Street GRACE

North Avenue Presbyterian Church is located on the corner of North Avenue and Peachtree Street — one of Atlanta’s worst corners for commercial sexual exploitation of children.

In 2005, North Avenue Presbyterian Church in Atlanta received gut-wrenching news. The corner they worshipped on — North Avenue and Peachtree Street — was in the headlines, front-page news for being one of the city’s worst corners for the commercial sexual exploitation of children. Prostitutes as young as 13 — underage teenagers — were working in the neighborhood, according to a mayor’s report on child sex trafficking.

When Rev. Dr. Scott Weimer, pastor at North Avenue Presbyterian Church since 1997, heard the news he felt familiar pangs of injustice stirring in his heart. He remembered hearing chief judge Nina Hickson in 2000 in Fulton County asking "what has happened to our city?" "She was concerned about the 1,000 cases of underage prostitution that happened during her tenure, and that was nearly 10 years ago," says Weimer. Four years later, in 2004, he was called by Health and Human resources in Washington, D.C., who had identified Atlanta as one of the major cities for human trafficking. “They’d heard we were an international church and thought we might be an important partner in bringing together government, religious and civic leaders,” says Weimer. The church spearheaded and became part of a rescue and restore coalition, a work that is ongoing on behalf of victims of human trafficking.

Still Weimer wasn’t sure how the congregation would respond to his speaking directly about this kind of darkness — the commercial sexual exploitation of children happening on the same corner where they worshipped. For him, doing nothing was not an option. “Once you know of injustice taking place the gospel of Jesus mandates that you preach to release the captives and cry for the oppressed to go free,” says Weimer. Suddenly these gospel words — heard during the Advent season — took on new power and meaning. There was an immediate human response to take action. Older woman came forward saying “we’ll open our houses if you need room.” Young people, singles, couples and college students wanted to form teams and go into the streets. “We’ve always talked about this corner as our Jerusalem,” says Weimer. “Jesus promised his disciples they would receive power from the Holy Spirit to be his witnesses (Acts 1:8). We kept asking what should we do, now that we know this is happening on our corner?”

As the congregation wrestled with what their response should be, one of the churches African-American members said, “We don’t want to just keep meeting, we want to get into the streets. If we were in Africa we would meet for a prayer vigil, to pray away evil and ask for God’s justice.”

The church put together a midnight prayer vigil. Three hundred people came from all over the city, including a young woman, who had seen a live interview on the local 10 o’clock news about this gathering. She immediately got in her car and came from 30 miles away. “I saw the news, I’m from Amsterdam,” is what the young woman told Weimer. “I was forced into prostitution as a teenager and finally escaped. I had to be here.”

The response to the prayer vigil, from both congregation and community, encouraged Weimer to take the next step. He began to reach out African-American clergy and the regional council of churches. Weimer wanted the full force of the Christian community to form a powerful response to Atlanta's being a major hub for child prostitution.

Together, in four short years, they have built Street GRACE, which according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution “is an extraordinary coalition of Presbyterians, Catholics and nonbelievers, conservative Christians and feminists, Jews and Muslims, city dwellers and suburbanites,” all engaged in the common purpose of the good they believe in: “to eradicate child prostitution from the streets of Atlanta” (Quinn, Christopher. “Sex-trafficking fight goes beyond streets” AJC, June 14, 2009). For the alliance of churches GRACE is God’s love for humankind through Jesus Christ, but GRACE also is an acronym for Galvanizing Resources against Child Exploitation.

“We have raised awareness of the commercial sexual exploitation of children,” says Weimer. “Now we are becoming advocates for them trying to change laws.” Recently, Street GRACE filled a hearing room at the state capital supporting a proposed bill that would set a minimum age of prostitution at 18. Under current law children under 17 who are arrested for prostitution are sent to jail, there is no other sentencing option. “The underage person working the streets gets double punishment, while the person sending them gets no punishment at all,” says Weimer. “A lot of these kids are from broken homes, runaways from around the country. A high percentage of these kids are immediately approached by pimps, given shelter and food and then forced into prostitution.”

Estimates from organizations who analyze the commercial sexual exploitation of children on Web sites, through (or similar) escort services and in known prostitution areas estimate that 250 to 300 children are pimped every month in Atlanta. Yet when Street GRACE began their work there were only six beds available in the city for aftercare treatment programs. Now there are 22.

“Our hope is that when they find a child engaged in underage prostitution that they will be able to get treatment,” says Weimer, “which is why we’re working on raising money from churches to support social services that are currently doing aftercare work.” Street GRACE is also working on prevention, partnering with local efforts of intentional mentoring of children economically troubled parts of the city, where they are most at risk.

Deeply embedded in this ministry of Street GRACE, which is not only a coalition of churches but a movement of broad, diverse partnership, is the history of North Avenue Presbyterian Church. In the 1960s their location became an undesirable part of town. Businesses and churches left. As the church debated whether they should also move out of the neighborhood, leadership felt a call to stay and bear witness to their Jerusalem, their corner. The corner that now has some of the worst commercial sexual exploitation of children in the country. “We’ve been straightforward that we are compelled by the love of Christ to always respond to the changing needs of our neighborhood,” says Weimer, “people are eager to partner, to channel their human response to the kind of evil that commercially and sexual exploits children, for common good.”

North Avenue Presbyterian Church has added 63 new members this year, representing eight different nationalities. They average between 600 and 700 worshippers on their street corner “their Jerusalem.”

— The Rev. Dr. Scott Weimer, pastor at North Avenue Presbyterian Church.