[House Hearing, 108 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] FAITH-BASED PERSPECTIVES ON THE PROVISION OF COMMUNITY SERVICES ======================================================================= HEARING before the SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES of the COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ AUGUST 25, 2003 __________ Serial No. 108-101 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house http://www.house.gov/reform ______ 91-692 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON : 2004 ____________________________________________________________________________ For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001 COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER, NATHAN DEAL, Georgia Maryland CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Columbia MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JIM COOPER, Tennessee JOHN R. CARTER, Texas CHRIS BELL, Texas WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota ------ MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont (Independent) Peter Sirh, Staff Director Melissa Wojciak, Deputy Staff Director Rob Borden, Parliamentarian Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk Philip M. Schiliro, Minority Staff Director Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman NATHAN DEAL, Georgia ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland JOHN M. McHUGH, New York DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois JOHN L. MICA, Florida WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri DOUG OSE, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER, EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia Maryland JOHN R. CARTER, Texas ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee Columbia CHRIS BELL, Texas Ex Officio TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California J. Marc Wheat, Staff Director and Chief Counsel Elizabeth Meyer, Professional Staff Member Nicole Garrett, Clerk C O N T E N T S ---------- Page Hearing held on August 25, 2003.................................. 1 Statement of: Beasley, Reverend Jesse, Team III, Inc., Fort Wayne, IN; Richard Hart, Salvation Army, Chicago, IL; and Beth Truett, executive director, Partners in Education, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL........................... 12 Moore, Emmett, 11th District Police Steering Committee in Chicago; Richard Townsell, executive director of the Lawndale Christian Development Corp. of Chicago; and Steaven McCullough, chief operating officer, Bethel New Life, Inc., Chicago, IL.................................... 104 Sauder, Tim, executive director of Gateway Woods Children's Home in Leo, IN; Mark Terrell, chief executive officer of Lifeline Youth and Family Service in Fort Wayne; and John Green, executive director of Emmaus Ministries of Chicago.. 56 Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by: Beasley, Reverend Jesse, Team III, Inc., Fort Wayne, IN, prepared statement of...................................... 15 Green, John, executive director of Emmaus Ministries of Chicago, prepared statement of............................. 73 Hart, Richard, Salvation Army, Chicago, IL, prepared statement of............................................... 39 Sauder, Tim, executive director of Gateway Woods Children's Home in Leo, IN, prepared statement of..................... 59 Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State of Indiana, prepared statement of.................... 4 Terrell, Mark, chief executive officer of Lifeline Youth and Family Service in Fort Wayne, prepared statement of........ 64 Truett, Beth, executive director, Partners in Education, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL, prepared statement of......................................................... 44 FAITH-BASED PERSPECTIVES ON THE PROVISION OF COMMUNITY SERVICES ---------- MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2003 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, Committee on Government Reform, Chicago, IL. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:10 a.m., at 3333 West Arthington Street, Chicago, IL, Hon. Mark Souder (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Souder and Davis. Staff present: J. Marc Wheat, staff director and chief counsel; and Elizabeth Meyer, professional staff member and counsel. Mr. Souder. The subcommittee will come to order. We don't have a projection microphone at the table here. They will have one for the witnesses so we will do our best to project as loudly as we can. Unfortunately, without a mic my voice won't sound as deep as Congressman Davis' but I will do the best I can. He is known as the voice of the Congress. We all each morning wake up hoping that an extra day or two in our lives will deepen our voice, too, and we can get out of the puberty stage. Good morning and thank you all for coming to this hearing. I am an ardent believer and supporter of many different things, White Sox baseball for one, and yesterday I was fortunate enough to cheer on my favorite baseball team since 1959 and Nellie Fox, Chicago White Sox unfortunately without much success. Apparently I do better cheering them on radio and TV. In fact, the first point of the day was initially a high point. They actually arranged to put my name up on the score board and then the Texas Rangers hit a three-run home run right after my name went up. I think that sent a message to the dugout, ``I am not going to get upstaged by Souder.'' More important to the purpose of our hearing this morning, I am an ardent believer in the work of the countless faith- based organizations that are helping scores of people in neighborhoods across our entire Nation. Today I am happy to be here in Chicago to convene this third in a series of hearings to discuss what characteristics make faith-based providers especially effective at serving the needs of their