On many days, the endless work of combatting rural poverty leaves you in the dark, utterly hopeless, Frances Ford says, but as Perry County’s own begin to build it themselves, hope flickers. True asset-based community development is sluggish work, and, at times, maybe impossible work.
Perry County, Alabama: Fields of Paradox
There is a tension you must hold in Perry County, Alabama, between strength and fragility, beauty and dismay, resilience and defeat. The moment you discount its people and cry “poverty,” Perry County bewilders you with overwhelming abundance and gratitude. The moment you discover the outright richness of life there, you must contend with the exhaustive power of poverty to steal home, health and even your next meal.
Photo Gallery: Perry County Alabama
Alabama: Perry County is a series about holding a healthy tension between a perspective of scarcity and one of joy and strength. What, in all realities, appears to be extreme poverty may actually represent generations of strong, resilient families who have made a true home in Perry County.
Video: Frances Ford on Change
Twenty years ago, Frances Ford left her nursing career in Selma, Ala., to seek justice and development among her lifelong neighbors in Perry County. She speaks in this video about change in Perry County.
Video: Frances Ford on Justice
Twenty years ago, Frances Ford left her nursing career in Selma, Ala., to seek justice and development among her lifelong neighbors in Perry County. She speaks in this video about justice in Perry County.
Video: LaQuenna Lewis
LaQuenna Lewis serves as leader of CET ministries, a nonprofit of Eagle Grove Baptist Church and one of Sowing Seeds of Hope’s newest development partners. She speaks in this video about working in Perry County.
Video: The Kings
Willie Roy and Jennie Bell King helped build their new home in Marion through Sowing Seeds of Hope’s self-help housing initiative. They speak and sing in this video about their experience.
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How else can we help?
Welcome House, a community dedicated to holistic ministry with displaced peoples, had formed together with another ally in seeking wholeness for immigrants and refugees in North Carolina. Thomas and Nunu withdrew to their own apartment just across the hall, only to emerge with a 24-pack of bottled water for the moving crew and a simple question: How else can we help?
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CBF church offers ‘open door’ to Hispanic community with legal aid ministry
“Can you imagine living in a place where you didn’t think there were even 50 people who cared about you?”
That’s why Blake Hart and Oakland Baptist Church, SC are partnering to renew God’s world through Puerta Abierta, a Department of Justice-accredited organization helping immigrants in Rock Hill access vital legal assistance for issues in the areas of naturalization, family-based immigration, temporary legal status, crimes of domestic violence and more.
For Macon, Ga., community, Americana music is holy liturgy
Since 2016, that liturgy of roots music and candid conversation about faith has distinguished Hall’s Sunday morning radio program Gospel Gothic as an unlikely yet utterly compatible force among Macon, Ga.’s most devout church-goers as well as its most resolved agnostics.
The Christ-haunted hosts of Gospel Gothic
The hosts of the Gospel Gothic radio hour — Jake Hall, pastor of Highland Hills Baptist Church in Macon, Ga., as well as Wes Griffith and Brad Evans, local entrepreneurs and owners of 100.9 FM The Creek — are inviting Macon and listeners around the country to join them each Sunday morning in exploring “faith, music and meaning in the Christ-haunted South.”
Down to the river: A pastor’s journey toward real life, real sin and real redemption
The day Jake Hall discovered 100.9 FM The Creek, he nearly plowed through a red light into oncoming traffic. As Hall approached the Spring Street bridge in Macon, Ga., to pass over the Ocmulgee River, Darrell Scott’s “Down to the River” on the radio suddenly broke through his humdrum focus with communion of another kind.