Fuller Center for Housing: 5 Tips to Transition from Paternalism to Partnership

 


Savannah Aleckson
Regional Director for Joplin, MO, Area
& Events Director
Read more from Savannah

 

For Royce Nelson, Executive Director of the Fuller Center for Housing chapter located in Joplin, MO, material assistance is less about provision and more about partnership. That perspective has shaped the way Fuller Center for Housing approaches charity, inspiring meaningful exchange and quality relationships—in their view, treating their clientele as collaborators rather than charity cases is key to sustainable, development-oriented solutions for those in poverty.

With over 75 chapters across the United States, Fuller Center for Housing aims to alleviate one common social woe: inadequate housing for those in poverty. Whether that’s through building new homes or rehabilitating homes that have deteriorated, Fuller Center for Housing envisions a world where everyone has a safe place to live—and they see collaboration as the vehicle through which that becomes a reality.

How can you participate in charity that’s less like a toxic handout and more like a dignifying exchange? Royce shares 5 tips to achieve just that from Fuller Center for Housing’s operations.

 

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Do your homework

 

Before the Fuller Center for Housing team gets started on a project, they explore several relevant questions: What’s the client’s story? Why is he unable to afford a new home build or repair by conventional means? What’s caused the decay of his current home? Has any other agency stepped in to help in this situation? The answers to those questions are best found through personal, careful investigation that is unmoved by any pressure to rush. Fuller’s team members take the time to get to know the client and their situation before agreeing to assist. They also use community collaboration tools such as CharityTracker to gain more insight into the client’s backstory and determine how else he has been helped.


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Expect more, not less, of your clientele

 

The temptation to zero in on what feels like urgent and serious need, like a rotting floor or a badly damaged roof, is potent. However, Royce urges those involved in charity to step back and get the big picture: even those with pressing needs have valuable skills, resources, and assets to offer. To invite the poor to put those giftings to use in exchange for assistance is not a cruel ask; on the contrary, it’s an incredibly affirming and dignifying process! For that reason, Fuller Center for Housing is intentional about deeply involving the client in the process of the home build or repair. They are expected to chip in:

  • Financially. Fuller’s helps complete the needed work well below market rate to assist their low-income clientele who may be unable to afford a conventional loan. Clients are expected to pay for the discounted materials along with a 12.5% fee to help with Fuller’s operating expenses; if payment cannot be made up-front, then a payment plan is arranged. “This is about giving back,” Royce shares. “Clients understand that the money they pay is not just to repair their own home, but to help keep the ministry going so other folks can receive help, too. It’s good for people to know they are capable not just of being helped, but helping others as well.”
  • Physically. Yes, clients are even expected to get their hands dirty in the physical repairs of their home! This is what Fuller’s refers to as a “sweat-equity” model. Royce chuckles as he recalls all the myriad ways they’ve had clients get involved, from hanging drywall, to fixing flooring, to installing new shingles on the roof. It’s through this willingness to take things a little slower in order to involve the client that clients are able to learn new skills and take ownership over the project for their own home.

 

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Honor and promote real relationship

In the view of Fuller Center for Housing, the most effective social safety net is the one at work right here at home—the connections between family members, friends, and community members. Root issues of poverty are addressed and life change is put in motion when those vital affiliations intervene to help their neighbor in need before more distant, bureaucratic forms of help get involved.

Fuller Center for Housing finds a variety of creative ways to encourage their clientele to lean on old relationships and create new ones, from asking family members to help with the physical labor if the client is truly immobile to completing projects side-by-side with the homeowner. These small interventions pack a punch: family and friends are reminded of their duty to help those in their circle, and hours together working on a project opens the door for good, life-giving conversation.

