Tough Week

It has been a tough week here at the Church of Peace in Rock Island. We had a series of almost daily break ins at the church that seemed to come to a conclusion on Thursday morning. Early that morning the Rock Island Police found a broken window when patroling the building and when they entered the building they found a suspect hiding under a desk in an office.


The photo at the left is a police officer dusting a computer for fingerprints. It is not quite the television program CSI, but many objects were investigated for evidence.


I was impressed with the outflow of concern about our situation. Two of the neighborhood pastors visited with me at the church to offer their help and to show their concern. They assurred me that our church will be in their prayers this coming Sunday. It is good to be reminded that we are not alone trying to do God's work in our neighborhood.


The officers interviewed members of the church staff and the staff of the Community Caring Conference about the incidents.



It is surprisingly stressful to be the victims of crime. (I guess we should remember this, especially since the Community Caring Conference offers a program of assistance to victims of crime! But somehow it is always different when one is personally involved.)

Yesterday morning there was a television crew here from the local NBC affiliate to do a story about the situation. It is always a dilimma - on the one hand we want to tell our story, on the other hand I always fear looking silly or saying something in a way that I did not intend. When I was finished with the interview one of the staff brushed some powdered sugar from a doughnut off of my face. Well, fortunately that did not show up on the television.


If you look carefully at this third photo you will see that the pane of glass to the left of the door is in place. And the one on the right has been broken out. Broken glass is visible on the carpet along with a lamp that is flipped on its side. My (limited) experience with with a church burglery is that far more damage and expense comes from people breaking into things that from the stuff that they take.

Our neighbors have shown deep respect for the church for over a century. This set of break ins is so unusual based on our previous experience. It makes me sad to think that there are folks so desperate that they feel compelled to steal from a church and do damage to God's house.

Bix Sunday

Davenport Iowa was home to a well know jazz musician and composer, Bix Beiderbecke. There is a road race for runners called the Bix that takes place near the end of July each year. This year there was also a Jazz Festival in Davenport that same weekend.

The church music director,

Mary Kae Waytenick, is pretty resourceful. Noticing that there were many church members who also play brass instruments, she organized a Dixieland brass group several years ago. It has taken the name "12th Street Brass."

This year on July 27 all of the music in the service was in a Dixieland style with the 12th Street Brass playing. Mary Kae arranged the music so that all the players could participate - from the featured pieces to accompanying the congregation on the hymns.

Mary Kae also found music written by Bix Beiderbecke that was featured in the service. This service was well attended and a lot of fun.

Our altar guild chairperson, Bea Anderson, snapped a few photos of the brass band rehearsing before worship. Not only was the music enjoyable and different from our usual fare, the band and the singing group included a number of young adults in worship.

This was a great Sunday.

Outreach Director

For many years the church has been able to employ an Outreach Director to help manage areas of ministry for the church in our neighborhood. The salary has been underwritten for the most part by an annual grant from the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ, through the Mission Support Committee of the conference.

The Outreach Director at the church is Angela Richardson. It is our Outreach Director who is the key manager for programs like the Book Nook, the Food Pantry, Summer Enrichment program for children, and the like. The Outreach Director also works with the Emergency Assistance program.

Most churches have some people who come to the door seeking immediate emergency assistance. Our location means that we have even more than average. Many who come simply speak to the church secretary, Nora, who is able to give them a voucher for the food pantry nearest their home. Many are directed to the food pantry at Second Baptist Church, which is a neighbor church with a week day food pantry. Nora also has access to small packets of disposable diapers - we collect these at Christmas through our "Diapers for baby Jesus" program. (Members bring packets of diapers and place them under the Christmas Trees in the sanctuary.) We also have a modest supply of local bus passes, to help folks get to doctor visits and the like.

However, some who approach the church need some counsel and support. These persons are referred to the Outreach Director. Angela is able to listen. We also have a slogan, "treat everyone with dignity and respect." While this sounds simple we sometimes get the impression that such an approach is difficult to find for those seeking emergency assistance. Many times Angela is able to provide some imformation and referral that is a help.

Many issues are well beyond our ability to help. But we do what we can. We remember that we are a church and do what we do because we are loyal to Jesus, who encouraged those who follow him to offer simple, direct support to those in need.

Summer Work Camps

One of the ways the church supports our immediate neighborhood is by helping to maintain and rehabilitate local housing. At one point church members walked through our neighborhood and recorded some 175 abandoned homes that blighted the area, reduced home prices and made our neighborhood unsafe. Bad things happen in abandoned houses.

