesh ventured into the day-to-day lives of urban gangsters in Chicago and has produced an alluring, disturbing, and surprising ethnographic narrative.  Gang Leader For A Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets recaps the time he examined, up-close-and-personal, the lives of characters most Americans only read about in the crime pages of big city newspapers.

In 1989, as a student at the University of Chicago, Venkatesh met with his academic advisor, William Julius Wilson.  Wilson is the most eminent living scholar on poverty and race. At that time Wilson was interested in the “the difference between growing up in a neighborhood that was surrounded by other poor areas and growing up poor but surrounded by an affluent neighborhood.”  Venkatesh agreed to assist with the study. Equipped with questionnaires he began his endeavor–one that would run its course far longer than he could have imagined and morph well beyond the task of data collection. Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Wadding–

Phil Webb with his sons Micah and Jeremy build a bamboo bike. (Photo by Phil Webb)--

While riding his bike through the countryside of Northern Thailand, Phil Webb asked the Lord to show him a way to help the struggling people of Thailand.

As he continued riding, Webb couldn’t help but notice the abundant amount of wild bamboo flourishing along the roadsides. That’s when he felt the Holy Spirit telling him to turn that bamboo into bicycles for Thailand’s poor.

“By teaching and training the people in need how to build these bikes themselves, the funding gained by selling them can meet (their) needs,” Webb explains.

Webb, a member of Greenville First Church of the Nazarene in Greenville, South Carolina, has been serving as a missionary in Thailand since 2005. Read the rest of this entry »

Rachel Swann–

Wong with neighborhood kids, Tywan and Darryon. (Photo by Brian Wong.)--

Wesley, Tywan, and Darryon, dressed in their Halloween costumes, banged on the door with excitement.

A few seconds passed. Impatient, they rapped on the door again. They were reminded to wait politely for someone to come to the door before they approached the next house.

They didn’t hear the rules. The boys wanted their candy.

Like thousands of other kids on this chilly October night, these three boys were trick-or-treating. But their parents were not with them. Instead, their neighbors–Brian Wong, 22, Andrew Crimmins, 22, and Michael Hendricks, 23–took them as promised to get the coveted candy. Wong says the boys are more than neighbors; he likes to think of them as friends.

Read the rest of this entry »

Morgan Daniels–

Students put together car packages to send to Haiti. (Photo by Morgan Daniels.)--

Trevecca students, faculty and staff, with the help of the local community, have donated around $800 and supplied items for more than 300 care kits to be sent to Haiti.

In the wake of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit the capital of the impoverished nation in January, the Trevecca community has been eager to find ways to offer relief to Haitians.

Most of the university’s efforts have been coordinated through the J.V. Morsch Center for Social Justice.

The Center, with help from the Office of the Chaplain, partnered with Heart to Heart International, an organization that specializes in disaster relief through the use of medical supplies, in order to provide care kits that will accompany the medical supplies delivered to Haiti. Read the rest of this entry »

Jason Adkins, guest contributor–

Jason Adkins

In our Projects in Environmental Justice class, I find it hard to get away from projects and lectures concerning gardening and farming.  I can’t help myself; it’s just something that’s been heavily on my mind in the recent decade.  But perhaps, it’s not a bad place to linger because the most immediate door to creation care is through our daily bread.  Wendell Berry reminds us that, “Eating is an agricultural act . . . and how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.”  How, then, is the world being used? Read the rest of this entry »

Rachel Swann–

People wait in line for support services, mail and store, at Campus for Human Development. (Photo by Rachel Swann.)

Not long after the death of her father, Rachel Hester, Executive Director of Room In the Inn’s Campus for Human Development, was on her way to work when a homeless man stopped her. The man was a member of the community at the Campus, a high profile service provider for Nashville’s homeless, and he knew about Hester’s loss. Worried that money might be tight with her father gone, he offered Hester a handful of cash.

The incident showcases the friendships that develop at this unique ministry. This homeless man and Hester had a relationship that went beyond her providing services to meet his needs. He reached out to her to provide for his friend in her time of struggle.

For nearly 20 years, Hester has served and advocated for Nashville’s homeless population. Her first experience at Room in the Inn was in 1989, when she arrived at the agency as a Trevecca student volunteer, eager to help. The nonprofit then employed just three people. Today, she heads this sophisticated, comprehensive service organization that helps thousands annually. Read the rest of this entry »

Review of When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett (Moody, 2009).

Reviewed by Mary Grace Edwards, guest contributor–

Forty percent of the world’s inhabitants are living on less than two dollars a day. From the slums of Calcutta to the housing project a few miles from your front door, poverty is everywhere. Thankfully, some are taking action to recognize and help the poor. But what happens when our good intentions are only making things worse? What if for all of our efforts, we are only keeping the poor poor? And how can we recognize if this is happening? This is the question tackled by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert in their book When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor.

Clearly, all Christ followers are called to share God’s heart for the poor. Given our relative level of wealth, North American Christians have particular responsibility. When Helping Hurts focuses specifically on the role the church should play. From a deep well of experience, the authors—both professors at the Chalmers Center for Economic Development at Covenant College–examine both domestic and international poverty. They discuss Biblical principles and theology, share stories from the front lines, and offer practical advice. Read the rest of this entry »

Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How it Can Renew America by Thomas Friedman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008)

Reviewed by Steve McNerney, guest contributor–

According to Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Thomas Friedman, America needs some new Mayflower pilgrims if it—and the rest of the planet—is going to survive our current ecological crisis.

Whatever we may think of their fashions and livelihood, the pilgrims had drive, giving themselves to a journey of discovery. Friedman argues that Americans today must embark likewise. Our task is to discover another new world—this time, one in which we abandon our reliance on dirty, exhaustible fuels and implement a vibrant green economy based on renewable energy. For him, this isn’t merely a fanciful idea. It’s imperative, and time is running out.

Freidman is a master of tone, so what could end up as screeching scaremongering is instead an incisive, entertaining, and informative read. The book is presented in two parts. First it explains how we came to live in what Friedman terms a hot, flat, and crowded world. The second offers potential solutions for reversing the damaging trends in our globalized world and finding our way to a more secure and vibrant planet. Along the way, Friedman does a masterful job of illustrating how the economic, social, religious, and cultural problems of the 21st century are intertwined with climate change, globalization, and population growth. Read the rest of this entry »