 

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Remember that the devil is in the details

Through that close bond that is forged through hours spent working together, Fuller’s team members get a glimpse into details of the client’s life. Paying attention to those glimpses can make all the difference in the success of the project. Royce shared the story of one couple who was having trouble keeping up with their repayment plan. One of the team members who was helping with the project found out that they were spending $350-$400 a month on cable and suggested that they cut it to find the necessary money. The couple accepted this counsel and were able to regain hundreds of dollars of cushion back into their budget not just for the repayment plan, but for future expenses as well! Knowledge of details increases the chances of charity teams like Royce’s to find and route out the devils that hold people back from the flourishing life God intends.

 

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Celebrate success, big or small

Royce beamed as he shared the best moment of the entire project, from intake, to evaluation, to getting the project underway, to completion: “You can’t beat the pride a client has when he’s able to step back and look at his newly built or repaired home and say ‘I did that! I can take care of myself!’” A challenge met and overcome is a dignifying and rewarding process, and something that the Fuller Center for Housing team is careful to protect for their clientele. An equally satisfying moment occurs when clients call back some time later to tell the team about a home repair they were able to complete on their own, thanks to the training they received from Fuller Center for Housing.

 

To the Fuller Center for Housing, their role is about much more than the sum of the boards, nails, and paint it takes to shore up a broken-down home. It’s about ministering to folks through relationship, healthy challenge, and accountability. It just so happens that repairing homes is a great vehicle for delivering those life-changing ends.

 

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Intake With Love, INC: 7 Steps to Take Your Process from Clinical to Transformational

 


Avery West
Director of Community Initiatives

 

 

Love, In the Name of Christ (INC) of Hillsdale County doesn’t give out a single penny, meal, or piece of furniture, but the group meets needs every day. Nestled in a small town in Michigan, this Love, INC chapter is one of 122 across the United States. Love, INC acts as a clearinghouse for their local network of churches, connecting needs to appropriate ministries. They take the time to get to know the individuals asking for assistance, and often are able to meet deeper needs than those originally presented.

Jessica Fawley, executive director of Love, INC of Hillsdale County, shared how her volunteer team practically gets to know the people who call in, and where they go from there.

 

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Set expectations

Hillsdale Love, INC volunteers always begin their conversations with a disclaimer: They don’t have any resources on hand, but can connect clients with a church who does. As a part of the intake process, they’ll go through a lengthy list of questions. Volunteers assure clients that these questions are not meant to be judgmental, but only to give Love, INC a better understanding of their particular situation. This authenticity gives the conversation a sense of rapport and respect from the very beginning.

 

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Listen to their story

After setting expectations, the volunteer sets aside the need the individual originally called for, and focuses on getting to know him or her as a person. Often the people who call are more than willing to decompress and tell their story. Jessica pointed out that this simple act of receptivity affirms that the client is worthy of being listened to. As they listen to clients’ stories, volunteers ask questions that help them understand what brought the individual to this point of need.

 

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Verify existing connections

Next, the volunteer verifies the need with the client’s pastor, if he or she has one. The goal here is not only to alert the pastor of a need in his congregation, but also to find out if the individual’s own community has resources he or she hasn’t tapped into yet. You can learn more about how and why we work towards reestablishing community ties through the free True Charity University Affiliation course.

 

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Make a timeline

Volunteers help clients come up with a plan that addresses not only the initial need, but also the situations that led to it. For instance, the client might make a plan to work through his budget with a volunteer, sign up for job skills class, or meet with his mentor.

When Jessica comes alongside a client, she asks herself “Who in the body of Christ can I connect this person with?” This focus on relationship rather than material goods radically changes the conversation. Recently, Jessica worked with a woman who called in asking for a bed, but later revealed she was in an abusive marriage and felt uncomfortable in her church. Jessica was able to connect her and her husband with help, as well as put her in contact with friends from a different church.

 

– 5 –

Maintain mutual participation

Love, INC highly values mutual participation, and believes that the volunteer should never work harder than the client. Jessica explained that their model always puts the ball in the client’s court, so the process will naturally end if the client remains unwilling to participate. The key to mutual investment is the volunteer’s commitment to clear expectations, willingness to have a loving confrontation, and understanding that not everyone is ready to progress toward self-sufficiency.

