What is Be The Neighbor?
You might have noticed I wasn’t around this summer. What was I doing? I was an intern with Be The Neighbor! Be The Neighbor describes itself as a “justice-based service-learning trip ministry that equips youth and adults to live lives of love, service and justice.” It is related to the UCC and the The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denominations.
Be The Neighbor is the result of a joining of two Texas based ministries: Reach Beyond Ministries, founded by Mary Lou Johnston in 2012; and Connect Fort Worth, founded by Allision Lanza in 2015. As Mary Lou was preparing to retire, she reached out to Allison to connect the programs together, creating Be The Neighbor in 2022. The program has since expanded beyond Texas to include sites across the country.
Where did I go? What did I do?
There were 14 BTN sites around the country this summer and nineteen incredible interns. Each site had a specific justice theme which it focused on. I spent two weeks at the Kansas City site, where the theme was Justice 101 and three weeks at the St. Louis site, where the theme was Race and Reconciliation.
At each site, myself and a fellow intern led morning worship services, attended and facilitated trips to service and partner sites, and led educational sessions and games in the afternoon. Be The Neighbor’s curriculum focuses on giving youth skills and knowledge that will allow them to return to their home communities and continue making a difference there.
Our groups came from all over. In my five weeks, I served groups from Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, several from Texas, and one from Bowling Green, KY, where I was born. The youth ranged from middle school to recently graduated and came from all kinds of backgrounds.
At the Kansas City site, our focus was on an Introduction to Justice. We volunteered at The Micah Ministry, a food kitchen run through Independence Boulevard Christian Church, where we did everything from building fences and making food to serving meals and passing out clothes to those who attended. We also participated in the church’s tradition of ringing their bell for every homicide in KC this year. At the time, that was around 70. Now it is almost 135. We volunteered at Kanbe’s Market, which addresses KC’s food deserts by providing fresh produce in areas without access. At Kanbe’s we sorted produce deemed not perfect enough for big grocery stores to find those that were still good enough to eat. Those that weren’t were either composted or sent to livestock, leaving everything used. We also attended sessions on Art Activism, Political Activism, and Environmental Activism.
At the St. Louis site, we went beyond Justice Work in general to focus on racism. We spent a lot of time discussing the many different ways racism is part of the systems that run our country, including redlining and high infant and maternal mortality rates. We explored both sides of the Delmar Divide, a street — Delmar Boulevard — which divides St. Louis on the basis of racial and economic status. On one side, the population is majority black and low income, on the other side, the population is majority white and upper middle to upper class. We visited Delmar Divine, an organization founded by the Maxine Clark (yes, of Build-A-Bear) dedicated to helping nonprofits thrive. We volunteered at Soulfisher, an organization started by a formerly incarcerated woman to provide for the needs of youth with incarcerated parents, while helping those who are incarcerated to get back up on their feet. We helped them organize their new offices and prepare for back-to-school programs. We also volunteered at Lydia’s House, which provides transitional two-year housing to women and youth who have faced domestic violence. One of my favorite things we did was garden work through various community gardens at Seed St. Louis, a program which aims to provide communities with the tools to grow their own food.
In the midst of all this, I didn’t forget about summer camp! I came home to spend a week down at Templed Hills counseling MMADD camp! I also spent a week up at the Dunkirk Camp and Conference Center in NY. There I filled in for the Disciples Peace Fellowship Interns. DPF is a program through the Christian Church (DOC) that aims to provide a model of peace to youth through educational programing at summer camps. BTN and DPI partnered together this year, so that each of the three DPF interns spent a week at a BTN site, and myself and another BTN intern spent a week at a summer camp at DPF interns. There I ran three DPF sessions, one on Environmental Justice, one on Art and Activism, and one on Service vs Justice work.
What did I learn? Why does it matter?
I learned a lot of things over my nine weeks of travel. I got really comfortable with airports, for one. I learned about and saw many new states: Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. I figured out how to pack for constant travel, live out of a suitcase, and sleep in some very strange places. But I also learned how to be a leader. It was tricky for me to step into a leadership role, especially when just last summer, I was a youth and not a leader. We discussed a lot of difficult things, and it was hard to be the facilitator in those discussions. Being an intern taught me leadership, flexibility, and compassion.
It also taught me to hope. Most of the time, the world seems like a terrible place. There are always bad things happening, from politics, to violence, trans and homophobia, islamophobia, anti-semitism, ableism, racism, climate change, I could go on. It’s really easy to be overwhelmed, to think that what you do doesn’t matter. But when you actually go out in the world and do the work, things seem brighter. I met so many wonderful people. There were ministers leading their congregations in ever-expanding service projects, gardeners who were passionate about connecting to the land, organizations and nonprofit leaders aiming to platform other nonprofits, volunteers who gave their evenings and weekends to help their neighbors. Perhaps most importantly, I met dozens of youth with big ideas and the drive to go home and make change.
What sets BTN apart from other mission trip programs is its emphasis on enacting our new knowledge in our home communities. The work we do in St. Louis or Kansas City is important, but the real goal is that each group returns to their homes with the skills, knowledge, and ideas to do justice work in their area. At the end of each week, we had a brainstorming session, where the youth worked together with their adult leaders to pick an idea for some kind of service or program. Then they would begin working on a plan to make it happen. The hope is that when they go home, their communities will benefit from what they experienced on their trip.
Be The Neighbor also emphasizes that difference between service and justice work, and the importance of engaging in both. Service work is any kind of work that meets an issue where it is at, attempting to remedy it in the short term. Justice work, on the other hand, attempts to find the source of that issue and solve it so that that issue no longer exists. For example, setting up a food pantry is service work. Creating and passing legislation aimed at evenly distributing food to all regardless of economic or social backgrounds is justice work. As Christians we are called not only to feed the hungry, but also to eradicate the issue so that there are no hungry. Our job is to do on Earth like it is done in Heaven, or, in other words, to create a life on Earth that is as much like Heaven as possible. That involves not only doing service, but seeking justice. Be The Neighbor teaches a young generation of Christians how to do both.
Wrapping up!
Our next song will be the song which we sang each day: “I will sing of your love, love, love.” It will be in video format on the screen, and we will play through it once so we can hear it, and then we will all sing together the second time. It’s a little more contemporary than we are used to, so it will be a fun experiment.
I will be in coffee hour after this to do a little Q&A so please ask me questions!
Finally let me leave you with the mantra that we said at every worship service:
BE BRAVE because you are a CHILD OF GOD!
BE KIND because everyone else is TOO!
Let us join together to do SERVICE and JUSTICE in ways that are RELATIONAL, SUSTAINABLE and DIGNITY AFFIRMING!