Talking about God without talking about God

Last week I met with a pastor who did a strange thing, he didn’t mention “God” until the very end of our discussion. Rev. Don Parish is the pastor of the True Lee Missionary Baptist Church, a church his dad founded about 60 years ago. True Lee is located in the Frazier area of East Dallas, the poorest neighborhood in the poorest part of Dallas County. True Lee has about 750 members, the largest church in Frazier, only about 10% of whom live there. He is a wonderfully committed man who cares about the community he’s from and the potential of the folk who remain, mostly because they have to. He chooses to remain and do what I would call true church leadership.

What really struck me was that he was the first ‘religious’ person I’d met who didn’t mention God, but talked as eloquently about faith and religion without hammering church, scripture, and the bible down our throats.

I was there as part of the Southern Sector Dallas Initiative, a bold idea Baylor has to build in Frazier a wellness center focused on diabetes. Our idea was to meet at True Lee and continue the work, Rev. Parish wasn’t on the agenda. But as he welcomed me and the rest of the team it became clear that if we sat down and listened we would learn much… and learn we did. Among our learning objectives was to learn more about this community, its history and its people. Rev. Parish took us through this as the son of a prominent preacher who grew up on the very spot we sat. He also talked about health and rattled off statistics and anecdotes that frame the issues we are efforting to address.

• In Frazier only about 30% of its residents own their homes
  Rate of home ownership is a clear marker for the ‘health’ of a community. 30% is low, very low. Exacerbating this is the fact that most of the 30% bought in the 60s and 70s. These people will be dying soon and no young people buy homes there.
  
• There are no public gathering places
  Folks stay in the house not because of the heat but because of the crime, mostly stemming from drugs and prostitution that runs rampant.
  
• The people have little hope
  Apathy is a vicious virus that adversely impacts the community. The people have no hope so the people don’t care enough. They don’t care enough about themselves, they don’t care enough about their neighbors, and they don’t care about their community. We struggle with apathy, it is flourishing. This community is not used to having resources (adequate police protection, grocery stores, employment opportunities).
  
• The people there are sick
  Frazier, a majority Black community with a growing Latino population, has the highest infant mortality rate in Dallas county. By the way infant mortality, along with life expectancy, are key markers for the health of any population. In Dallas county Black infants die at five times the rate of White infants. Rev. Parish also sees hypertension, diabetes, cancer, and STDs amongst his parishioners.
  
• Trust is low
  Rev. Parish took us through some history here. When the State Fair came in and bought up a significant part of the community they basically condemned many homes to make room for parking for the State Fair. There is a real trust deficit, outsiders are viewed with scrutiny.
  

Rev. Parish did not stop at describing the problems. He also offered solutions, not just what someone else should do but what he has done and is doing.

• Health Screening – the church is very involved with educating folks on the importance of screening, and getting them access to it. We do health screening all the time, we’ve saved the lives of 4 of our members through prostate screening alone. I am working on expanding this to the entire community.
• Policy/Community Involvement – Rev. Parish is Board President of the MLK clinic, the only ‘free’ clinic in the area. He is on the Board of the Fair Park Community Development Corporation which operates a ‘weed and seed’ program. He is also working with UT Southwestern’s Community Medicine department. He is also running for City Council, the election is May 2007.
• Touching Lives – Rev. Parish does pre and post marriage counseling, relationships are based on trust and if you do something to ‘withdraw’ that trust you must ‘deposit’ something to rebuild. He also collaborates with other churches and organizations to try and effect change. I’m willing to work with anyone that’s willing to do something positive in this community. He also has worked on a relationship with Richland College to teach their college courses, not just their remedial ones, there in the community.
• Building Bridges with Latinos – He recognizes that we must work on Black – Brown relationships. He mentioned the growing Latino population he’s reaching out to. He has already discussed English as a Second Language (ESL) courses with Richland. He also thinks we should eduate ourselves. I think we should also teach SSL (Spanish as a Second Language), my last sermon focused on this.
• Capital Investment – On the wall of the fellowship hall where we met were two drawings. One was of a church/sanctuary and the other was a community center. Rev. Parish shared with us his vision for the spot where we sat. Of course the Pastor of a church talking about a new church building is nothing new, in fact I think most of these guys spend way too much time raising money to build buildings versus building lives. Rev. Parish’s pictures, and plans behind them, were over 10 years old. He needs capital investment to make this vision happen, he also recently decided to divert all the money raised for the church/sanctuary to the community center, Frazier needs a community wellness center a lot more than it needs another church.
  

How refreshing it was to listen to a Reverend who had such passion, knowledge and love for the people. The notion of taking the building fund and using it for a community center epitomizes his spirit and priorities. Church so called ‘leaders’, and all of us, can learn much from his walk. I look forward to our next meeting in a couple of weeks. JFK was right, here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.