 

– 6 –

Follow up

Love INC volunteers make sure to check in with their clients every month after the initial intake. Whether they become aware of new hurdles to overcome, find out the client has not followed his steps toward self-sufficiency, or hear a story of transformation, follow-up is always fruitful and essential.

 

– 7 –

Keep the goal in mind

When you’re cranking through intakes, Jessica said, it’s easy for the conversations to become very clinical. She used the decreased caseload during the pandemic as an opportunity to recalibrate her intentions, and pour more deeply into the few individuals they were able to work alongside. It’s a constant fight to focus on the person, not the need, but Jessica and her team remind themselves every day of this greater goal.

 

Whether your group provides food or diapers, car repair or budgeting services, we can all focus on making our intake process more relational. Love, INC’s model of setting expectations, listening, reestablishing existing relationships, and long-term mutual participation is a good place to start.

 

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Journey Church: a Congregation and Community Transformed

 


Nathan Mayo
Director of Member Services

 

Pastor John “Chip” Boyd recalls that prior to 2011, Journey Church’s ministry focus was almost 100% internal. With a small church of only 130 members, they did not expect to change their predominantly poor urban neighborhood in Joplin, Missouri. When a devastating tornado ripped through their town in 2011, they were jolted to consider how they could help their neighbors. This question was amplified by a Wisconsin-based missions company that used Journey as a platform for a short-term mission trip to assist with tornado rehabilitation. 

When Journey Church members saw people coming from out of state to serve their own community, it was a clarion call to put their faith into action. The church refocused its ministry to spend 80% of their ministry time, energy, and dollars in their neighborhood. A wave of exhilaration swept through the church as members experienced the thrill of serving people in need. As the years went by, that exhilaration eroded into the fatigue of watching the same people with the same problems get the same “help.”

 

In 2017, Journey Church did some soul searching and determined a more deliberate way forward than their previous strategy of one-way handouts. They crafted a plan to reach every neighbor in a two-mile radius over the next five years—the “2 in 5 Initiative.”  The plan was to offer some tailored assistance and friendship to each family with an intent to improve their long-term situation, as laid out in these steps:

 

1) Make their acquaintance. This could be through an in-person invitation to an event, like a community Christmas dinner or to participate in a program, like a community garden. This also takes the form of identifying obvious needs, like a collapsing roof and stopping to ask if the church could be of assistance.

 

2) Assess their complete needs. Once a church member or leader establishes a connection with the community member, they are asked to discuss deeper needs, using a brief assessment card as a prompt for conversation. If your roof is collapsing, there is sure to be a discussion of why you are unable to pay for your own roof. Is it inadequate income? Or inadequate management of existing income? Sometimes the needs are simple requests for relationship—“My husband is in prison, and I wish I had someone to play catch with my son.” Pastor John remarked that literally every community member he is aware of was willing to discuss underlying problems, if a church representative first established rapport and expressed a sincere desire to help. In his words, “If we want to really help people, we’re going to have to get into their business, and it is going to get messy.”

 

3) Match the needs of the community member with the assets of the church members. For those needing better income streams, the church pairs them with members who teach resume writing and employment skills. For those needing assistance with money management, the church teaches budgeting. If they need home repairs, the church is happy to assist. If they need money to get them through a tight spot, the church offers members an interest-free loan—repayment is required for additional financial assistance. In short, the church is thrilled to offer people ways to better their own situation. However, the leadership team will ask tough questions and, for those uninterested in bettering their own lot, the church is friendly but refuses to enable bad choices. When a young couple came to request assistance with their electric bill days after spending their tax refund/credit on expensive electronics, Pastor John helped them return their new toys. They paid their own electric bill.

 

4) Follow up to ensure their needs were met. To ensure that projects and classes have the intended effect, assigned church members follow up with beneficiaries monthly. They build lasting friendships when possible, and when not, they provide feedback to the church on how effective the assistance was and recommend additional assistance as needed. 

