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Sept. 28, 2005   

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SDOP celebrates 35 years of giving
as ‘heart and soul’ of Presbyterian church

by Evan Silverstein

     The anniversary dinner at a hotel here included speeches from high-ranking officials of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and past and present SDOP staff, as well as personal stories from some of the people who have

John Detterick, executive director of the GAC, presented a ceramic cross to SDOP Director Cynthia E. White.
                                            Photos by Evan Silverstein

     SDOP, now part of the PC(USA)’s Worldwide Ministries Division (WMD), helps Presbyterians and others establish partnerships with oppressed and disadvantaged communities by providing small grants to groups that create and manage local development projects.

     The investments are meant to help poor people reach their potential and gain independence.

     “Today, millions of families around the world have been positively affected by SDOP,” said Cynthia E. White, the program’s director. “Families in Columbia, Mississippi, have a health-clinic. Mothers in a rural village in India, through economic empowerment, have a place of dignity in their family structure. Migrant farm workers in New Jersey are more aware of the threat of pesticides, and of their legal rights. Elders on Native American reservations have been able to teach their language to the younger generation.”

     Pictures of SDOP members visiting project sites around the world were flashed across a large screen during the event, whose theme was “Celebrate Hope: Bring Forth Justice to the Nations.” Snapshots of SDOP-funded projects in Africa, El Salvador, India and the United States adorned the walls, creating colorful backdrops for tables featuring crafts and garments from the homelands of SDOP partners.

     SDOP has helped to galvanize the church’s effort to answer Christ’s call to ensure that all people live their lives in fullness, several speakers said.

     SDOP, funded primarily through the One Great Hour of Sharing offering, has achieved its justice-related mandate, Rick Ufford-Chase, moderator of the PC(USA)’s 216th General Assembly, said during the celebration.

     “This body, and all of the good work and the good people that you represent across our church and around the world, are in many ways the

mandate of helping the poor and oppressed to that of the captive Israelites who were chosen by God in the Bible to bring justice to all nations.

     The Presbyterian Church responded to its chosen-ness, Walls said in his homily, “Justice is a Journey Onward,” by establishing SDOP, demonstrating “God’s love for the people of the nations. … It was and is a very special approach of the gospel ministry, to help enable people to take the initiative in overcoming the things that hold them captive and limit their lives, and doing so in their own way.”

     Walls said SDOP was organized to “help God’s people gather the equity and health and shelter and clothing and quality of life, by having the means to think and act for themselves, and to exercise the right to discover and become what God had intended for them in their creation.”

     He said SDOP’s focus on Christian mission has been made even more critical by recent events in the United States and overseas, events ranging from the war in Iraq, to devastating natural disasters in the United States, to genocide and famine in Africa.

     “With shrinking resources, the task is as daunting and as enormous as ever,” said Walls, who read from the Biblical texts of Isaiah, Matthew and Psalms during his sermon. “The chosen ones are surrounded by idolatry of greed and massive poverty worldwide, with more than 37 million people living in poverty here in the United States alone. Thousands are being killed in the Darfur region of Sudan; thousands more are starving in Niger.”

     “How can we sing the Lord’s song by the floodwaters of Katrina and Rita?” he asked. “How can we establish justice for the nations? It may be our mournful cry, but deep in our hearts we know, like with the Israelites and Jesus, we have the one true God, the creator of heaven and earth, to help us face and struggle with these overwhelming conditions.”

     In many ways SDOP is a “family affair” for the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the PC(USA), who spoke at the event and presented SDOP a plaque of appreciation for its three-plus decades of service. Kirkpatrick said the gift was from every General Assembly agency.

     Kirkpatrick said he served on the Synod of the Sun’s first SDOP committee, in the early 1970s, and his daughter, the Rev. Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Brucken, of Graniteville, VT, is a current member of the SDOP national committee.

     “What was so striking then, was that we really did believe that we were in something that was about the very cutting edge of the gospel and the church,” Kirkpatrick said. “That was about the promises that Jesus made to the least of our brothers and sisters. About that call to justice, to empowerment.”

     Kirkpatrick said he hopes the SDOP’s national committee will hold open a slot for one of his grandchildren, in the class of 2020.

    
     He said the “SDOP and the vision that as Christian people we’re committed to the

church 35 years ago, it’s critical to the church today, and it’s going to be critical to the church when my grandchild is pushing 60, like me.”

     He said he agrees with Walls that SDOP’s mission is more important than ever.

     “It’s even more on the cutting-edge today,” he said, “because we live in a world where the gap is not narrowed, but widened, between the rich and the poor. … I am grateful to God for this ministry, and I want to join many others in saying ‘Thank you’ to all of you, and thanks to God that there are people that carry this commitment.”

     John Detterick, executive director of the General Assembly Council (GAC), applauded SDOP’s work, recalling a visit to a self-development program in Egypt that had enabled a woman to improve her family’s standard of living with the help of a chicken-plucking machine.

     “SDOP does it right,” Detterick said. “SDOP has done it right and will continue to do it right. Presbyterians do many, many things well, but SDOP has to be one of the best things that Presbyterians do.”

     Detterick presented ceramic crosses to White and the Rev. Paul Rader, chair of SDOP’s national committee, on behalf of GAC and WMD. Each cross was inscribed with a line inspired by Ephesians: “Share together in the promise made in Jesus Christ.” 

     Others on hand for the event included the Rev. Curtis A. Kearns Jr., director of the PC(USA)’s National Ministries Division (NMD) and a former chair of the SDOP national committee; the Rev. Gary R. Cook, associate director of the Global Service and Witness area in WMD; and the Rev. Marian McClure, the WMD director, who offered a prayer before dinner.