communities. This subcommittee has oversight over the faith-based programs. We are really the only committee in Congress with oversight. The tax and some of those bills go through other committees. We are the only committee that deals with this issue. We decided over 2 years we are systematically going through neighborhoods and cities and different regions of the country to highlight different types of programs in each area. They are not necessarily representative of all the programs in that area but by the time we are done we will have a range of what is going on in the country and then getting additional written testimony and other things to add to it as we do a major report on what is actually happening in the communities across America. We have held hearings in San Antonio, TX, where we had people from Dallas and Houston and New Mexico and others a little more heavily focused on Hispanic things in that area. We held a hearing in Nashville, TN, both with urban and rural in the central south. This is our third. Most of the people today are from Chicago. We have a number from my hometown area in Indiana, some which are urban and some which are more small town and rural. We will be holding hearings in LA, Orlando, Boston and Philadelphia, and maybe one or two more out in the western United States. What we will hear from our witnesses today faith-based organizations are raising the bar for social service providers through their tireless efforts and unsurpassed dedication of their volunteers. Many people toil away day in and day out in our communities trying to help those who are less fortunate. For these workers service is not simply a 9 to 5 job but a calling. They know there is a need in their community and they are compelled to help. By doing so they have been making a difference that cannot be denied. I have had the opportunity to visit many faith-based organizations and time and time again I have heard the testimony of men and women who have seen their lives transformed thanks to the love and support they receive from volunteers and leaders in the faith community. My home State of Indiana has a long tradition of active faith-based organizations. Recent examples of State and local partnerships with faith-based organizations include the Front Porch Alliance create by former Indianapolis Mayor Steven Goldsmith and Faithworks Indiana, an initiative designed to assist faith-based and community-based organizations of all types in developing services and access funding to help families in need throughout the State. Two years ago Faithworks produced a study, modeled after the National Congregations Study, that found that 79 percent of Hoosier congregations provide human services. this compares to 57 percent of national congregations that provide human services. When we talk about faith-based organizations we are referring to more than just congregations, but it is clear that in Indiana faith communities have been active in mobilizing resources to help people in need. At a minimum, government must not only allow but should demand that the best resources this Nation possesses be targeted to help those of us who face the greatest daily struggles. We must embrace new approaches and foster new collaborations to improve upon existing social programs. We know that as vast as its resources are, the Federal Government simply cannot adequately address all of society's needs. Services provided by faith-based organizations are by no means the only way to reach all people in need. Rather, they offer a unique dimension to that service, a group of people motivated in many cases by their faith, who are ready, willing, and able to help their neighbors around the clock. I believe that we cannot begin to address the many and diverse social demands of our Nation without the help of grassroots faith and community initiatives in every city across the country. A recognition that faith-based organizations are competently filling a gap in community services has led to legislation and regulations that encourage these organizations to become more involved in their communities, through both action by Congress and the leadership of President Bush. Charitable choice provisions have allowed faith-based organizations to compete for government grants on the same basis as secular providers so that they can reach more people in need. As we expand that involvement, we must fully consider the specific characteristics and methods that make faith-based groups successful at transforming lives. Today we will hear from organizations that provide care to children, families, prostitutes, people in need of shelter and food, and the community as a whole. We need to understand how the unique element of faith impacts the structure and success of these programs. It is also important that we understand how your programs transform lives. Our witnesses today represent just a fraction of the countless faith-based organizations that are meeting the needs of their communities. I expect that our witnesses today will provide valuable insights to their work, and identify areas and methods by which the government can best assist community organizations of all types to provide the best possible care for people in need. I very much look forward to the testimony. Now I would like to yield to my distinguished colleague, Congressman Danny Davis from Chicago, one of the most active members of our subcommittee. [The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me join with Chairman Souder in welcoming all of you to the third series of faith-based oversight hearings by the Committee on Government Reform's Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources. Let me just tell you that one of the pleasures that I have had since becoming a Member of Congress and being assigned to the Committee on Government Reform has been to snare an assignment that put me on the subcommittee chaired by Congressman Mark Souder from Indiana. While we are