From Welfare to Wellness
May 2001 - By Gary Schneeberger

It’s not a happy story.

My father was horribly abusive. There were times I thought he was going to kill me.

It’s especially sad, in fact, because you can guess where it’s headed.

I had dedicated myself to a life of what we call sin. I was really good at it. Broke every one of God’s commandments and did so with relish.

It’s a story about living without morals.

Eventually I found myself in a relationship with a woman who was married. Took her away from her husband and children.

Without love.

We had an argument on the way to work one morning. She kicked me out of the car with $12 in my pocket.

Without hope.

I found myself a patch of woods off of Highway 70. Just a tent. I dug a revetment, camouflaged my face and hands, wore camouflage clothing. Did not ever want to see another human being again.

It’s a story that usually hushes those who hear it.

I raided Dumpsters at night for food, and snuck into a construction company to get water. I had to build small, hand-sized fires—like I learned in the military so that you couldn’t see them from far away—to stay warm. And that’s how I lived for a little over a year.

So why is it that the guy telling the story never stops smiling?

His name is Don Turner, a round, ruddy-faced man of 41, and he’s smiling because it’s his story—and he knows how it ends.

"One night I looked up into the sky, not believing in a God, and asked Him a question," Turner recalls. "I asked Him, ‘God, is this all there is?’ And I got this feeling like there was a voice speaking to me. It just said, ‘No, you need to come out of these woods.’ "

So that’s what he did, and in the little more than five years since it’s become clear just how much more there was for Don Turner—a relationship with the Lord, a church family, a job, a home, some hope. What’s equally clear is that he owes much of it to the Jobs Partnership.

Turner is not alone. More than a thousand men and women have been helped in ways big and small by the program hailed as a one-of-a-kind model of why faith-based welfare reform works. Today, the Jobs Partnership is working in 20 cities, and is about to be working in 13 more, introducing the lost and the broken to the love—and the gospel—of Jesus Christ.

"Work is a blessing—not a chore, not a duty," Turner says, explaining what the program has taught him. "It’s not dragging yourself out of bed to pay the bills. This is how God blesses us. It’s how we worship Him."

The Jericho road

The Jobs Partnership is not unique, not by a long shot, in drawing on biblical principles to help people find jobs. If there weren’t other groups out there with similar missions, President Bush wouldn’t have opened an Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, a clearinghouse to make it easier for religious nonprofits to get federal grants to fund their social-service programs.

But that’s not to say the Jobs Partnership isn’t distinctive. Welfare-policy scholars single it out for how swiftly it’s spread across the country since its founding just five years ago as a local outreach in Raleigh, N.C.

That growth—to big cities like Washington, Los Angeles and Philadelphia as well as smaller communities like Buffalo, N.Y., Knoxville, Tenn., and Peoria, Ill.—is a function of success. Eighty-three percent of those who have completed the program not only have landed jobs, they’ve held on to them for at least a year. These numbers, in turn, make it easier to attract companies willing to offer jobs, including businesses not owned by Christians.

As impressive as the program’s reach and retention are, those who run it say that’s not what makes it unique. The Jobs Partnership is truly different, they say, because its goal is to change a lot more than just a participant’s employment status—hence the testimonies of graduates like Don Turner.

"We’re not about welfare to work," says Skip Long, who oversees the national program from a small strip-mall office in Raleigh. "We’re about welfare to wellness."

In fact, spend any time at all listening to Long discuss the Jobs Partnership and it becomes clear that the name doesn’t do it justice. It could just as easily be the Literacy Partnership, the Marriage Partnership or the Housing Partnership, since it equips those it serves to excel in these areas, too.

It does so by combining the resources of local churches and local businesses, using Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (from Luke 10) as a model of how the two should work together.

The churches assume the role of the Samaritan, ministering to neighbors who have been "beaten" and "robbed" not only by unemployment, but also by drug and alcohol abuse, lack of education, sexual promiscuity and all other sorts of sin and hopelessness. It’s the church that refers people to the program from its pews and surrounding neighborhoods; the church that hosts the 12 weeks of classes on topics like submitting to authority, preparing a resume, conflict resolution at work and home, acing a job interview and responsible stewardship of time and money; and the church that enlists parishioners to offer encouragement and accountability to students.

Businesses, in turn, take on the role of the innkeeper, offering the Samaritans a haven where their mutual neighbors-in-need can complete the healing process. No one is guaranteed a job, but the program’s reputation has convinced companies to hire even the hardest cases when those men and women demonstrate a desire to change. What most business owners discover is that the risk is well worth taking.

