Faith leaders present God’s work in Cleveland at CCDA Conference.
As many may know, a bus full of mission-minded Cleveland leaders recently spent a few days in Cincinnati absorbing all that the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) Conference had to offer. As Building Hope in the City’s (BHITC) very own Community and Leader Development Director, Dr. Vatreisha Nyemba, is now a CCDA Board Member, many of the BHITC staff made the journey to support the association’s largest event of the year.
In addition to her work on the board, Dr. Vatreisha served as a workshop presenter at the conference with her BHITC Community Development teammates: Yomarie Gonzalez - Enrichment Coordinator and Luis Luna, Hope Grows Coordinator. Together the three of them shared with a full room of people all eager to hear how the CCD principles have woven into their program area at BHITC, giving it a solid foundation.
‘Place’ and ‘proximity’ were the words of the day it seemed, as all three of the presenters live in the ‘place’ that they are serving daily. This core value of theirs really struck a chord with the audience as many questions led to hands raising one after the other. “What are the benefits of living where you serve?” one person asked. Another audience member expressed that “living where you serve is great and allows you to really understand the need, but doesn’t it feel like you never have a break from your work then?”
Each question, as valid as the next, continued the conversation and allowed for our three BHITC presenters to share their personal experience with living in the community they serve. Luis is hopeful that not only did their workshop open up conversation among those that attended, but that it was the spark that lights the fire of some real change in communities across the country. He noticed right away that “people are hungry to learn about CCD principles and take the values back to their communities.”
Because BHITC began out of a church 20 years ago, the relationships between neighborhood churches and BHITC have watered the seed of our mission from the very beginning.
It became clear throughout the presentation that other communities do not have the same luxury of church partnerships, “there was a woman talking about her community and how the local church should get more involved in the needs. She said that they are willing to donate money and help financially, but their church is not as willing to be deeply involved in the community with their time or effort. She asked us how we have been able to involve churches deeper in our mission with the community and I was immediately grateful thinking about the churches in Cleveland who come alongside us. I told her that building those relationships takes time. It did not happen overnight and still takes a lot of effort,” Luis shared.
Now, was it mentioned that Luis and Yomarie are also a married couple? Well, they didn’t mention that either in their CCDA presentation until the very end… and the audience erupted with laughter, realizing how much more the stories lined up and made sense with that added detail. Each person seemed to think that when Luis mentioned his ‘wife’ and Yomarie mentioned her ‘husband’ while sharing their personal experiences, they were not speaking of each other. Had they mentioned that from the beginning, it would have made a lot more sense to the audience why these two had such similar lives. However, the unintentional and funny punch line demonstrated the unique gifting a husband and wife duo like Luis and Yomarie bring to BHITC.
When the formal presentation was over, the three allowed for casual conversation and mingling throughout the room. With these continued conversations, Luis was hopeful to know that although his and Yomaries’s personal story may be different than those they had presented to, “I hope it impacted other people's view of serving their community after listening to the story we shared of our time living and working in Clark-Fulton.”
Outside of the time of their own presentations, those who led workshops within the week of CCDA still got to absorb all that the conference had to offer. “The panels at the plenary sessions were so good… the disability panel and the justice system panels were really eye opening to how different members of the community experience church in different ways,” Yomarie shared.
It was an incredible week to see how the network of Cleveland’s faith leaders show up for one another and share the mission that God has called them to do.
