Best Game in Town: Interfaith

In early summer 2001, I walked into the ULM Catholic Student Center where a meeting was just getting underway. By the end of that meeting, I knew that I had found something of great value. It was a meeting of leaders of Northern and Central Louisiana Interfaith.

The first thing that got my attention that evening was the mix of people in the room. They were African American and white, Missionary Baptist and Episcopalian, Church of God in Christ and Lutheran, Ba’hai and Jewish, from the north side and the south side, teachers and janitors, businessmen and laborers, and although it was less immediately obvious, they were poor and middle class and relatively well-off. And they were there to work together for the good of the community.

Interfaith celebrates its 10th Birthday with a skit.

Of course, I did not yet understand how my own life would be affected, but I remember leaving the Catholic Student Center thinking, “this is the best thing happening in this community.” I have been involved with Interfaith ever since. We have had our ups and downs, successes and failures, and we are now in a time of rebuilding. But it has changed my life, it has changed the community, and I still think it is the best thing happening in this community.

Why? Of course I must mention some of our big successes, like getting the city and the school board to cooperate in closing a 12-foot deep drainage ditch that runs right along the edge of the playground of Madison James Foster Elementary School. Teachers had fished more than one kid out of the water during rainy seasons!

The city school system began a cycle of major remodeling projects, but mysteriously ran out of money when they got to the dreadfully inadequate, deteriorating gym at Carroll High School. We went to the school board and said, “That’s not acceptable,” and today Carroll has a new gym.

NOVA might well be our biggest accomplishment to date. NOVA is a workforce intermediary. It is employer driven. It locates living wage jobs with career tracks and benefits that are going begging in this community for lack of skilled applicants. Then NOVA, with the help of Interfaith, recruits motivated but underemployed people in the community, gets them in and through the training they need, and into the jobs employers have been unable to fill. Through NOVA, we are building the middle class of Ouachita Parish.

NOVA executive director Paul West speaks to an Interfaith assembly.

Just a few weeks ago, NOVA expanded into the Delta. NOVA, with the help of Interfaith, will conduct two graduation ceremonies this summer. The one for Delta graduates has not yet been scheduled. However, Ouachita Parish graduates will commence at St. Thomas’ Episcopal at 7 p.m. July 26. Come to hear how lives have been changed—not only those of individuals but of entire families!

But most important of all to me is the relationships I have found and cultivated through Interfaith. I am welcome at New Light Baptist Church and am on the board of directors of their community development organization. I am connected with people at Jesus the Good Shepherd Catholic Church, at Mt. Nebo Missionary Baptist Church, at Messiah Lutheran, at Lighthouse Church of God in Christ, and the list goes on.

My relationships through Interfaith are central to my rootedness in this community. They are what make “community” out of diversity for me.

Want to get involved? Interfaith needs organized money and organized people to do what it does. I’ll write more about that next month, but for now, see me if you’d like to help. And I will definitely need some folks to provide finger foods for the reception to follow the NOVA graduation!