"What you’re getting out of it are reliable employees who have a good attitude," says Rick Flammer, a horse-farm owner in Brenham, Texas, who has hired graduates from that city’s Jobs Partnership. "For a lot of them, this is the first time in their life they have confidence that they can do something, the first time in their life they want to do something."

Government has a role to play as well, although the size of that role varies. Federal and state grants aren’t necessary to run the classes—the national office provides the curriculum at no charge and all sites and instruction time are donated. There are overhead and staff expenses, but many partnerships pay for those with small monthly gifts from member churches and businesses.

That hardly means Jobs Partnership programs can’t benefit from Bush’s proposed expansion of grant opportunities for religious groups, though. Some local partnerships already have put government funds secured under the old, more restrictive rules to good use—Raleigh started a computer lab for students and Brenham applied the $8,000 it received to its executive director’s salary. And in Orlando, the Jobs Partnership of Florida, not yet two years old, continues to operate solely on funds from a state grant.

"Now, our goal is to move toward private funding," Executive Director Marc Stanakis says. "But the opportunities to team up with the government for things like job training, child care, addiction treatment—those are things partnerships can add to the core program."

As for the national office, its board of directors doesn’t try to influence local boards to pursue or avoid government money. Its function, Long says, is to help them understand the pros and cons of either choice.

Besides, Long adds, the real key to making the Good Samaritan model work has less to do with money—government or otherwise—than developing the close relationships needed to help a neighbor recover completely from physical and spiritual poverty.

"Somehow, that Samaritan knew of an innkeeper who would let him in," Long says. "He knew of a place to go to get that man help. And for him to know that, the Samaritan and the innkeeper had to have been in a relationship. Had to have spent some time together long before that brother ever got beat up on the Jericho road."

Paving the way

The Jobs Partnership exists today only because two very different men pursued their own unlikely friendship so intentionally.

It was 1995 when the Rev. Donald McCoy, pastor of Pleasant Hill United Church of Christ in Raleigh, needed his church’s deteriorating parking lot fixed. He dialed up a local construction company, C.C. Mangum Inc., hoping to talk to an engineer who could give him an estimate for the repairs. He got patched through to Chris Mangum, the company president, instead.

"Initially, I thought the call had been improperly routed," Mangum says. "But I knew better pretty quickly."

That’s because for months, Mangum said, God had been convicting him about his isolation from his city’s black community. Realizing he was talking to a black pastor, he sensed the Holy Spirit again, urging him to pursue a friendship with McCoy.

As the paving project progressed, so did the pair’s camaraderie. Before long, they were meeting weekly for lunch—same time, same restaurant, same table. It wasn’t always easy—Mangum says his conservative evangelical sensibilities were often challenged—but it proved to be fruitful.

"We hit it off at the heart level, and we were able to be real with each other," Mangum says. "I think that opened the door then for God to be able to do something in the midst of our relationship."

That "something" came to light six months into their friendship. Mangum casually mentioned he was losing money because 10 of his company’s largest asphalt trucks were parked for lack of drivers. McCoy responded that many of his parishioners found themselves "parked," too, unable to find jobs.

"We looked at each other," Mangum says, "and thought, ‘Hmmm. Maybe we can help each other out.’ "

The idea started small—the preacher’s flock behind the wheel of the CEO’s trucks. But after two weeks of prayer and fasting, both men sensed God was after something bigger.

"He said he could get 12 businesses if I could get 12 churches together," McCoy recalls. "That’s how it all began."

Today, more than 100 churches and 100 businesses support the Raleigh Jobs Partnership. Since going national three years ago, the program has sought to duplicate that success by building new chapters the way McCoy and Mangum built the first: Before a partnership hosts its first class, church and business leaders meet for months, sometimes more than a year, just to get to know each other, to get comfortable with the notion that not all of them can be in charge, to pray through the racial, ethnic, economic and theological differences that often stifle meaningful cooperation.

"This model really demands that churches drop their denominational and cultural barriers and work together," explains Stanakis of Orlando. "For us, it took a year and a half of working it and finding pastors with a vision beyond the barrier. "

The process paid personal spiritual dividends, too. As a member of a conservative Presbyterian Church in America congregation, Stanakis found it especially enlightening to tackle a common goal with believers who don’t think exactly like he does.

"I’ve not only been challenged," he says, "but I think it’s really broadened my understanding of who God is."