 

5) Invite the community member to partner with the church in helping others. The ultimate goal of charity is not to merely assist “the needy,” but rather to transform the needy into flourishing people and see them pass on the service they received. In the case of Journey Church, this begins with invitations to accept Christ and join the church. If people decline or already attend other churches, they are still encouraged to use Journey as a local hub and share the needs of neighbors with the church and join collective projects in support of their own community.

 

The 2 in 5 Initiative is ahead of schedule to meaningfully impact every family in a two-mile radius of the church. Pastor John also notes how incredibly generous their diverse-income church is at contributing to the church’s operation and outreach.  John attributes this generosity to the fact that members know their dollars, time, and talents are really changing lives—not because of emotive advertising, but because of effective, challenging programs with measured outcomes. 

 

Journey Church is a remarkable story of a congregation transforming from an inward focus to being dedicated to transforming their community. Not only that, but they resisted the pull of paternalistic and perpetual giving, which was unlikely to help many people in the community improve their own situations. Journey Church acknowledges that their journey to optimizing their impact is not yet complete, but thanks to incorporating principles of true charity, they are certainly on the right path.

 

 

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Neighbor Connect: Meeting the Needs Next Door

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Kyle is a young man who has been mowing the yard for Mary over the past two summers. Mary is in her sixties, suffers from depression and anxiety, and is on disability. Kyle and Mary were introduced through Neighbor Connect, a program of Watered Gardens Ministries that cares for the local community by connecting one neighbor’s need to another neighbor’s skill. By databasing and categorizing the services volunteers can offer, Neighbor Connect took Kyle’s willingness to volunteer mowing services and paired it with Mary’s lawn care needs.

And the relationship between Mary and Kyle has only grown from there.  At the end of last summer, Mary was so thankful for Kyle’s excellent work, she sought ways to bless him in return.  And when Mary was hospitalized earlier this year for heart surgery, Kyle stepped up to take care of her dog. Then he and his wife brought dinner over while Mary was recovering.

“Who does that?” Mary said when she called the local Neighbor Connect coordinator. “Who does that? That is what a true Christian is supposed to do!”

The experience of Mary with Kyle highlights a key principle of True Charity: Subsidiarity.

The principle of subsidiarity states that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized, competent agent. Adhering to the principle of subsidiarity means viewing the government as the last source of help for a person in need.

When government is looked to first, local communities lose their resolve to care for their own.  The result?  The welfare problem grows, and the fabric of a local community wears thin. Without any understanding of the person or his or her situation, charitable transactions are mostly blind and ineffective. True charity is based on face-to-face relationship-building, which empowers, ennobles, and sets free people captive to poverty.

So, if the government should be the last source of help for a person in need, who should be first?

Family, friends, and neighbors. In that order.

It is important to note that when a client comes to Neighbor Connect with a need, the Neighbor Connect coordinator does not automatically step in to help. An interview is conducted with the intent to connect them with their own family. If they don’t have any family, then effort is made to identify friends who could help–or the church to which they are affiliated. If they don’t have any of those, then Neighbor Connect seeks to step in and help.

What does that help look like?

It depends on the need. Initially, Neighbor Connect consisted of a database of willing volunteers, their location, and their identified skills. When a need arose, the Neighbor Connect coordinator would go through the database and try and find a volunteer geographically positioned with the skills to meet the need. Now, while a Neighbor Connect app is in development, a texting service is utilized. A text goes out to all of the volunteers, and this allows people to see needs in real-time and step up on a more frequent basis if they want.

It wasn’t long ago that neighbors were the first respondents to needs in their communities. We need to get back to that priority again. It’s why Neighbor Connect was created, and the program is set up to be easily replicated in any community. Like yours.

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If you live in the Joplin 4-State region and are interested in volunteering with Neighbor Connect or referring a client of your ministry for assistance, visit neighborconnect.us.

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To find out more about establishing a Neighbor Connect center in your community, visit neighborconnect.us.
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