ROANOKE RAPIDS, N.C. (ABP) — Nine participants in a "poverty plunge" stuffed their fears into a drawer with their personal identities and immersed themselves for 24 hours into the unfamiliar and frightening world of the poor and homeless March 4-5 in Roanoke Rapids, N.C.
Poverty Plunge participants packed 250 boxes of with about 40 pounds each of food from the Central and Eastern North Carolina Food Bank to distribute to poor families in the Roanoke Valley.
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They joined a small, curious and committed contingent of Christians around the country who are trying to personalize the plight of the poor.
Wide eyed, eager and anxious with the energy a person might emit crouching at the open door of an airplane before a first parachute jump, participants in the group organized by the North Carolina Woman's Missionary Union listened raptly to Anna Anderson tell them, "Poverty is not an issue. Poverty is people."
Anderson and her husband, LaCount, are self-funded Cooperative Baptist Fellowship missionaries in eastern North Carolina. They work in transformational ministries with the poor and homeless.
"You are making a critical commitment to learn about the poor and about God's heart and mandate for them," Anna Anderson told participants.
Participants knew the only life that might change from their experience was their own. And that change is enough, said organizers, because the purpose of these plunges is to send participants back to their churches newly aware and committed to educate others.
"At one point in the experience I actually thought I was homeless," said Rebecca McKinley of Apex, N.C., who participated in an earlier event. "We'd had very little to eat all day. People were seated on the sidewalk eating all these scrumptious meals. I was surprised at my reaction. I actually became angry they had this food to eat and I was hungry."
Poverty Plunge participant Holly Baldwin sorts vegetables for inclusion in food boxes that will be distributed to the poor.
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While most participants assume the mantel of "poor" in the simulation, two draw cards that designate them "homeless." That means they cannot sleep inside that night; they get no emergency money; and they cannot keep a single item they brought with them to the simulation: no sleeping bag, coat or toothbrush.
"I didn't feel so much the homelessness as I did the hunger," McKinley said. "The homelessness was a little superfluous but the hunger was real, and the fatigue that came with it."
McKinley, 82, said she gained "great understanding" by meeting with the homeless in downtown Raleigh, where she did her plunge in 2009. Her new awareness inspired her to step up her church's feeding program, encouraged two groups from church to start serving at the homeless shelter and she initiated a Feed and Read tutoring program at church for children from the nearby trailer park.
It also prompted personal gifts to the Raleigh Rescue Mission, contributions to the local food drive and participation in Christian Women's Job Corps.
Since taking the plunge in 2008, North Carolina WMU President Delores Thomas has become "a virus" that has infected her church "to become more alive and helpful to the homeless" she said.
During her experience she never felt she was playing a game, but "jumped into it as if it was really happening."
Among learning activities, Thomas and her group had to pick up 50 aluminum cans and find out how much they were worth, beg a quarter from a stranger, converse with a homeless person, find something of value in the trash, learn the bus route and fare to the nearest hospital and find a restroom.
"It widened my horizons in so many ways," said Thomas, 66. "I wouldn't take anything for the experience."
Pat Byrd, left, of Ahoskie First Baptist Church, asks for an opinion on her clothes closet choice from Shayna McReynolds.
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LaCount Anderson, who runs the Union Rescue Mission in Roanoke Rapids, recognizes middle class "plungers" really understand neither poverty nor the poor. When volunteers passing out food boxes resented putting boxes into expensive cars, Anderson said the poor often borrow a car or beg a ride to pick up their food and the car may be a friend's.
A classic middle class reaction is to assume a panhandler is asking for money he will use to buy beer. When we refuse to give money because of how the beggar might use it, "We don't really care for the individual," Anderson said. "We just don't want our money to go to beer."
Ultimately people forced to live on the street were delivered by bad decisions. "You're not born knowing how to make right decisions," Anderson said. "Your mother and daddy teach you that. Their parents didn't teach them that."
Anderson wants to start similar rescue missions in nearby Ahoskie and Edenton where workers will get beyond the "band aide" approach to poverty, such as giving clothes, food or paying an electric bill.
"You need to know these people; make a relationship with them; make a commitment to follow them through life," he said. "Give them an opportunity to use the talents God has given them. They are precious people and they have talent."
"If you have a headache and go to the doctor and he prescribes Tylenol and you discover you have a brain tumor, that's not very helpful. That's what the church does. We give out aspirins."
Anderson said his work in eastern North Carolina is pioneer work for the CBF, helping churches identify opportunities and do missions in their own back yard, with an emphasis on poverty. Median household income in Halifax County is just 60 percent of that in North Carolina. More than a fourth of the population lives on income below the poverty line.
The Union Rescue Mission is a focal point of ministry. Men stay as long as they need to and everyone has a task, what Anderson calls "work therapy," in at least one of the mission's businesses. Anderson's goal is to help each man get a job after they've gotten a handle on their lives.
He compares the rescue ministry to Interstate 95 that runs north and south past Roanoke Rapids. "You pull off into that rest area and while you're here we try to help you figure out what exit you're going to take down the road," he said.
Anderson admits he cries more while doing poverty ministry than at any point in his three decades as a minister.
"Sometimes I just wonder if many of us go to work in the church planning to do this but never get to it because of church work," he said. "For me, this is the church."
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Norman Jameson is reporting and coordinating special projects for ABP on an interim basis. He is former editor of the North Carolina Biblical Recorder.
Read more New Voice stories:
• Debriefing a poverty simulation
• Poverty simulation begs middle class questions
• Poverty simulations have long history