City Missionaries Stage a Live-in : World Impact Members Don’t Leave Ghetto at End of Their Day’s Work

In 1964, the year before racial violence shattered Watts, a white UCLA student named Keith Phillips first walked into a ghetto housing project in South-Central Los Angeles.

Feeling that churches were doing little to combat the fear and despair associated with poverty, violence, drugs and prostitution in the inner city, Phillips invited half a dozen black youths to form a Bible club.

Phillips and his ministry have been there ever since.

World Impact Inc. now has 55 full-time workers in seven Los Angeles ghetto areas. Another 50 missionaries staff inner-city projects in San Diego; Fresno; St. Louis; Newark, N.J.; Wichita, Kan., and Portland, Ore.

World Impact is not the only religious organization dedicated to the urban poor. But it is one of the few Protestant agencies with a long-term commitment to live and work alongside the inner-city people it helps.

Live in the Ghettos

Because World Impact workers and their families live in the ghettos, they are there when emergencies arise and tragedies strike. And they are exposed to the same blights and dangers of crime.

“This is not just another group that comes in and serves Christmas dinner and leaves,” said Lt. Vance Proctor, the Los Angeles Police Department’s officer in charge of the Juvenile Division Child Protection Section. “Nor do they pack up in a year when a grant runs out. . . . I’m just not aware of any other group in the inner city making this kind of commitment.”

Proctor, who advises World Impact staff members on child abuse matters, said he thinks that the organization “definitely helps prevent potential situations of abuse and exploitation.” And, as a result of counseling by Impact staff members, abuse victims “are better able to understand what has happened to them. . . . They can forgive and go on,” Proctor added.

Ben Jacoby, a retired management consultant in Berkeley Heights, N.J., is a contributor to World Impact and raises funds for the evangelical organization, although he is Jewish.

‘Christ Is the Hook’

To get young people “to live and do this work in the ghetto requires a dedication that’s total,” Jacoby said in a telephone interview. What “really works,” he added, “is the love that’s required to make that sacrifice in the inner city. Jesus Christ is the hook; if you didn’t have it, you’d have to invent it.”

While evangelistic Bible clubs remain the mainstay of World Impact outreach, the $5-million-a-year ministry also operates schools, thrift stores, a vocational training center and a furniture factory. And it provides low-cost housing for inner-city families and unwed mothers.

“We want to live out Christianity in a practical way . . . to change patterns of hopelessness and fractured families,” said Phillips, 39, who holds master of divinity and doctor of ministry degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.

“Everything we do focuses on rebuilding that family unit. We believe it has to begin with an inner motivation, a desire to obey God’s law whatever it may cost.”

At a recent weekly meeting of young women training to become World Impact leaders, the theme of lasting friendships with “godly” men and women as role models was emphasized.

‘Know You’re Chosen’

“You just have to know you’re chosen--not rejected,” said Mary Thiessen, the women’s director for World Impact since 1973, speaking about a Bible passage that calls Christians “God’s chosen people.”

Thiessen, aware of the lingering emotional damage of illegitimate birth and childhood sexual abuse on many of her trainees, added: “It’s hard to believe that you’re valuable and to deal with the hurts in your past--especially for those of you who don’t know who your fathers are.”

“It’s tough to believe when all around us there’s so much mess,” agreed Patricia Williams, 28, who first attended a World Impact Bible club when she was 14. She now teaches weekly Bible clubs herself--four for children and two for teen-agers--and directs a women’s staff home in South-Central Los Angeles.

Phillips proudly points to Williams as a positive inner-city role model.

“For years little girls in the inner city have seen only two options in life,” he said. “They can have illegitimate children and start their own welfare homes, or they can become prostitutes. Patricia presents a third option. Now children can choose to follow Jesus and live pure, godly lives. They know they can, because Patricia is doing just that.”

The 14 young women attending Thiessen’s recent Bible class had watched the “CBS Reports” television special, “The Vanishing Family--Crisis in Black America.” The program critically examined an important but culturally unpopular topic.

Without exception, the young women--their average age was 22--and World Impact staff members agreed with the documentary’s thesis that the black family structure is disintegrating.

Among the grim statistics recited by television journalist Bill Moyers: Half of all black female teen-agers become pregnant while single. In the black inner city, practically no teen-age mother gets married. The leading cause of death for young black men is murder. Nearly half of inner-city young men are arrested before they reach 18.

But Laurine Carson, 20, a World Impact trainee from Newark, said the television program might have given the wrong impression.

“You need to know not everyone is like that,” she said. “I didn’t want it to seem hopeless for inner-city teen-agers. . . . They can break the cycle. I’m living proof.”

Way to Break Pattern

One way the pattern can be broken, World Impact leaders believe, is through Christian education.

Impact’s first elementary school was opened adjacent to the organization’s Vermont Avenue headquarters in Los Angeles in 1982; a sister school was opened two years later in Newark. Property for a junior high school was recently secured in Los Angeles.

Eighty students from kindergarten through fourth grade are enrolled in the Los Angeles elementary school, which “meets or exceeds state standards,” Phillips said. The teacher-student ratio is 1 to 15, and family members who cannot afford the monthly $25 tuition per child perform volunteer work at the school one day a week. Extensive tutoring is also provided.

