Who is my neighbor?
One of the easiest ways to love your neighbor as yourself is to get involved in community missions. Our church started Bellevue Loves Memphis in 2007 to provide quarterly “mission trips” for our members. We currently have twenty-five pathways through which our members can be involved. We serve inner-city churches, schools, and ministries.
My neighbor in Memphis includes the children in my city—34.7% of which live in poverty.
Did you know that children in poverty on average are three grade levels behind their more affluent peers by the fourth grade?
Did you know that two-thirds of the children who are not reading proficiently by fourth grade will end up either on welfare or in prison?
Did you know that sixty percent of young men entering prison cannot read at a third grade level?
These statistics were weighing on me during the summer of 2012. I had been volunteering for four years in the inner city with a small number of children. I was praying over our city when I felt these words impressed upon my mind and heart, This is your city; these are your children; what are you doing about it? I had been kneeling as I prayed. I rocked back on my heels and said out loud, “I don’t know. It feels really overwhelming!”
Immediately, I knew that churches (Christ’s people) could adopt inner city schools and focus on literacy and the gospel. This is the hope for disrupting the generational poverty cycle that is so prevalent in our cities.
Memphis, my hometown, has one of the highest child poverty rates in the nation. This is my city. I knew the Lord was calling me. I called the staff member at our church who was the liaison between our church and the schools. She called the volunteer coordinator and told her what we wanted to do. She said, “That is wonderful because my mandate from the Board this year is to increase the number of faith-based organizations that adopt schools.”
The Lord had gone before us and opened the door. That “wide door of effective service” has been continuing to open. ARISE2Read.org was birthed after that prayer time. We became a nonprofit in 2015. This fall we will be in fourty-eight schools in Shelby County and fourteen states. We also seek to provide an after-school Bible club for the schools. Arise2Read hired our first full-time evangelism director this past year.
Our mission is to provide coaches for second-grade students utilizing the 1,000-word Frye Sight Word list. Each child is coached one-on-one, one hour a week. Our goal is to have these students reading on grade level by the third grade.
We pre- and post-test our students. This past year the students had a 563% increase in children reading on sight word grade level! They averaged over a three-grade level increase in sight word fluency.
The good news is if children in poverty are reading proficiently by the end of the third grade, they have an 89% graduation rate—the same rate as middle-income children!
That is tremendous news for the students, but the volunteers are impacted as dramatically as the students. The volunteers fall in love with the students they coach. The poverty rate and poor reading statistics now have a face and a name. The volunteers don’t want to stop with reading. Clothes closets, food pantries, and campus beautification have grown out of the volunteers’ desire to do more.
This simple one hour a week act of service has a profound impact on all who are involved. The teachers tell us that behavior problems go down in the classroom. Teachers are encouraged as we provide two teacher appreciation meals each year for the schools we adopt.
Serving in the schools has opened additional doors of service. We were asked to help a single mother one year with Christmas gifts for her six children. Our staff and volunteers purchased the gifts. The mom was evicted from her home and moved the children to a different school. We called the other school and set up a meeting to give her the gifts. After talking to her and praying with her, we exchanged phone numbers.
As she drove away, I sensed the Holy Spirit say, “Help her find a place to live.” Through a miraculous set of events, the Lord provided a home to rent back in the community where they lived previously. With a simple email to our volunteers, we moved her and her children into the home, fully furnished, with the kitchen fully stocked, a Christmas tree in the den and a wreath on the door. That is the power of the Lord through willing volunteers!
We go in as the hands and feet of Jesus, praying over our campuses and seeking to be salt and light in our communities. If these children grow up unable to read, they will never be able to read God’s Word for themselves. That is why we focus on the gospel and literacy. Every child who attends one of our Bible clubs receives their own Bible.
Our motto at ARISE2Read is: Save a child. Save a family. Save a city in Memphis and beyond.
What are you doing to impact your community? There are multiple ways to serve and be involved. Pray about what the Lord would have you do. To turn our heads or ignore the need is to ignore Jesus. He said in Matthew 25 that whatever we have done to “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (v. 40). When you look into the face of those in need, you are looking into the face of Jesus.
Pray. Listen. Obey. God is calling His people into the fields that are white unto harvest.
He is the One who has promised to do “above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us” (Eph. 3:20). Answer His call and be amazed at His power unleashed through your acts of service.
For more information, go to arise2read.org.
Listen to our interview with Donna Gaines on the MARKED Podcast:
ABOUT DONNA GAINES
Donna Gaines is a pastor’s wife, former educator (M.Ed. from Texas Woman’s University), Bible teacher, author of four books, (Choose Wisely, Live Fully, Leaving Ordinary: Encounter God Through Extraordinary Prayer, Seated: Living From Our Position in Christ and There’s Gotta Be More) and editor of A Daily Women’s Devotional. Donna is the Founder and President of the Board of ARISE2Read, a nonprofit focused on breaking the generational poverty cycle through the gospel and education. Donna is also the founder and President of the Board of the Pastor’s Wives and Women in Ministry Session of the SBC Pastor’s Conference. Donna joined Robert Lewis (Better Man) in 2022 to create REAL Woman, an 11-week curriculum for women. (realwoman.org).
Donna is a disciple maker who fervently desires to see the lives of women transformed as they encounter God through His Word and prayer. Embracing God’s missional calling on her life, Donna mobilizes women to practically live out their faith through both inner city and international efforts. She is the wife of Dr. Steve Gaines, Sr. Pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church. Steve and Donna have four children and eighteen grandchildren.
