This past weekend, the Ember Cast team participated in
Serve the City Baltimore's (STC)
one day service event (unfortunately, the project we served with is not listed on the link because it was organized very last minute). Patrick Donohue, executive director of STC, intentionally put the project together for our team to expose us to relational Christian community development. He connected us with Don Campbell, pastor at
Moravia Assembly of God. Don, as he prefers to be called, has lived in Baltimore for almost his entire life, first as a pastor's kid, then as a pastor. God has used him to build up an amazing network in the community of Darley Park.
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| View Darley Park in a larger map with more descriptions |
Darley Park does not look too harmless from this top view. The community is well organized, in a central location, and used to be a nice place to live. After years of spiritual darkness, the community is extremely dangerous to live in and has one of the highest incidences of murder. One of the indigenous leaders and our local contact, Ms. Dorothy, has lived there her whole life. She told us of a time when her community was safe, a time long forgotten by the aesthetics of the community. Below is a Google street view of Normal Ave:
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| Click here to take a virtual walk down Normal Ave |
The picture shows grates on windows, boarded up homes, and people sitting on porches in the middle of the day. These are signs of a crime-filled, poor community. The grates are a response from homeowners with disposable income who want to deter theft and vandalism. Boarded up homes are an affect of foreclosures and tenants who chose not to or were unable to upkeep the home. People on porches during normal working hours generally show an area of welfare and unemployment. But Ms. Dorothy said it didn't always used to be like this...
Ms. Dorothy is probably 70 years old (I didn't have the guts to ask). She explained how as a child, she felt safe in Darley Park, often playing outside and not worrying about what "might" happen. As she grew up, the community did too. A group called the "Uptown Boys" moved in at the top of the neighborhood and brought their drug distribution ring with them. The community quickly became engulfed in buying and selling crack-cocaine, ultimately reducing the living standard of the area. Welfare, waste, and crime followed suit and the community evolved into the Darley Park we see today.
Amazingly, this change didn't scare Ms. Dorothy or five of her friends away. Although her children have all grown up and moved out, she still lives in Darley Park, praying, searching, and crying out for an opportunity to transform her community back to its original state. Ms. Dorothy and her friends are Don's primary point of contacts in the community, his
people of peace (although they are already Christian, the idea still fits). Ms. Dorothy and Don are fighting the darkness in Darley Park with devotion to prayer, walking around the community praying that God will again have a stronghold there.
In an effort to also fight the for the physical redemption of the community, Ms. Dorothy asked us (about 15 volunteers from Ember and the Salisbury Cru) to help her clean the ally-way that runs adjacent to the main road. After merely 3 hours we had filled over 40 trash bags with waste. Below is a series of pictures I snagged from Tony's
blog post.
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| Tony's youngest (11) is second in from the left |
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| Ms. Dorothy is on the left |
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| Our team! Don is in the blue, farthest from the camera |
This is just one account of community development in Baltimore. As my involvement with Ember and STC continues, I will be exposed to more and more opportunities for investment. Already we are pursuing a more intentional relationship with Don to encourage even more proactive programs in Darley Park. At the same time, Ember is looking beyond Baltimore and the United States and is sending myself and several college students to invest in some of the programs created by STC Stellenbosch in South Africa. Keep a look out for an official document on that!
Here's to community development in Baltimore and beyond.