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VOL. 14, NO. 10

Washington
Saving Stations

The District of Columbia reports that there are approximately 60,000 addicts living in the city. To address addiction and other social ills, five United Methodist churches in the Washington area and one in Severn, near Annapolis, are scheduled to hold Saving Station tent ministries this summer. They are:

• First UMC, Hyattsville June 22-28
• Emory UMC June 29-July 3
• Emory Grove UMC July 6-11
• A.P. Shaw UMC July 13-19
• New Beginnings UMC,
  Severn Aug. 10-16

Saving Stations seek to restore community

BY MELISSA LAUBERUMCONNECTION STAFF

The war against drugs in Baltimore is over and we have lost, say two United Methodist leaders in urban ministry. But the fight is not over.

Baltimore City Councilman, the Rev. Kwame Abayomi, pastor of Unity UMC, and Baltimore-Washington Associate Council Director Timothy Warner both recently decried the citys criminalization of drug addiction.

In April, for the first time, the number of inmates in U.S. prisons exceeded 2 million. Seventy percent of these incarcerations are drug-related, Abayomi said. In Baltimore, from 1999 to 2001, the number of drug arrests rose by two-thirds to almost 30,000.

Baltimores zero tolerance approach, city officials claim, has brought about a decline in drug-related deaths and drug-related emergency room visits. Today, according to Department of Health Commissioner Peter L. Beilenson, the number of drug addicts in Baltimore has dropped to 40,000.

While they appreciate the decline, Abayomi and Warner stress that drug addiction is a medical, psychological and spiritual issue that still overwhelms the city. Why is it a crime to be sick? Abayomi asked. Anyone who suggests we are solving the problem is living in a fantasy world.

Warner calls the social welfare and criminal justice system pernicious. It further marginalizes the people it was built to help, he said.

The church is far from blameless in this arena, said Abayomi. For the most part, we sit too much as churches, just talking. Are we treating the disease? Is this really and truly our best effort? If it is, then we are failing.

Warner agrees that the church has yet to reach anywhere near its full potential in addressing drug addiction. There needs to be an intentionality about really digging down to the roots of the problem, he said. We are not even close to the church doing what it is capable of doing.

As one means of addressing drug addiction and the issues that compound it, the Baltimore-Washington Conference will change the way it does its Saving Stations in Baltimore this summer.

At the request of the district superintendents, instead of holding the tent ministries for one week periods at 10 locations around the city, the conference will focus intensive efforts on one site, at the corner of Milton and Oliver streets in East Baltimore during the months of July and August.

This corner was once home to a United Methodist church, but it was destroyed by fire. Today in that community, Warner said, there are drug dealers on every corner and people behave as if the kingdom of God were not present.

At the Saving Station site, he said, evangelism work will be done, programs for children will be offered, worship will be held, addicts will be offered places in treatment centers, a community developer will help the neighborhood develop a vision for a Shalom Zone of economic empowerment and, when the summer is over, the beginnings of a new, indigenous faith community will be in place.

The logistics of accomplishing such lofty aims will take an army of volunteers, said Warner, who is hopeful United Methodists throughout the region will bring whatever gifts God has endowed them with to work on the corner in Baltimore.

We will be sowing seeds of faith in the Milton-Oliver Street community and we are expecting growth, he said. This is a way to be present in a way we havent been before. People in all our churches need to ask God how they should be participating in what God is doing in the city.

In addition to the Saving Station ministry, this summer the Baltimore-Washington Conference is opening Hesed House, a transitional house in the former St. Paul UMC parsonage in Baltimore.

The facility will provide short-term housing for people who are waiting to get into residential drug treatment programs. Many of them are expected to come forward during Saving Station activities.

The war on drugs may have been lost, but we can never stop fighting, Warner said. This ministry gives us all a greater potential to use what God has put inside us.