Teachers and other World Impact staff members are considered “missionaries” and paid “according to need,” Phillips said.

Last month, construction was started on a $350,000 gymnasium and multipurpose center at the Los Angeles headquarters; $100,000 of the cost was donated by the Presbyterian Church in La Canada-Flintridge. Pastor Gary Demarest said his affluent congregation decided not to expand its own facilities unless it could raise matching funds for mission projects in other areas.

Spreads the Word

“The churches today are wide open to what we’re doing,” Phillips said. He and his wife and children live in Culver City and attend Van Nuys First Baptist Church, where he was ordained a minister. He tells the World Impact story in at least 100 local congregations and dozens of major Christian colleges and seminaries each year.

As an example of how churches support World Impact, Phillips said, a Presbyterian church in the Midwest was “condemning abortion but not doing anything about it. . . . “ Now the church is going to staff and outfit a 22-unit apartment complex for unwed mothers in World Impact Village in Wichita.

Individual contributors account for 50% and churches 40% of Impact’s $5-million annual budget. Corporations and private foundations donate the remaining 10%. Federal funds are neither sought nor accepted.

“Federally funded housing does not build pride,” Phillips said. “We think it’s rather hypocritical (to accept government assistance) if you’re trying to get people off welfare.

“Food stamps do not engender character. Giveaways do not restore dignity. Handouts beget greed and resentment. A faceless bureaucracy is an easy mark to rip off and manipulate without guilt.”

Stretch the Money

Sometimes, however, Impact leaders succeed in wrangling major money-stretching “deals” on property and services.

The Newark school, for instance, with 170,000 square feet of space, including a vocational high school, was appraised at $16 million, Phillips said. But Impact got the public school board to sell the aging facility for only $53,000--which was donated by a Christian businessman.

In Fresno, Impact is acquiring a 22,500-square-foot multipurpose center in the inner city for a mere $10 a square foot.

A Christian contractor donated the labor to build a major bridge over a river bisecting World Impact’s 560-acre leadership training ranch 60 miles northeast of Wichita.

The ranch is the hub of Impact’s two-year vocational program for Christian high school graduates. Here, students from the eight Impact centers learn basic skills and work disciplines necessary to hold urban jobs. A furniture factory and house-building projects to shelter the poor are centered on the farm.

A 24-unit housing rehabilitation project in Newark, an injection-molded plastic parts business in Portland, and thrift shops in Los Angeles and Fresno round out World Impact efforts to equip ghetto youths for entry-level jobs and businesses.

‘Simple Work Habits’

Impact “goes beyond just a Bible study,” said Proctor, the LAPD Juvenile Division officer. “A lot (of ghetto young people) need a father figure and authority. . . . They need to learn simple work habits, like getting up on time. Many have never had chores or responsibilities.”

Without an opportunity to develop job-related abilities and discipline, most ghetto youths stay on the streets, Phillips believes.

That is where Eric M. West, 20, was until World Impact came along.

West, who grew up in Watts, said he “strayed off” with gangs and drugs during his early teen years. But a World Impact Bible club met at the Imperial Courts housing project where he lives, and he checked it out.

“I was challenged,” West recalled. “I asked myself, ‘Is my life really worth anything?’ ”

West returned to a continuation high school, where he is pursuing a diploma. He enrolled in a small group Bible study. Impact helped him land a part-time job. And he helps Impact’s boys club leaders.

Setting an Example

“I’m trying hard to set an example in the project and the neighborhood . . . so others may think seriously one day, and ask what I’ve got going for me,” West told a visitor while about 60 inner-city junior-high-age boys roughhoused during a lively game of “capture the flag” in the World Impact meeting hall.

This summer, West plans to begin Impact’s vocational training program in Kansas, where he will learn to build houses, make furniture and manage cattle.

West’s case is not unusual, said Fred Stoesz, an Impact club leader since 1975. “Quite a few guys are standing stronger after 11 years.”

But World Impact staff members are realistic about frequent setbacks.

“Street dudes ridicule anyone who attempts to break out of their futile life style. They jeer when one of their own applies himself academically. They laugh at any friend who works,” Phillips wrote in “No Quick Fix,” his book on World Impact.

Impact staff members try to counter peer pressure through Bible verses and role modeling. A skit closing the junior high game time dramatized “spiritual warfare” between Satan and the young believers:

‘A Battle Going On’

“There’s a battle going on, and you guys are in it,” the leader said. “It’s not an easy battle. If you’re going to win, you’re going to have to let God fight it for you. Remember, he will protect you and save your soul.”

Phillips tells the story of JoAnne LeDent, 28, who, with her numerous sisters and cousins, joined a World Impact Bible club that met in a Los Angeles park.

“Almost immediately they all accepted Jesus,” Phillips recalled. “It seemed like a good thing to do.”

But only JoAnne and one sister--both are now on Impact’s staff--persisted in the changed life of faith. Nor did JoAnne’s friends from the park follow her example.

“Nine have been in the mental ward of (Los Angeles) County General Hospital, one committed suicide, one was murdered by a boyfriend, and two others have several illegitimate children each,” Phillips said.

“There is no easy answer. There is no quick fix.”