| Church fights drug abuse through collaboration by John W. Coleman JrUMConnection Staff 
John Coleman Jr./UMConnection
Harriette Henderson (left) and the Rev. Hal T. Henderson, pastor of Congress Heights UMC in Washington, D.C., greet Vance Page of the Darrell Green Youth Foundation in front of the Hal T. Henderson Interfaith Substance Abuse Resource Center. In 2002 when the Rev. Hal T. Henderson, pastor of Congress Heights UMC in Washington, D.C., helped a fellow pastor get his grandson out of a Hagerstown prison and into a drug abuse treatment program, it was a familiar labor of love. He was having the same bout with drugs that my son went through, said Henderson, who recalled working with a probation officer and a religious drug-abuse recovery program to help free the young man from incarceration and addiction. There have been numerous other young men at least 10 this year steered into treatment programs by Henderson and his partners in the All Gods People Interfaith Coalition. Several came from clergy families. The coalition, a vanguard of concerned individuals, churches and faith-based organizations, operates mostly in Southeast Washington and Prince Georges County, but often extends its services beyond that region. According to Henderson, members screen addicts to ensure that they earnestly want to escape the lethal snare of substance abuse and then refer them to any number of faith-based recovery centers stretching from Virginia to Michigan. I thank God for you and for Teen Challenge each and every day, wrote one grateful young man from Alexandria, Va., in a recent letter about his transformation and new-found faith in Christ. He wrote that he had been addicted to cocaine and sexual immorality for 20 years before Henderson introduced him to the popular, international Bible-based treatment program. Weve found that secular drug rehabilitation programs often dont work, said Henderson, who is vice chairman of the conference Committee on Drugs and Violence. His son relapsed repeatedly after completing at least four expensive rehab programs more than a decade ago. Hal Henderson Jr., a church trustee, now shares his testimony freely and works with the coalition to help other addicts. Rehab programs just try to get you off of drugs, he explained, but they dont really deal with your soul. You rehab houses, not people, added the elder Henderson, who talks openly about his familys former ignorance and the bewildering pain they felt when his son admitted his addiction at a church meeting. That ordeal occurred while Henderson was chairing the program committee of the 1990 Bishops Initiative on Drugs and Violence and running a Saving Station tent ministry as the pastor of Grace UMC in Fort Washington. He later developed the Resurrection Drug Treatment Ministry, which received conference support. Youve got to deliver people and their entire families holistically from the chains of addiction, Henderson said. And that deliverance has to be grounded in spiritual principles. All Gods People and Congress Heights UMC together established the Hal T. Henderson Substance Abuse Resource Center this year to expand their collaboration. The center, located in the churchs parsonage next door, houses a handful of partner agencies that offer youth and adults opportunities for deliverance and development. Among them: - The Congress Heights Training Center teaches employment readiness and job skills at a halfway house for former prison inmates preparing to re-enter society.
- Youth Court is a peer adjudication program cosponsored by the municipal court and the D.C. Coalition against Drugs and Violence as an alternative to divert young offenders with misdemeanors from getting trapped in the judicial system.
- The Nehemiah Entrepreneurship Training Center teaches economic development skills and strategies using biblical principles.
Meanwhile, the church invites its homeless and addicted neighbors to attend its Friday night Gospel Caf, offering Bible study and fellowship. It also distributes donated truckloads of food to low-income residents weekly and provides space to the Thurgood Marshall Academy, a pioneering charter school, to improve education in the community. Henderson and his team, which includes members of his family, recently helped a group of churches in the Peninsula-Delaware Conference launch their own interfaith coalition and resource center in Hurlock, modeled on the one at Congress Heights. They are eager to help other churches in the Baltimore-Washington Conference as well. Were excited about this ministry because of the promise it holds through collaboration, said Harriette Henderson, who coordinates the center named for her husband. Our mission is to provide a holistic, inclusive ministry to families by offering them awareness, education, treatment and counseling. This mission is personal for us, she added. We are trying to help other families not go through what we had to go through. | 
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