The emphasis on building relationships is evident once classes start, too. Every participant is assigned a mentor to reinforce the lessons. But the mentoring doesn’t end when the classes do; volunteers make a two-year commitment, ensuring ongoing spiritual and emotional support for graduates through the challenges that inevitably arise in their daily lives. That’s the only way to operate, Long says, when your goal is more than "just get them a job—ding!—and move on."

Johnny Crudup, executive director of the local Raleigh partnership, says the friendships between mentors and the mentored are the No. 1 reason the program changes lives. He describes the first man he ever mentored as a "hoodlum" at the outset, fresh from losing his fast-food job for pulling a gun on his manager. By the time the hoodlum graduated, three months later, he had given his life to Christ and traded his weapon for God’s Word.

"David didn’t have a father," Crudup says. "But he got to the point where he wasn’t just looking at me as a friend, and not even as a father figure—but as a big brother who he could tell anything to."

No belief required

The kind of connections Crudup describes are certainly not rare in the Jobs Partnership, but they don’t come cheap—and they can’t be forced.

Maybe that’s why none of the program’s leaders seem too worried about the big guy with the thick neck and the shaved head who spends most of a February class doing little to conceal his disinterest in what Dwayne Mitchell is saying.

Everyone else in the room—five other students and a dozen or so mentors, business partners and friends of the Jobs Partnership—listens intently as Mitchell chronicles the emptiness of his life when he wasn’t living for the Lord. But the big guy, hands clasped behind his head, gaze fixed on the opposite wall, rarely even looks in the teacher’s direction.

Does he hear Mitchell talk about his $500-a-day crack habit? Does he hear him admit to beating his wife? Does he understand what it all has to do with the theme of the evening’s class, identified in his Jobs Partnership workbook as "God and Relationships"?

"Once a man gets right with the Lord, gets a relationship with God," Mitchell sums up, "that’s when a man can love."

Although Mitchell, a Jobs Partnership alumnus himself, delivers his lesson in a preacher’s cadence, Long is quick to point out that these classes aren’t church. Students are given Bibles, yes, because the Bible is the course textbook, but they aren’t required to believe it. Whether or not the big guy with the thick neck and the shaved head ever comes to Christ, the program will help him find work.

"Our role is just to love up on them, give them skills, help them get a job," Long explains. "Whether you’re Muslim, atheist, Jewish—it’s still unacceptable for you not to feed your family.

"Now, in my heart, do I want that the whole world would know? Yes. We have a biblical Christian worldview. That’s who we are in this partnership, and we don’t apologize at all. But how I operate now is God is calling me to love, period. And I’ve got to believe that the Word of God won’t come back void."

Long’s faith has been rewarded time after time, in story after story of lives, marriages and families transformed through the program. Many of those stories end in salvation; one of his favorites involves four Muslims who found out "that Allah couldn’t meet their needs."

"That’s the way so many of our neighbors get saved," Long says. "We don’t have to beat them up. We just have to remember how to preach the gospel—and, if necessary, use words.

"What shines through for them is that they’re seeing God’s love in action. That’s what ultimately draws them to the Lord."

‘I’ve got joy today’

Don Turner’s life didn’t instantly get easy the morning he walked out of the woods on the outskirts of Raleigh. Yes, he gave his life to Christ, reconnected with his family, began going to church. But the wounds that forced him into the darkness—those wounds did not heal quickly or painlessly.

"I was still pretty much a loner, very much afraid of people, very much afraid to go back to work," he says. "I didn’t trust in anything. I was afraid to take the next step forward."

That’s when someone in his church recommended the Jobs Partnership.

"As I went through the program, my fears diminished," Turner recalls. "I understood where I was supposed to be, and what I was supposed to be doing. I learned who I am in relationship to God, what Jesus purchased for me, all those things that I can claim. And even before the 12 weeks were up, I got a job."

The job, which he still has, is a perfect fit—jack-of-all-trades at an art gallery/supply center and framing shop. The boss is so happy with Turner’s performance that he lets him sell some of his own art from a storefront window. That encouragement has motivated Turner to develop his natural talent; he’s sold several pieces, won a couple of awards and been commissioned by customers to do portraits.

"I’ve gone from homeless to entrepreneur," he says, cracking another satisfied smile.

It’s a journey, he admits, he never could have completed without the Jobs Partnership.

"I’ve got joy today. Every day, being able to take your work and turn it into worship for God, that makes every moment enjoyable."

This article appeared in Citizen magazine. Copyright © 2001 Focus on the Family.
All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

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