Sunday, August 31, 2003

By Ervin Dyer, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

A Place of Refuge and Tree of Hope are two city ministries trying to rescue lives from the current upswing in street violence.

On Wednesday evening, the Rev. Winnie Pollard is found singing for Jesus. She's in Garfield at a Place of Refuge, a 3-month-old storefront church on Penn Avenue. The doors of the church are open, and Pollard's chorus of hallelujahs drifts into the street.

She hopes they'll land on the ears and hearts of a community struggling to be whole.

If it wasn't threatening to rain, Pollard, and her "spiritual helper," her husband, Melvin, would be barbecuing on the sidewalk.

"We're not afraid of the street," said Winnie Pollard. "We come from a place where everything isn't perfect. This is a place for the broken, abused and neglected."

On Thursday in Northview Heights, a crowd of 300 gathers at dusk to see Christian mimes, listen to soulful gospel and hear a young minister talk about the goodness of the Lord. They've been gathered by the Tree of Hope, a nonprofit committed to soothing and healing victims of violence. It was started two years ago by Adrienne Young, who lost her son in 1994 to gun violence.

"We've easily touched more than 500 people since we've begun," said Young. "We don't want to see any more of our children lost."

In August alone in Pittsburgh, 15 homicides have been recorded.

As a result, some black faith-based groups are beginning to believe that the only possible way to reach people is to go back to the streets.

They especially hope to connect with young black men, the majority of the victims in the recent deaths.

"It's time for me to take my big Suburban back to the corner," said the Rev. Marcus Harvey, a licensed Baptist minister, referring to a decade ago, when he rode through tough neighborhoods playing loud music from the back of his truck.

It was 1993. Gun violence had peaked in Pittsburgh.

The kids were drawn to Harvey's truck because of the music. When they approached, he appealed to them to leave the street life.

He now runs Strength Inc., a social service agency that works with drug offenders and gang members.

Many regard street-tough, drug-dealing, young black men as a population the church just can't reach. Not Harvey.

He feels the violence is ripping apart the moral fiber of black people and neighborhoods, and that more must be done to stop it.

"Prayer isn't enough anymore. We need to get out and put hands on folks. These are our children."

Many churches say they want to connect with these young men, said Harvey, but they seem like they are scared.

"But God doesn't call us to have a spirit of fear. We need to put on the full armor, because these are our nieces and nephews."

Black clergy are not afraid, said Bishop Otis Carswell of the charismatic Potter's House Ministry in Braddock, the same church that built A Place of Refuge. But when the violence subsided in the mid-'90s, many churches moved on to develop different kinds of ministries to address community needs.

"We've been in the street; we just needed to stay there."

Things the churches did a decade ago worked, said Carswell, adding, "We've been lulled to sleep."

Today, the violence stems from a stew of problems exacerbated by a lack of human services, especially those that reach out to young black men; a lack of employment opportunities; a lack of community and individual responsibility; and broken families. On many levels, the black faithful try to address all of those needs.

Many now fund health seminars, private schools, senior centers and credit unions. All are necessary community services, but they remain removed from the direct street ministry necessary to connect with fatherless youth who often turn to gangs and violence as rites of passage, Carswell said.

Those who attend large black churches get a spirit-filled glory hallelujah time and an experience that guides them in being better parents and investors, and relationship counseling. But you have to be in the congregation, said Carswell.

The men who need to be touched are, for the most part, hopeless, desperate and outside the church, Carswell added.

To reach them, Carswell said, "The church has to get from behind the stained glass."

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