of different political parties and persuasions, I am a Democrat, Mark is a Republican, but we have been able to form an alliance to establish a friendship and establish a common bond of understanding relative to the need to pursue some of the most perverse social problems that exist in our country. Mark, I want you to know that I value your friendship and it is indeed a pleasure to have the opportunity to work with you. Thank you very much. These hearings are designed to look at the role of faith- based organizations in providing much needed services. Specifically, the witnesses who have been invited to testify today have been asked to discuss effective means of providing social services in their communities. As a Member of Congress and a member of this subcommittee, I have long known the value of services provided our neighborhoods by community nonprofit and religious based organizations. As a matter of fact, the community where we are currently located has been a hot bed of social activism and involvement for the last 40 years. In many instances churches and other groups have been in the forefront of addressing the varied needs of many of our communities. Whether that be offered in food and drink via soup kitchens, handing out sandwiches and blankets to the homeless, making shelter available or providing drug counseling treatment, you the soldiers of comfort are helping to provide and improve the conditions and character of our country. I not only support the services provided by these social activists and faith-based organizations, I also agree with the President that these organizations should, in fact, be in place and have an opportunity to serve. As a matter of fact, my last conversation with the President a few weeks ago when we rode together from Washington to Chicago and back on Air Force One had to do with the provision of services by faith-based organizations. We were both very engaging in our descriptions of what we thought those should be. One is we both agreed that organizations should not in any way discriminate against people seeking such services or make participation in religious activities a condition for receiving these services. I, too, believe that faith-based organizations should be held accountable for the Federal moneys they receive and that Federal dollars should not be used to support inherently religious activities, although I don't think you can get much more religious than I am relative to the fervor with which I involve myself. I come from a religious-based environment. As a matter of fact, the church was the center of activity in the small town that I grew up in, Parkdale, AR. Much of whatever it is that I am today comes as a result of the Pinnas Chapel CME Church. It was a colored Methodist at the time. They have since changed and it is now the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Everything changes, even religion. I do not, however, believe that faith-based organizations which receive Federal funds should be allowed to discriminate in the hiring of individuals. A little sticking point that has been much of the discussion and will continue to be much of the discussion about faith-based organizations, the role that they play in our society, and the position in which they are placed. Our hearing today is particularly timely given the enormous interest in the effectiveness of services provided by faith- based organizations, especially in comparison to services provided by government entities. Two years ago our subcommittee ranking minority member, Congressman Elijah Cummings, and Senator Joseph Liebermann requested that the investigative arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office, look into the services provided by faith organizations. That report issued in September of last year specifically examined how faith-based organizations were being held accountable for performance and what information is available regarding their performance. The report concluded that while most State and local officials believe that their faith-based organizations performed as well as or better than other organizations overall, they did not provide data regarding faith-based organizations performance. As I end, let me just suggest this. One area in particular where I have personally seen the work of faith-based organizations be so effective with not very much in the way of resources is in the area of drug counseling and rehabilitation. I don't know what it is that other folks have seen but I have seen people addicted to drugs get into sessions and start singing ``What a Friend We have in Jesus,'' and ``Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of Glory divine. Watching and waiting, looking above. Pass me not oh gentle Savior.'' I have seen individuals come out of those experiences with a renewed determination to confront their problems and deal with their needs. I am a psychologist by training. I am a scientist. As a matter of fact, I own a Ph.D. degree. I have four honorary doctoral degrees. I have never learned anything in any scientific setting that replaces that experience. I am unequivocally in support of faith-based activities. I part with some of my friends who consider themselves, and all of us do, civil libertarians who have certain kind of notions about this than I do. We agree on the nondiscrimination but I think the services can, in fact, be extremely effective and they can be cost effective more so than anything else that I have seen. