Mothers Ending Poverty: MaryBeth Stover, Marietta, Pennsylvania

Leading up to Mother’s Day, the NCC Poverty Initiative is sharing a series of stories lifting up, celebrating, and praying for mothers who are fighting poverty and alleviating suffering in their communities.

Prayer for Marybeth: God, thank you for expressing your love through MaryBeth to her family and community members seeking employment. Thank you for filling her heart with love of her neighbor. When times get tough, fill her with your grace and courage. Bless and strengthen her family and her work. In good times and bad, let her life overflow with the deepest joy that only You can give. Amen.

Recognized by: Lancaster County Council of Churches in Lancaster, PA

A single mom, MaryBeth Stover worked hard to get off welfare and to overcome homelessness and poverty in her own life. Now, through her work, she is inspiring others to follow her lead.  Not only is MaryBeth a caring and devoted mother to her two children, but MaryBeth Stover inspires so many who are trying to build a better life for themselves and their families. In her current job as a career counselor to the unemployed, this bubbly and vivacious woman works with people who are experiencing the desperation and poverty she herself faced three years ago. She encourages them to persist and to hold onto their dreams. “If I can crawl out of poverty,” she often says, “you can, too.”

Only a few years ago, MaryBeth and her two children were living on public assistance in a tiny, one-bedroom apartment. At the time, she worked as a data entry clerk but her job was 14 miles from her home, and, she had no car. She depended on the one bus that came in the morning and the one that returned in the evening to get to and from home and work. But many times the bus came late, or she missed her bus connection while bringing her infant son to child care. Though her  supervisor warned her about lateness and told her she was in danger of losing her job, she saw no way to correct what she couldn’t control. No matter how early she rose in the morning she couldn’t change the bus schedule. Nor could she change her work schedule. While she knew she could lose her job, she didn’t see a solution. She didn’t have the money to buy a car, and the car she tried to borrow left her stranded and in tears.

She felt trapped until she learned about Wheels to Work, a Lancaster County Council of Churches program that sells dependable, used cars below cost to the underemployed. Through the Wheels to Work program, MaryBeth purchased a car. That first Friday night she owned her car, she drove her children the four hours to the Maryland shore. She wanted them to play in the sand, to feel the breeze, smell the salt air,  and watch the ocean waves roll onto the beach. “We arrived about midnight and went on the beach,” she recalls, with tears rolling down her cheeks. “ I didn’t have money to stay anywhere, so we all played on the beach for an hour or so. Then we drove home. We all had a wonderful time.” Having this ability to give her children a trip to the beach, even a brief one, meant the world to MaryBeth, and this beach trip also marked the beginning of a new life for MaryBeth and her family.

MaryBeth’s personality and persistence, supported by an old, reliable Toyota, has changed everything. Now a star employee, MaryBeth has received three raises. “I’m making it,” she exclaims. “I’m paying my bills. I bought a little house with a little garden out front. I love my job, because I get to see other people succeeding, too. I love being able to pay back by helping others, and I love being able to do more for my children.”

MaryBeth is a member of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Please join us in wishing a Happy Mother’s Day to MaryBeth Stover and to hard-working mothers everywhere.

Mothers Fighting Poverty: Rev. Kathleen Wilder, St. Louis, Missouri

Leading up to Mother’s Day, the NCC Poverty Initiative is sharing a series of stories lifting up, celebrating, and praying for mothers who are fighting poverty and alleviating suffering in their communities.

Prayer for Kathleen: God, thank you for expressing your love through Kathleen to hungry and sojourning people of St. Louis. Thank you for filling her heart with love of her neighbor. When times get tough, fill her with your grace and courage. Bless and strengthen her family and her work. In good times and bad, let her life overflow with the deepest joy that only You can give. Amen.

Rev. Kathleen Wilder is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and has pastored Centenary United Methodist Church in St. Louis since 2007. She has cultivated a ministry of caring and courageous people with a strong commitment to serving the city of St. Louis. Centenary church provides a significant part of St. Louis’ plan to end homelessness through The Bridge (formerly CENTENARY CARES), the primary drop-in center for the City of St. Louis. Through The Bridge ministry, the church has served over 200,000 breakfasts, lunches, and dinners seven days a week to homeless and food insecure persons since November 2005, and provides many additional social services as well. Rev Wilder is an outspoken advocate for social justice, and a deeply compassionate and hard working person. She holds up her staff, and is a great collaborator with other ministries in St. Louis. She is the loving mother of three children; Andy, Jesse and Grace.

