Every Monday morning, 50 or more people wait at the door of Jubilee Jobs, a small faith-based employment service in Washington, DC. They show up for the weekly orientation, hoping that there is an immediate job waiting for them. The good news is that, if they can make it through the preparation week, there will be a job for them.
The amazing unrelenting crowd of people on a weekly basis often reminds me of the crowds that Jesus faced time after time. They came, looking for food, healing, a loving touch, hope. Our crowds are looking for work and their demeanor is often to look sullen, depressed, discouraged, despairing. Yet they have shown up at least one more time with a glimmer of hope. Or perhaps some one else's glimmer of hope for them.
At the stroke of 9 a.m. we swing into action and walk everyone up the street from Jubilee Jobs to the Festival Center. We might gather a straggler or two, but once in the Festival Center doors close and no late-comers are allowed in.
Who?
Who are these folk and where do they come from? The unemployment rate in DC is the lowest in years. Yet every week we keep having large numbers of new applicants. These are the forgotten or ignored, hidden in the inner city neighborhoods, halfway houses and housing projects. These are our city's homeless, ex-offenders, recovering addicts, welfare mothers, newly arrived immigrants.
These are Jesus' people -- the weak and outcast whom he loved specially. He promised that a drink of water or a morsel of food or even a job given to one of the least of these was the same as giving to Him
Spirit Goal
About the time of Pentecost last year, the wind of the Spirit blew through Jubilee Jobs and whispered the magic number 1000. It felt right, if not logical, to work toward placing 1000 applicants in marketplace jobs in 1999. Strategic planning could not have given us this goal, a third larger than our 730 placements of the previous year with staff size the same. It took the Holy Spirit to call forth this effort.
Applicants often sense themselves connected to something be yond the practicalities of the job placement process. One put it this way, "I just had to step back and let the miracle happen." We too live is Walter Wink puts it, "in expectation of miracles". They happen almost every day.
Jubilee Jobs did place 1023 people last year into marketplace jobs. It looks like we will place another 1000 this year. Already over 500 people have gone to work in the year 2000. This is important and does offer a beginning on the journey to sustenance, dignity and hope which work has the potential to offer.
Workplace Realities
The exultant joy of the applicant at the time of being hired brings laughter and sometimes tears of relief. Quickly, however, the harsh reality of the work world, the marketplace, our acquisitive, money driven society becomes evident The living wage in Washington, DC is at a minimum $10 per hour. Few of those thousand placements will earn even beyond the minimum wage of $6.15 in DC and less in Virginia or Maryland. Even $8 per hour is not enough for one person to pay rent, buy food, cover transportation, yet I recently heard a director in a church sponsored organization defend the low wages on the basis of it being an attractive place to work!
To make each placement successful, we support applicants in their early days of employment --- keep in touch by phone, mail and programs, and keep nudging applicants to take steps which we will help with toward a better job. The move-up process happens, but not as much as we would like or applicants need.
Bridge the Gap
Jubilee Jobs has been a call for me. The community of love and support which God led me to at Church of the Saviour gave me disciplines of Bible study and prayer revealing Jesus' deep love for the dispossessed. It opened my heart to a call to this ministry to the unemployed poor.
Now I am part of the Friends of Jesus Church, which is committed to finding ways to bridge the gap between those who have too much and those who do not even have enough. The Zachaeus Fund, investment groups, economic counseling - these are just our beginnings to address this structural injustice in our society, our economy. I am grateful for the privileged and educated family and environment in which I grew up because those advantages make it possible for me to work with both funders and employers which we need for support and placement.
Jubilee Jobs will keep on placing applicants as carefully but quickly as possible. We are currently doing a research project to look at past placements and who has been successful and who has not been successful. Are there characteristics in applicants which make for success? Are there certain jobs which are better? Where are the move up jobs? What do applicants need to do to find and succeed in those jobs? We may not find out anything of use or interest but at least we want to look.
Servant Leaders
Beneath the pain and struggles of broken lives, there is a beautiful and precious person. At Jubilee Jobs we focus on giving each applicant our full attention, seeing their lives with all the goodness and positive dimensions -- to see each person in that crowd as Jesus sees them. We need to do more, to express more specifically the spiritual reality which is our foundation.
Working in a small non-profit organization, addressing a large and serious need in our city, we become acutely aware of the need for leadership for our city. We need servant leaders for the present and the future. What better place to discover and evoke leadership than from those crowds of people waiting every Monday morning, created in God's image, coded with God's love beneath the exterior --- and sometimes eager for a new dimension of calling in their lives.
Terry Flood is the Director of Jubilee Jobs in Washington, D.C. and a member of Friends of Jesus, a Church of the Saviour community.