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for bringing this hearing to Chicago. I look forward to the testimony of the witness. Thank you very much. Mr. Souder. Thank you. I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to submit written statements and questions to the hearing record, that any answers to written questions provided by the witnesses also be included in the record. Without objection it is so ordered. What I just read functionally means is that this is not a town meeting, it is a congressional hearing. The witnesses that are testifying have prepared written statements but anybody else who has written statements if they give them to Congressman Davis or myself within the next 5 days, they will be submitted into the record. The record entails this. We have a court stenographer here today. I don't know if it takes us a year or year and a half until these things get printed in a booklet form but since these are the only hearings being held by Congress on faith- based, they will be the more or less permanent record of the kind of the history of faith-based. There have been some hearings in Congress and debates on provisions in law but there aren't hearings looking at what faith-based organizations are actually doing. We are having the debate over discrimination clauses in almost every bill that is coming up right now on the House floor and what makes groups effective but nobody is going to hearings trying to figure out from the groups themselves what makes them effective. We are having the tail wagging the dog right now in that we are trying to get out and hear from the diversity of different groups. We will also be doing a separate committee report at the end of next year like we did on borders in the United States that will pick up the information from the GAO reports, the different CRS reports, private sector reports. I have worked closely over the years with Rev. John Perkins' organization on community Christian economic development efforts around the United States and from different organizations like that to incorporate addition to the hearing. What I just read says that if you want to get something to us, you need to get it to us in the next 5 days through Congressman Davis' office. The next thing is I will also ask unanimous consent that all exhibits, documents, and other materials referred to by the Members and the witnesses may be included in the hearing record and that all Members be permitted to revise and extend their remarks. Without objection it is so ordered. For example, what that means, Rev. Beasley, is the different charts you have that you refer to will all appear in the record and if any of you have additional things you want to submit in addition to your testimony, we will put them in the hearing book record as well. Now, our first panel is here. Let me describe the procedure we go through. I come from a little hometown that is surrounded by Amish and my great-great-grandfather was one of the first Amish settlers in Indiana back in this area in 1846 around my hometown. There we have an extended yellow light so the buggies can slip through. We found that people tend to extend during yellow so we just have a green and a stop. You have 5 minutes to do your testimony. When the red comes up we will be a little more generous but try to wind up so we can get everybody in today. The red doesn't work? When the green goes off, that means wind down. I know one time Rev. Perkins, I don't know how many of you know, was speaking at a church in Fort Wayne and he said right at the beginning, he said--I was one of, I think, there were two other guys there. He said, ``I see some White folks in the audience. I just want you to know we are going to be done at 2. I know you White folks tend to look at your clock a lot and start to do things, whereas Black folks are a little bit more did it feel good?'' He said, ``We'll be done at 2 so just sit back and see if it feels good and stop watching your watch.'' That was fine except it was 9:30. In today's testimony we don't have to stay rigid to the 5- minutes because we want to get your points in but to get everybody done so we can ask questions and followup. We will draw that out we may have additional written questions. Now, this is also a Government Reform Oversight. By tradition this committee swears in all its witnesses. We are part of the committee that did the Waco hearings, the Travelgate hearings, the White Water hearings and all that. If you give your testimony, you are giving an oath and you can be prosecuted for perjury, as witnesses have been in this committee. It is a little bit different than other committees. If you will each stand and raise your right hands. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. Souder. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative. It is a real privilege to have each of you here today. First leading off is Rev. Jesse Beasley from Fort Wayne, IN, who I have been working with on and off for multiple years and who I am just really pleased at what they have done in Fort Wayne with this TEAM III concept and we are going to have you lead off this morning. STATEMENTS OF REVEREND JESSE BEASLEY, TEAM III, INC., FORT WAYNE, IN; RICHARD HART, SALVATION ARMY, CHICAGO, IL; AND BETH TRUETT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PARTNERS IN EDUCATION, FOURTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, CHICAGO, IL Rev. Beasley. I want to thank Congressman Souder and Congressman Davis and the rest of the team that is here today for allowing us to come and testify about what TEAM III has done. Mr. Souder. Can you hear in the back? Rev. Beasley. I am sorry. I will talk a little louder. I am going to act like Congressman Davis this morning. I want to thank Congressman Souder and Congressman Davis for having us here today to testify concerning faith-based. We have been working the arena for about 3 years. TEAM III is an acronym, Touching and Equipping All Mankind. We are a collaborative group of proactive faith-based organizations that exist to enhance and enrich the quality of life for the low income, working poor, and disadvantaged people. We are primarily focused on the southeast area of Fort Wayne. We are a network center. We have a group of 12 churches who have come together that are providing programming development and these the churches. We are seeking some financial assistance and we are recruiting professional