Recognized by: Dr. Deborah Krause and Dr. Martha Robertson of Eden Theological Seminary

Mothers Ending Poverty: Stephanie Krauss, St. Louis, Missouri

Leading up to Mother’s Day, the NCC Poverty Initiative is sharing a series of stories lifting up, celebrating, and praying for mothers who are fighting poverty and alleviating suffering in their communities.

Prayer for Stephanie: Creator God, thank you for expressing your love to disconnected and dropout youth through Stephanie. Thank you for filling her heart with a passion for “the least of these” (Mt 25:40). When times get tough, fill her with your grace and courage. Bless and strengthen her family and her work. In good times and bad, let her life overflow with the deepest joy that only You can give. Amen.

At age 15, Stephanie Malia Krauss dropped out of high school. In her teenage years, she experienced adversity, but thank God she found support to get her GED, go to college, teach with Teach for America, and continue on to get two master degrees in Education and Social Work. Her experience of feeling lost in her teens led her to found the Shearwater High School, a college-preparatory public charter school serving disconnected and dropout youth, ages 17-21 in St. Louis, Missouri.  Inspired by her faith and her hope for a better future for other youth like her, she has raised millions in financial and in-kind contributions to the school. Now, she is president and CEO of Shearwater Education Foundation, an organization that aims to lead policy change and program design efforts that positively impact the education of disconnected youth, which includes supporting the growth and development of Shearwater High School. She serves as a member of the St. Louis Regional College Access Pipeline Project, and as an advisory board member of Preferred Family Healthcare.

Stephanie leads with confidence but also humility, ensuring the school and Foundation are focused on the students and not on a charismatic founder (although she has a gift for making fast friends!). Stephanie’s always being mindful of working to put family and faith first in spite of the demands and importance of her life’s work. She lives with her husband, Evan in St. Louis with their two young sons, Justice Hi’ilani and Harrison Drew Koali’i. Her family participates in a Mennonite community.

Recognized by: Shantha Ready Alonso, for whom Stephanie is a dear friend from social work school and a great inspiration.

Our God, Born into Poverty: A Christmas Reflection.

Yesterday on Capitol Hill, we held the last Faithful Budget prayer vigil of the year. Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, led the vigil. Please read the compelling Christmas reflection he offered yesterday. It is a theological reflection on the meaning of the incarnation for the engagement of Christians in poverty and justice issues.

Grace and Peace,

Michael Livingston

Director, National Council of Churches Poverty Initiative

Reflections from Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon on Why Christians Should Be Particularly Aware of Poverty and Justice Issues at Christmastime.

(Delivered at the Faithful Budget Prayer Vigil on Capitol Hill – December 13, 2011)

I realize that we are an interfaith campaign, but I thought it might be appropriate if I said a brief word about the Christian holiday of Christmas, and why I believe it compels Christians to be here for this vigil.

What Christians confess and celebrate in this season is that “God [the Word] became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). The implications of this are so staggering that I fear we, Christians, often miss them. If we look for God only in spiritual things, if we speak about God’s presence as something that is only in our hearts, if we teach that God’s promise has only to do with heaven, then we may overlook God altogether. Because the God we know and worship was born in a cave where animals were kept—the child of poor, Jewish peasants—threatened by a king who saw in him the seed of political revolution (Luke 2:1-20; Matthew 2:1-18). “Christmas,” writes theologian Shirley Guthrie, “is the story of the radical invasion of God into the kind of real world where we live all year long—a world where there is political unrest and injustice, poverty, hatred, jealousy, and both the fear and longing that things could be different.”

Let me say it another way. The Christian doctrine of incarnation—that God became flesh—affirms that life in this world, though distorted by sin, is supremely precious to the Creator. In the Christ child, Christians see the purpose of God who has drawn near that humanity (all creation!) may have abundant life (John 10:10)—not just in another realm, but here and now.

That’s why a religion that celebrates incarnation cannot remain aloof from political oppression or economic injustice or environmental destruction. God, Christians believe, became flesh, the ultimate act of solidarity with this world in all its political, economic, and ecological messiness. And that’s why the church, as the primary instrument of God’s purpose for Christians, is called to promote social transformation toward the day when God’s will for abundant life is realized on earth as it is in heaven.

Theologically speaking, re-enactments of the Nativity should not take place inside our sanctuaries, but outside the doors of the church, in the midst of the everyday world where “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19). To put it simply and bluntly: A church that is indifferent to worldly struggles, indifferent to the plight of the poor, is following its own agenda, not God’s.