So we made improving housing one of the points of our church mission statement.

We helped establish a local group to buy and renovate houses and sell them at affordable prices to low income persons. This effort was merged into Rock Island Economic Growth some years ago.

Another effort has been to bring in youth groups from churches around the Midwest - Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin - to do work camps to assist in bring houses up to par.

Our current partner is Project NOW. They have a number of rental units that need to be cleaned up between tenants. By doing this with volunteer labor we can help keep the costs lower to Project NOW and to the tenants.


The groups stay in our parish house and have a good summer experience. Work Camp groups stay from three to six days and work on houses and apartment units under the supervision of Project NOW staff. We have a summer camps coordinator who makes local arrangements and is the host for each work camp groups. The coordinator greets the group, shops for food for the campers to prepare, and helps arrange evening programs - either educational or recreational.

The work camps coordinator for summer 2008 was Erin Lambert, a recent graduate of University of Iowa. Seven church groups participated in work camps this summer.

Summer Youth Club

About four years ago the church was approached by the food service people at the Rock Island Schools because our neighborhood school was being reorganized - it had gotten the "death penalty" under "no child left behind." So it was getting a new staff, a new name, a new age group of kids and so forth. They asked if we would provide a lunch program for our neighborhood that was usually provided at the neighborhood school - previously Hawthorne/Irving School, currently The Primary Academy.

The Summer Lunch program is funded by the state. They require pretty meticulous record keeping, and that we hire a professional and certified cook, and things like that. At the same time, with lots of volunteers from the church, and a special effort at record keeping and organization by the church secretary, Nora, it is something we can do.

When we provide the lunch and then shoo-ed the kids out the door that first summer it felt sort of empty. Sure, we had provided a nutritious lunch, but the kids did not seem to have much else that they were going to do.

For the last two summers we have, in cooperation with the Community Caring Conference, provided a Summer Club for neighborhood kids that took place in the afternoon, after lunch. The first year the club was funded by the Doris and Victor Day Foundation. This summer it was underwritten with a grants from the Rock Island Junior Board and from LAN 29. (Local Area Network.) Our Outreach Director reports that 65 youth and 6 parents joined in the activities.

This is your basic enrichment program for children. They do arts and crafts, go on field trips and generally practice working together as good citizens in groups. One of the creative aspects of last summer's program was a special group for girls to build up self-esteem and look forward to a positive future. This was managed by a graduate student in counseling named Molly.

Above is a photo taken one day at the park when the Summer Club kids were wearing their special orange T-shirts.

Book Nook

One of the more enjoyable outreach activities of the church is the Book Nook we provide at the neighborhood elementary school, the Primary Academy. A key reason that this is successful is that the idea was suggested by the school principal and the church was able to impliment it at her innitiative.

The principal told us that children who have books of their own, in their home, tend to do better in reading. So we devised the book nook idea to help children have books of their own.

A friend of the church built a hinged book shelf to display the books. New books are collected and purchased by the church and then made available to the kids for 50 cents per book. We believed that if a child could select a book they wanted, rather than have someone else select it for them, they would be more likely to read.

The Book Nook is open two Fridays each month during the school year for a short period right before lunch. It is staffed by volunteers from the church and the community. Children make their selection and purchases, and then these books are bagged and delivered to the classroom so they can be taken home after school.

We provided three hundred books to kids in the first year. Last December we sold three hundred books in one month! Obviously the program has grown. It is a lot of fun for everyone.

The new books we sell are either given directly to the church or we take money gifts and buy books from Scholastic Books. We try to get books that are at various appropriate reading levels and that have high interest.

The silly hats on the book sellers are because this particular Friday they were celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday.

Church of Peace

Into the 90's...

I have young adult children who tease me about lack of techno savy. That said, I am trying to enter at least the 1990's with this bolg. I am a pastor in a Midwestern church where I have been called since 1991. Our church was established in 1895 and has been in its present location since about 1913. We are in a near downtown location.



Since about 1975 the church has taken the direction of being in mission within our neighborhood, where there are a number of low income residents. The church sponsors an Outreach program, is in partnership with the Community Caring Conference, a grass roots neighborhood organizing project, sponsored a lunch program for kids this summer that served over 10,000 meals to children, and we have developed a program called "Book Nook" to help promote reading at our neighborhood school.



I hope to post bits and pieces of my experience as a minister that may be of interest to others.