Worship through work

Effective Compassion: Program helps prepare the homeless for life on the job | Kathleen Thorne

RALEIGH, N.C. — On Boyer Street in the heart of urban Raleigh a month ago, four police cars surrounded a dilapidated wooden house, its cornflower blue paint peeling and its sagging roof showing gaping holes where shingles are long gone. Around the corner, decades-old cars filled the parking lot of a chicken-and-biscuits restaurant next to an overgrown baseball field. Rap music drowned out the shriek of an alarm nearby, the bass of the music pulsing so that it shook the cracked concrete.

Down the road, a steady stream of job seekers poured into the open doors of Wesleyan First Church of Deliverance. This summer the church completed its first semester of classes with Jobs for Life, a national organization providing a biblically based job-training curriculum. Program participants celebrated the milestone by hosting a community job fair.