Local leaders gather to address youth violence

By Fritz Klug
Western Herald

Some 35 people are gathered in the sanctuary of Galliee Baptist church, chatting and joking, talking about the Bible and what they saw last night on T.V. Rev. Denise Posie of Immanuel Christian Reformed Church and vice-president of the Northside Ministerial Alliance takes the podium.

“Good morning everyone. If you’re happy to be here, clap!” she said. Everyone starts clapping and the organist begins the song “This is the day the Lord has made.”

So begins the weekly meeting.
The Northside Ministerial Alliance is a Kalamazoo group that strives to reach change in the city.

“We are an agent in the community to bring people together,” Rev. J. Louis Felton, Ph.D.,  said, minister at Galliee and the fourth president of the NMA.

The Alliance was started in the 1960s as part of the Civil Rights struggle. At first, neither women nor lay-people were allowed. The idea of service has changed. Under Felton, anyone willing to work on community problems can become a member. “Whatever your calling may be, you can join,” Felton said.

Today there are 75 members from different parts of the community: Kalamazoo Public School spokesman Alex Lee is a member, so are both Public Safety commissioners, and representatives from Kalamazoo Hospices and the NAACP, as well as pastors from all branches of Christianity.

The Alliance also works with the Temple B’nai Israel and the Congregation of Moses, both Jewish synagogues. In recent meetings, representatives from the Red Cross, New Genesis, Western Theological Seminary, and Western Michigan University’s Theatre Department spoke.
As often defined by Felton: “North is everything above the ground; we all are on the Northside.”

Christian ministry has been a life long pursuit for Felton. Preaching for the first time at Galilee at age 17, Felton, who majored in both political science and history at Western Michigan University, spent eight years at a church in Cassopolis before coming back to Galilee, where he has spent the past 18 years.

“Sunday morning is the most segregated morning in America,” Deacon Joe Schmitt said of St. Thomas Moore Parish.

Trained in the Benedictine tradition and a member of the NMA, Schmitt sees the NMA as a way for peoples of different denominations of Christianity and Faiths to come together in a common forum.
Two months ago, Omari Jackson came to Kalamazoo to set up a church in Comstock, Mich. Having preached for 17 years in Detroit, Jackson said that the NMA is the strongest ministerial council he has seen.

“They have a great mission to improve the community,” he said, “and they are actually out there, doing things.”

Over the years, the NMA has played an important role in Kalamazoo. Gang violence, especially among teenagers, has been prevalent in North and Southside neighborhoods.
The violence began feeding into Loy Norrix and Kalamazoo Central, the local high schools. Felton and other ministers in the Alliance began walking the hallways and talking to students.
At the height of the violence the NMA had offices in both schools. As of Feb. 10, 423 days had passed since a gun homicide. Felton notes the work is not done.
Now the biggest problem facing Kalamazoo is poverty, from which branches many other social problems.

“The greatest way to deal with the poverty issue is to partner with other organizations,” Posie said, “we do not have jobs to hand out, but we can encourage others who do, we can educate and inspire people to be creative and entrepreneurs. We [at the Alliance] know we have our differences, but we work together to improve out quality of life.”

Felton thinks his way of bringing different groups of people to the table is to be like that of President Barack Obama. He supported Obama’s economic stimulus package.

“Unemployment in Kalamazoo is a human issue,” he said.

Education is still at the forefront of the NMA’s agenda.

“We try to share with our parishioners the importance of an education and how it can be achieved with the [Kalamazoo] Promise,” Posie said.

The NMA has had many youth related activities in recent months, including a Martin Luther King Jr. celebration with WMU for area students and a youth rally with WMU professor Dr. Von H. Washington.
Posie also said that the NMA is interested to work with WMU students in tutoring and mentoring programs. Anyone interested can call the NMA at (269) 270-1535.

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Posted by HeraldAdmin on Feb 22 2009. Filed under Local, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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