Thirty years ago, a group of Samford University students drove 900 miles in two days from Birmingham, Ala., to New York City to renovate an abandoned storefront that would serve as a Southern Baptist community center on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Thirty years ago, a group of Samford University
students drove 900 miles in two days from Birmingham, Ala., to New York
City to renovate an abandoned storefront that would serve as a Southern
Baptist community center on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
They did not know they were working on the ministry that would revolutionize a neighborhood.
“It was something we did when we were foolish
college kids and didn’t know what we were biting off, but it’s had such
a lasting impact for Christ in this neighborhood,” says Karon Bowdre,
one of the 19 students who served at what would become the headquarters
of Graffiti Community Ministries.
This summer, 12 of the 19 students reunited at
Graffiti, the umbrella ministry that also served as the beginning of
East 7th Street Baptist Church and has been the subject of countless
news stories, a book, and the center of Christian outreach to an
inner-city neighborhood.
The original student group came to New York in 1975
as part of a class held during Samford’s January term. After two weeks
of learning about urban ministry, they set off for a week-long hands-on
experience on the Lower East Side. Leaders had identified the area as a
place in need of special attention and outreach, and the Samford
students were among the first groups to participate in a ministry that
has hosted thousands of volunteers since.
“Without (those students), more than 500,000 meals
wouldn’t have been served, 300,000 tutoring hours wouldn’t have been
put in, nine new churches wouldn’t have been sponsored and countless
lives wouldn’t have been touched by Jesus,” says Taylor Field, who has
served as Graffiti’s pastor and a North American missionary for nearly
20 years.
Rex Hammock was one of those original students who
recently revisited the site. Hammock acknowledges he remains in “awe
and shock over the fact that something we did turned into something so
significant that it has affected so many lives and an entire
neighborhood.”
Ana Maria Nieves is clear evidence of Graffiti’s
impact. Pointing to a photo of neighborhood children that the Samford
group worked with when they returned as summer missionaries after that
initial visit, Nieves identifies herself as one of the kids. Now, she
works with Graffiti.
“I’ve wondered for 30 years what happened to some of
those kids,” says Dick Bodenhamer, who was one of the original Samford
students. “(Ana Maria Nieves is) proof-positive that something
wonderful came out of this.”
Throughout the reunion, the group share how their
lives were impacted by the trip in 1975. They describe how it affected
major life decisions, including who they married and what career they
chose.
Bodenhamer notes several members of the original
group now are in full-time ministry, and those who work in other fields
still are affected daily by what they did and saw in New York in 1975.
Hammock agrees, saying the reunion has reminded him
how ministry can change people and places, even when those who are
ministering are not expecting their actions to have a big impact.
“It’s not always so much the big things we do as the little things,” he says.
One of those little things was naming the site 30 years ago, Hammock recall.
“We had been cautioned that no matter what we did,
there would be graffiti on the side wall,” he says. “We were sitting
there looking at it, and we decided we might as well just call it
‘graffiti’ and invite people to do what they were already going to do.
“It’s now the name of a ministry that does a lot of
incredible things, …” Hammock adds. “It’s a fitting metaphor for what
has taken place and for the community that it’s in, a fitting name for
what the ministry has been over the years.” (BP)