National spotlight on local church and pastor
WASHINGTON— Buffalo’s St. John Baptist Church and its pastor, the Rev. Michael Chapman, stood out as national examples Wednesday as Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, D-N. Y., pushed New York’s faith-based organizations to seek federal funds and make the most of them. Speaking at Gillibrand’s second annual faith-based legislative summit, Chapman drew up a strategy that could help other religious groups have the kind of impact that St. John Baptist has had in Buffalo. Develop a plan that puts your community first — and then act on it, Chapman said. And in this era of dwindling federal funds, he said, faith-based organizations should rely on partnerships with a range of governments and the private sector to become forces for economic good in their communities. “Everything that we’ve talked about, we have put it on the ground,” Chapman said. “We have the most comprehensive urban development model anywhere in the country.” As a result, Chapman’s church has been able to build new town-homes, a hospice and a charter school, among other facilities. And he encouraged other faith-based communities to do similar work — and to take control of the projects they sponsor so they serve the people who need help most. “You can do a project and have jobs but not create a new work force,” Chapman said. “Because if I do a project and call a construction company to do the project, they’re going to bring in the same folk because they’re trying to keep their people employed.” Chapman’s approach, in contrast, is to create new jobs for people who need them. For that reason, St. John Baptist has established 14 corporations to handle every aspect of its community projects. “We determine who to hire,” he said. “We have our own supply company so the 40 percent markup on supplies comes to us so that we can hire more folk.” In addition, St. John Baptist has shown an ability to work well with various levels of government, said Michele L. Jawando, general counsel and senior adviser to Gillibrand. The church “entered into a really revolutionary partnership” with the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and has been intimately involved in the UB 2020 project, Jawando noted. During a break in the session, Chapman pointed to the complexity of completing the church’s projects. For example, the church relied on 11 separate funding streams for its $2.8 million hospice project. “Collaborative efforts really do pay off,” he said. Chapman also said faithbased groups should not worry too much about cuts in federal funding. “If they had $300 million to give out before a $100 million cut, they’ve still got $200 million,” he said. Still, the scarcity of federal funds was one of the central themes of Gillibrand’s summit, which drew about 175 faithbased leaders from across the state to a Senate hearing room for a day of conversation. The senator herself cited the difficulty of winning federal funding. Of all of the attendees at her faith-based summit a year ago, only two received federal grants, she said. But that may be partly because not enough organizations sought federal funds, Gillibrand added, noting that only 15 such organizations sought letters of support from her office. “That’s not enough,” she said. “We have to do better. We have to apply for more.” Gillibrand stressed that her office will help guide faithbased groups through the process of seeking federal funds. “You are our eyes and ears in every single community in our state,” she said. “We want to be able to coordinate our efforts with you.”