     “We thank you tonight for the ways that Self-Development of People walks in your footsteps and leads others to you and to your ways,” McClure said. “Be with us again tonight in the breaking of bread, and fortify us for your work.”

     White thanked St. Paul Epps, SDOP’s first director, for guiding the program during its first 10 years and making it an integral part of the PC(USA). The Rev. Ivan Iricarry, pastor of a Presbyterian church in Quebradillas, Puerto Rico, presented a $600 contribution that White said would be used in support of self-development partnerships.

     SDOP also unveiled a new logo.

     SDOP partners described their projects and how they helped those most in need in their communities.

     Presbyterian Liz Shaw-Stable, founder and director of the non-profit Center for Lupus Care in Inglewood, CA, detailed her ongoing 26-year battle with the disease, and how SDOP stepped in to contribute to the Butterfly Network for Lupus Patients, a support group.

     Shaw-Stable, a member of First Presbyterian Church in Inglewood, has suffered kidney failure, complicated pregnancies, miscarriages, arthritis, hair loss, depression and fatigue. She also has had three heart operations.

     “I stand before you tonight to tell you, however, that God is an awesome God,” she said. “I am now in my 13th week of chemotherapy, because my kidneys are failing again. Your support, SDOP, has encouraged me to tell my story and to work even harder to bring the women and men together for support and for education and to be an advocate in any way that I can.  I thank you so very much.”

     SDOP funding for the Butterfly Network has helped fund lectures, symposiums, seminars and workshops to educate physicians about the disease and to help victims and their families.

     The founder of the Low-Income Self-Help Center in San Jose, CA, said the mission of the six-year-old center is to empower, educate and organize the communities in Silicon Valley. The center has joined with other organizations in demonstrations in support of tenants' rights and housing for low-income people.

     A two-year SDOP grant supports the center’s health-action project, according to Peggy Elwell, one of the center’s founders. She said it offers workshops and counseling services for children and young people, including gang-involvement and drug-use prevention programs and a scheme to help uninsured people get health care.

     Also addressing those at the anniversary celebration were two women who are partnering with SDOP to help give rural residents of northern California a much-needed ride. The two started a bus service, Klamath-Trinity Non-Emergency Transportation, or K-T Net.

     The little bus line, which has received $50,000 in SDOP funding since 2003, has become the ride of last resort for residents of tiny Willow Creek, CA, and nearby communities. It’s in a mountainous part of California, about 220 miles northwest of Sacramento, where many people don’t own cars and public transportation was virtually non-existent until K-T Net took up the challenge.

     Tussey, a former senior citizens caregiver, formed a non-profit agency and recruited her friend, Willow Creek architect Joan Briggs, to help get the buses on the road.

     “It’s actually kind of lucky in some ways that we really didn’t understand how difficult a problem it is to bring public transportation to a rural area — it’s very costly,” said Briggs.

     The upstart operation, which has run buses in eastern Humboldt County since January 2003, transports about 200 passengers a month, Briggs said. For $1.50 ($1.25 for seniors and children), people can take advantage of a “feeder transportation system” that links nine communities within a 50-mile radius of Willow Creek. 

     A $30,000 SDOP grant in 2003 helped create the system, and a $20,000 grant last year helped expand it to shuttle elderly and handicapped riders to important appointments and to the grocery. 

     Tussey, K-T Net’s executive director, got the idea for the bus service while driving in the area one stormy morning in the late 1990s when she saw a young woman walking along the road. After Tussey and her husband gave the woman a ride, they discovered that she was carrying a baby with a fever of at least 103 degrees and had walked more than 10 miles in the rain in an effort to find help for her child.

     “That really brought it home to Jeannie about … how important transportation really is,” Briggs said of the incident.

     “I just want to thank you all just so very much for all of the help that your organization has provided,” Tussey told SDOP officials and supporters. “You’ve helped a community of 3,000 to 5,000 people who really do need the help.”

     The founders of the Low-Income Self-Help Center in San Jose, CA, also spoke during the program. 

     Since 1998 the center, managed mostly by low-income people, has helped to empower, educate and organize the communities of Silicon Valley. 

     Visitors from all backgrounds stop in to fill out food stamp and welfare applications, use the center’s computers, fax machine and telephones, or get help in searching for jobs or for places to live, according to Peggy Elwell, one of the center’s founders.  

     A $5,000 SDOP grant last year helped create a health-action project, Elwell said.  

     “The health-action project has covered a lot of ground,” she said. “We held a Monday night workshop for people on navigating agencies dealing with Medicare (and) workers’ compensation.” She said the center also offers workshops and counseling for children and young people, including gang-involvement and drug-use prevention programs. The center has also joined with other organizations in demonstrations in support of tenants' rights and housing for low-income people. 

     White, SDOP’s director since October 2002, spoke about the influence of civil rights activist James Forman in the program’s formative years.

     Forman, who died in January, challenged American churches in the 1960s to help African-Americans in economic development. He gained attention when he publicly called for churches to pay reparations for slavery in his “Black Manifesto.”

     Forman, an officer of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), presented the manifesto to the General Assembly of The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1969, in San Antonio, TX. The next year, Presbyterians formed a committee on the self-development of people, the precursor of the SDOP program.

     The National Committee on the Self-Development of People, as it was called, held its first meeting in September 1970, with an Assembly mandate to use its funds in “depressed areas and among deprived people.” Now, 35 years later, the PC(USA) remains committed to that mandate and to the principle of self-help.

     “There is no other place where we can really act out our mandate for caring for the poor and the marginalized like we can through Self-Development of People,” said the Rev. Dennie A. Carcelli, of Seattle, a former SDOP partnership advocate. “A little bit of offering goes a tremendous way, because it doesn’t just do something for somebody — it actually allows them to make their own lives better, to take their dreams and put them into action, and to experience the fullness of life that God intends for them.”