personnel to make sure that the programs are effective. That is one of the things that we see the need of change inside of the faith-based arena specifically speaking for the church. As we begin to provide services for the community, we realize that we needed to have professional people working in the programs so that they were more effective. This is one area that our faith-based arena was lacking in. We addressed the issue by creating a nonprofit corporation that will begin to focus on and train some of those individuals as well as identify them. We have worked with some of the government agencies, Family Social Services Administration, Fathers and Families, Department of Education, and we work with them on FFSA for structure because they provided a great structure for us to follow. We believe also that faith-based organizations need to be accountable for any dollars that come to them whether it be State or Federal or local grant money. We believe that faith- based has a powerful impact on the community because it provides for the need while it is assessing the place where the individual in the group needs to go. We also understand that it is not enough for one ministry to have result producing programs, childcare centers, or spiritual training whether Bible studies or seminars, but it is a need every ministry should have those things. Every faith- based organization, whether it is a church or not, should have the ability to reach their targeted population. We understand that if we continue to work individually, it will leave out a large number of grassroots organizations who are making a difference because of poor structure, lack of accountability, administrative skills, professional, personnel, and reporting processes. They were unable to attack any of the financial assistance to have a greater impact on the community. We started out in a summer feeding program with seven churches and the pastors started to work together as we collected the food and all the other things that went along with doing that like setting up a staff. We put four staff people in each of the churches and as we did that we saw the affect it had on the community while we were providing for the need. After we seen it we made a decision that it was no longer possible for us to do that individually and be able to reach the community. We understood that our methods needed to change as we identified some of the methods as we met as a board of directors. Some of those methods that needed to change was our leadership development, where we taught our leadership development, what information we gave them as we prepared them to meet the needs of the people or the targeted population. We had to assess the needs of the helper and that is kind of where we are right now. Our theme this year is helping the helper help. One of the things that faith-based has not addressed which would be a good thing to address is helping the helper help. Making sure that the people who are helping, who are directing the programs, who are running the programs are getting the adequate help that they need while they help the helper. That is one of the hugest things that we have seen. We also needed that vehicle to provide the structure, the accountability, and opportunity for government entities or other faith-based organizations. As TEAM III advanced we realized that was the vehicle that provides grounds for relationship with the Government and other faith-based organizations. I see my light came on. We also identified we needed to enhance our ability to provide informational resources and adequate direction to social service programming and assistance. We also understand that we can no longer address just the spiritual need but must be more practical in our approach and services by providing work force development, social services, crime prevention, and partnering with community organizations that were not necessarily faith-based organizations. And to provide those things in a faith-based setting without violating choice and certainly not apologizing for our faith. Last but not least, to duplicate that attitude and that atmosphere in each of the faith-based organizations that was connected and compliant, the same structure, accountability, and professional personnel and to monitor them with the vehicle organization. I have included in our presentation of TEAM III which describes us a little more adequately than I have done today. We have narrowed this concept for 3 years with much success. Three years is not a lot of time but as we examine ourselves in the light of what has been done in the faith-based arena, we believe that we are on the cutting edge. Mr. Souder. Thank you very much. Just for the record because many of you in the audience may not know that much about Fort Wayne, IN, but in our southwest quadrant we have not had the economic growth and we have had lots of other challenges and two of the three lowest income housing tracks in the State of Indiana are, in fact, in that area of Fort Wayne, not in Gary where many more people are familiar with. It is been a real challenge for the churches to get organized, find the resources, and try to address that. Not everybody can be like the Beasley family who are personally terrorizing soccer from all over the United States. We have had two tremendous products out of your extended Beasley family. Many people know from the Chicago fire and other places the graduates of Fort Wayne, the extended family, but Fort Wayne has other things in addition to Beasleys. Now I would like to have Mr. Richard Hart from the Salvation Army, one of the Nation's leading organizations to talk about the particular program that you have been working with, the Salvation Army. [The prepared statement of Mr. Beasley follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Hart. Thank you. Good morning, Honorable Davis and Souder. I am the program manager of the Salvation Army Community Corrections facility