Mission Houston Newsletter

Press Release
October 28, 2007

Mission Houston Refines the Focus on Whole & Healthy Children

Mission Houston announced that it is further refining the scope of its multi-year initiative to make greater Houston renowned for Whole and Healthy Children by calling the Body of Christ to a concerted focus on serving the public schools of our communities. Our target will be the transformation of the education sector by mobilizing support for those public school district elementary schools that have the largest percentages of at-risk kids and insufficient resources.

Mission Houston is an interdenominational ministry whose overarching, long-term goal is the spiritual and social revitalization of communities across greater Houston.

The goal of the seven-year focus is to collaborate with individual Christians, congregations, ministries and existing service providers

to recruit and deploy 100 mentors for each of the 135 most needy schools, and
to raise at least $10,000 for each school

Jim Herrington, the ministry’s founder and Chairman of the Board, says "Our ministry will serve the collaborative process. In some communities, there is good work already being done by individual congregations or ministries. We aren’t competing with them. We’ll join them and help fill in the gaps where they exist. In other communities there is no work currently underway, and in those communities, we will recruit folks to meet those needs."

This new initiative means that in the seventh year 13,500 mentors will be deployed and at least $1,350,000 in financial support for these schools will be raised.

Mission Houston’s desire is to see God’s influence established and expanding in every sector of every community in greater Houston. Of all the sectors in the city, there is a broadly shared sense that the public school in many parts of the city is both severely under-resourced and the most receptive to offers of help … even from the faith community. "The impact of this one sector touches every other sector," said Steve Capper, Executive Director of Mission Houston. "During CityFest Houston we mobilized teams that conducted 26 school beautification projects in 13 school districts. More than 2500 volunteers participated, and the projects were valued at more than $250,000.

In the year since CityFest, relationships with officials in a number of the schools where projects were done have been strengthened, and varieties of new projects have been completed or are underway. We’ve had a growing sense that this is what God is doing in our city, and we are seeking to align our ministry to join Him."

In order to effectively implement this narrowed Whole & Healthy Children focus, Mission Houston has divided the city into 45 Community Service Areas (CSAs). Mission Houston will launch teams in 6 CSAs each year for the seven years of this initiative.
Bellaire/Southwest Houston is a CSA that has committed to begin in the first year, 2008. During CityFest this CSA’s facilitation team, headed by Bob Chenoweth, a business leader and an elder at Houston’s First Presbyterian Church, helped remodel the school library at Cunningham Elementary. Now his team is working with Gordon Elementary in HISD. When asked why he thought this initiative is so needed, he said: "Gordon is an example of a school with great leadership but limited resources. Many of the children don’t have an adult in their lives who can read English. Because most parents are hourly wage earners, the school doesn’t receive strong financial support from the parent’s organization. That means that many of the things a PTO would provide are simply missing in this school. School officials have acknowledged that our efforts at Gordon are having a lot of impact; and we can already see that as more groups come alongside what is happening there, our impact will be increased significantly."

Kevin Barber, Pastor of Baca Christian Center and a Mission Houston Board member echoed Chenoweth’s sentiments. "It is unfair for any child to be in a setting where the basic needs of a good learning environment are simply not present. The Church has historically responded to this kind of injustice. In Isaiah 54:1 the prophet says, ‘Listen to me, my people; hear me, my nation: The law will go out from me; my justice will become a light to the nations.’ This Whole and Healthy Children initiative is a collective and collaborative response of the Church of to be an instrument of justice that brings the light of the Gospel into the lives of these children who are in ‘unfair’ situations through no fault of their own."

Mission Houston has been identifying those who are already at work on the challenges in the education sector. They are building a collaborative team of individuals, ministries, businesses, and congregations who have passion and a willingness to be used by God to see the public schools of greater Houston, and the lives of the children who attend the schools, transformed.

We invite you to join us! Contact us at info@missionhouston.org for more information about ways you can help.