Iowa Church Helps Troubled Youth with Community Service Project

Danielle De Ruiter had finished dropping off a stack of fliers inside the the police department in Pella, Iowa when she spotted Blake sweeping the floor.

On the way out, De Ruiter says, she stopped and handed the teenager a flier, which promoted a program called Project Second Chance at her church.

“I told him a little bit about it and then left,” said De Ruiter, who works decorating cakes and cookies at a local bakery and serves as the children and youth ministry coordinator at Grace Fellowship CRC.

“A little while later, I got a call from Blake’s mother who asked about the program and told me that her son should come because he needed Jesus in his life.”

Blake, she said, had gotten into some trouble and was sweeping the floor at the police station as part of a community service requirement. She told Blake’s mother he could possibly do some of that service at the church.

Not long after Blake’s mother called, the young man showed up at Grace Fellowship for the mid-week youth group and pitched in by helping to put away games.

“It was neat seeing the interaction between him and the kids,” said De Ruiter.

As it turns out, Blake was the first young person to be there on a  Wednesday night to take part in Project Second Chance, which is funded through a grant from Christian Reformed Church’s Sustaining Congregational Excellence (SCE) program.

SCE seeks to foster health in smaller congregations — so they can flourish. It was formed to advance the denominational priority to create and sustain healthy congregations. Since it began in 2007, 74 percent of smaller CRC congregations (two-thirds of all CRCs) have participated in SCE programming.

“We’ve been plugging away at our grant and working at this for several months, but it is just now getting off the ground,” said De Ruiter.

Project Second Chance has the goal of offering young people such as Blake an opportunity to do some of their community service work at the church. This might be painting or yard work or, under the guidance of trained persons such as De Ruiter, assisting with the youth group.

In addition, Project Second Chance seeks to connect young people who need to do community service with a trained mentor from the church who can assist the young person in schooling and other activities.

Beyond that, they want to bring the love of Christ to the young people and whenever possible welcome them into the fellowship of Sunday worship, said De Ruiter.

“The whole idea is to offer them moral support and give them someone to talk to, to share stories with, to pray with, and to walk side by side with them,” she said.

In the case of Blake, she said, “he is nearly finished with his community service hours and he may not need to come back for that. But we hope to see him again.”

When Rev. Don Ridder became Grace Fellowship’s new pastor last year, he recommended the church apply for a Sustaining Congregational Excellence grant, said De Ruiter.

Having worked in the past with troubled young people in their fellowship who had community service hours to do, they decided to seek support to offer this kind of ministry, she said.

In its application for the SCE grant, the church wrote: “We had three youth within our current high school program this Fall (2014) that we helped to complete community service.

“One of the youth … made numerous comments that his time spent interacting with people within our congregation was much more impactful than ‘washing cop cars’.”

As part of Project Second Chance, said De Ruiter, they have contacted local probation officers, school personnel and others to let them know about the program.

They also offered church members training sessions that provided information about youth growing up in families dealing with poverty.

This was based on Ruby Payne’s book A Framework for Understanding Poverty and was given by a community resource center called The Well.

“These sessions gave us an idea how to relate to these kids. They drew our church together and got us rolling,” said De Ruiter.

Now that Blake attended one of the youth group sessions, they hope to see more young people in need of community service taking part in Project Second Chance, she said.

The grant funding runs through early 2016 and after that the church plans to be able to cover the costs of Project Second Chance.

“We see a need for this in our community,” said De Ruiter. “We want these young people to know more about Jesus and to help them build strong lives of faith.”