here in Chicago on the west side. We have been in business since 1975 in the corrections area. At the beginning of 1975 we had a contract with the Illinois Department of Corrections. In the late 1970's, early 1980's we began to have a Federal contract with Federal inmates from Federal prisons across the country. In 1987 with the sentencing guidelines we went totally Federal as far as our contract. As of today our contract is all Federal from the Federal prisons across the country and with the Federal probation department here in the northern district of Illinois. Our residents are referred from those two primary sources for transitional houses, for the reentry issues that is so prominent these days as far as those being released from institutions. We happen to have the largest Federal work release in the country contracted with the Bureau of Prisons and we can hold 175 individuals, men and women. Today's count is 158. We have been down some due to a decision from the Attorney General's Office regarding release of individuals from Federal prisons that they serve 90 percent of their time and put 10 percent in work release facilities. Those that were called direct court commitments can no longer come to a community correction facility. They have to go to a prison so that certainly has affected our population. We feel that we are effective because of the structure that we have available in our program. We have case managers that will address all the needs of an individual coming through the doors doing a complete assessment of their needs. Primary focus for our resident is finding employment, a place to live, reestablish any family ties or positive peer interaction. Before they move out of our doors, they will have been placed in one of those areas, primarily the first two, either housing or employment or both. Our facility also provides a substance abuse counselor for our residents and also mental health after care for those who may need that service. As far as those being released from prison, there is a need in several areas, in particular substance abuse area. We have a clinical department that will address that in individual and group sessions and certainly again with the mental health after care. We have to structure that individual's need and for the long times of being incarcerated, some from 5, 10, 20 years that we see that come straight to our doors, we have to take the time that they have manageable steps and not try to do everything right at once, once they are released to our facility. Some are trying to find employment, trying to assimilate into a community, trying to establish a relationship with family members all at once. We have to give them time to do things in a process step to make them more effective so they don't become part of that revolving door recidivism. In addition to having the structured program that we have for our residents, residents who do come to our facility pay what is called subsistence and that is 25 percent of their gross income goes back to the government to offset their stay in a facility like ours. Not only is that a benefit to the taxpayers because in one particular year we calculated that over $400,000 in 1 year from our facility in Chicago on the west side was collected and given back to the government. The residents are also paying taxes as they find employment throughout this metropolitan Chicago area along with paying any restitution that may be required through the Federal Probation Department. There is an added benefit of those who are released to come through a community correction facility. In addition to the counseling program we do allow residents to enter into any type of schooling that may be needed. We find people who do not have their GED, so they can certainly utilize the services of Malcolm X College here on the west side of Chicago or any other community outlet that provides GED training. We also have English as a second language that is provided right there on the grounds of the Salvation Army for those who need those services. We also see a need of life skills for individuals that have been incarcerated for so long that have to really get into the adjustment of community life. We sometimes have volunteers along with our paid staff that provide curriculum of life skills. As recently as the last month or so we have had outside speakers who have given readings of poetry, given individuals opportunities to give self expressions. We have found certainly an abundance of talent from our residents there. We have had Alder Institute that is here in Chicago provide volunteer work for parenting classes for our residents. In addition, we have environmental safety trade training class, asbestos and lead removal on our site. Our residents now become their own business persons once they receive their license from the State of Illinois to do asbestos and lead removal. Quickly the other departments that we have in our program. Certainly our chaplain is here which is a big part since we are a faith-based organization. Our chaplains are paid through the Salvation Army and not the Federal Government money that our correction program is paid through. They even provide counseling and pastoral services in Cook County Jail and State of Illinois Prisons. Our clinical department, once again, does assessments and mental health aftercare. The other programs in our surrounding block area is a freedom center and that is where the Harbor Light program. They provide counseling for people with addiction and our Brandecker Clinic that provides health care for our residents and corrections along with the Harbor Light residents and the community residents in the 60607 area. The Brandecker is an extension of the Cook County Hospital which is now called John Stroger Hospital. