July 23, 2001

Week of Prayer for State Missions Sept. 9-16
	MEN at the Oasis of Life ministry center gather around a table for study and support. (Photos by Ken Camp)

Texas offering helps Amarillo church be presence of Christ
___By Ken Camp
___Texas Baptist Communications
___AMARILLO--The people at Buchanan Street Baptist Chapel understand what it means to be "the presence of Christ" in their inner-city setting. It's all about loving people where they are.
___"When I was in seminary, I had an evangelism professor who gave us the definition of love," Pastor Larry Mills recalled. "He said, 'Love is

ROBERT GEORGE (left), a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for 10 years, visits with Pastor Larry Mills of Buchanan Street Baptist Chapel outside the abandoned motel that now serves as the Oasis of Life residential facility for men recovering from substance abuse.

meeting needs.' That's what we're doing here."
___A typical day for Mills may begin by leading a morning devotional in the church basement for young adults wrestling with mental illness.
___Afterward, he might stop at the mission's community center to make sure canned goods are shelved and clothing is properly sorted.
___Walking out of the building, he could pass a classroom where three unemployed women--one divorced, one married and one pregnant but separated from her husband--are learning computer techniques and discussing life issues.
___He might drive a few miles and pull into the rough gravel driveway of a run-down motel that narrowly escaped demolition. Four recovering alcoholics gather there around a table, beneath the single bare light bulb that hangs from the ceiling of the musty room, as one of their peers leads a Bible study.
___"I've always pastored country churches. I never thought I'd be doing something like this," Mills said. "But I learned a long time ago not to be surprised by anything."
___After two decades serving rural churches in Erath Baptist Association, Mills and his family moved to Amarillo two and a half years ago when his wife accepted a teaching post at West Texas State University and Mills became pastor of the inner-city mission of Amarillo's First Baptist Church.
___It was a homecoming of sorts for Mills, who grew up on a farm near Tulia and whose family moved to Amarillo when he was a teenager.
___"My being here is the kind of thing only God could work out," he said. "I never thought I would pastor a church five blocks from where I went to high school."
___Mills acknowledged it has been an adjustment, moving from a rural area where everyone knows everyone else and all their extended family members to a place where people come and go every few weeks.
___"People are pretty transient here, so I've gotten where I leave the baptistry full and the heater turned on," Mills quipped. "They may be here three weeks and then gone."
___It also has been a culture shock as he has learned to minister among people who know practically nothing about organized religion in general and the Christian gospel in particular.
___"It's an interesting church we have here. We have a lot of people who don't take baths, who have cockroaches in their homes, who have been on drugs, who have lost a child to Child Protective Services, who live together and are not married. I married one couple who had been together for 15 years and had seven children. We have to love them where they are," Mills said, adding that it's not always easy.
___"I've visited in homes with so many cockroaches, when I went back to my house I'd take my clothes off in the garage and shake them out before going inside."
___Buchanan Street Chapel uses a variety of approaches in an effort to transform its community with the gospel. Ministries range from a community service center that offers food and clothing for needy families to a residential facility for male alcoholics to a job training program for women in need.
___Evelyn and Troy Perkins, a Mission Service Corps volunteer couple in their 80s, have directed the food and clothing ministry at the Buchanan Street Community Service Center since 1989. Orientation and training for volunteers in Mission Service Corps is made possible by Texas Baptist gifts to the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas missions.
___Two days each week, about 50 volunteers--most of them senior adults from First Baptist Church of Amarillo--work in the center, which receives support from the Texas Baptist Offering for World Hunger. The center provides for 300 to 500 clients each month.
___A few miles away, Buchanan Street Chapel works in partnership with another Mission Service Corps volunteer couple, Robert and Uvonne George, to help support the Oasis of Life ministry.
___Oasis of Life is a residential facility for men seeking to overcome chemical dependency. The six-month, Christ-centered, 12-step program includes 90 days in a controlled environment at what once had been the Ellis Motor Court.
___George, who notes that he has been "clean and sober for 10 years," started Oasis of Life last December as a ministry for other recovering alcoholics and substance abusers.
___"These people who have slipped through the cracks in the organized church are those we're called to minister to," he said.
___The Georges live at the donated facility, only half of which is inhabitable. Even the rooms used by Oasis of Life have bare concrete floors and no air conditioning.
___"It's not much, but most of these men would have been in prison or on the streets otherwise. It's better than that," George said.
___While the Oasis of Life is exclusively for men and the community service center focuses on ministry to families, last year Buchanan Street Chapel also began offering a program specifically for women.
___Christian Women's Job Corps is a ministry of Woman's Missionary Union designed to help unemployed or underemployed women learn job skills and life skills in a Christian context. Texas Baptists help support the program through their gifts to the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas missions.
___In addition to computer instruction and classes in money management and communication skills, participants in the program also attend Bible studies together.
___The women enrolled in Christian Women's Job Corps are paired with mature Christian women who agree to serve as their mentors for at least three months after graduation.
___The relationships they build, both with other women in the program and with their mentors, are as important as the job readiness training they receive, according to participants.
___"People here love you regardless of who you are, what you've done or where you've been," said Kim Patterson, a May graduate of Christian Women's Job Corps. "I've learned that there are people who can accept you for who you are."
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