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Hart follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Souder. Thank you very much for your testimony. Our next witness is Beth Truett, executive director of partners in education at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. Thank you for being here. Ms. Truett. Thank you very much, Honorable Davis, as well as Honorable Souder. I represent Partners in Education at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. We are a 501(c)(3) organization that was founded in 1991. However, our roots extend back to October 1964 when a group of church members began helping children from the nearby Cabrini-Green housing projects with their homework. Today we work with nearly 500 children from 33 Chicago zip codes in our Tutoring program. Some of that change is occasioned by what is going on in terms of relocation in both Cabrini as well as the Horner projects, some of it is voluntary relocation. The families just coming back over the years. About 50 percent of the tutors--it is one-on-one tutoring-- come from our church of about 5,100 members. We are located at Michigan and Chestnut Streets in Chicago. About 30 percent of the students still come from Cabrini-Green. We find it a great misnomer to think that the neighborhood is changing so much that poverty is not there and children are not there. The schools are full and there is a lot of work to do. We support nine of our tutoring students with scholarships to private and parochial high schools. We would like that number to be a lot higher. We have a job training program for high schools and had the pleasure of having one of our students this summer in Congressman Davis' office as an intern. We have 100 children participating in the City Lights Summer Day program that was founded in 1966. Finally, in partnership with the Chicago Public Schools, Partners in Education coordinates a literacy initiative in four Cabrini schools as well as an after-school arts education project which culminates in a Fine Arts Festival each May. In October we are going to open a parent learning center in Byrd Academy, which is one of the Magnet Cluster Schools in Cabrini thanks in part to a State of Illinois DCEO grant to eliminate the digital divide. It is going to replace the Center for Whole Life which has been located in a CHA project for 12 years. But the lack of neutrality of being in a CHA building has increasingly caused us not to be able to meet our mission of raising the level of parent education from that location. I sometimes say that our greatest success would be to go out of business. That every parent would be able to tutor their own child and that we would not have to do this externally. In the meantime, we are working to build self esteem through education. Partners in Education is funded by individual contributions, by grants from foundations and corporations, and earned income projects such as our student-designed holiday cards where we encourage kids to express their creativity, write verses, and also win prizes for their work. The mission budget of our church funds 22 percent of Partners in Education and we need to raise the rest. The Tutoring and Scholarship programs employ long-term one- on-one relationships. We serve students in grades one through 12. In addition to academic Tutoring, there is time for honing creative and computer skills and reading in our Tutoring Library. One single parent with four children in Tutoring program recently reported that her kids' grades have gone from D's to B's and C's and that one has achieved B Honors for three quarters and has actually been awarded a scholarship from the school itself. In order to bring students to Tutoring, bus transportation is provided if kids are living in Cabrini or Horner neighborhoods. They have the option to arrive 1 hour before tutoring to participate in Kids Cafe which offers both life skills lessons as well as a hot meal. This was founded in conjunction with America's Second Harvest and our program was the second in what is now 1,200 programs. We just celebrated our 10th anniversary and are deeply committed to alleviating childhood hunger. The City Lights Summer Day program provides opportunity for elementary school children that include strengthening academic skills, arts education, community service projects, in partnership with the Ravinia Music Festival and Rock for Kids, a local music-oriented charitable organization. Students showcase their talents in a performance for parents and friends. Like Tutoring, transportation is provided for most students and Kids Cafe serves breakfast and lunch bringing the total meals served to kids to 10,000 annually. The Near North Magnet Cluster Program is entering its 4th year. We are in Cabrini and we are 1 of the 144 public schools that have been clustered to provide local school choice for parents living in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. It is unique not only in its art focus but also because it brings principals together for strategic planning, leverages resource, and builds community. The 2002 Festival of the Heart won a Peacekeeping Award from the Presbyterian Church USA for its effectiveness in bringing kids together from rival gang territories on either side of Division Street with positive results. Now, as I wind up here, I want to tell you that the church is currently in the process of folding in three other local missions into Partners in Education, our ministry to homeless neighbors, older adults, and health ministry. The Center for Older Adults was founded in 1965. It is a place for seniors to search for meaningful engagement through adult education, exercise, health, and wellness. The Elam Davies Social Service Center welcomes and supports about 3,000 homeless persons per year. Sometimes they are not homeless but living in poverty and our efforts are to get them into housing and also to provide food, clothing, and the appropriate referrals. We are working to inform choices that will build bridges to the future for all the people that we serve. We seek to practice justice, not charity, by providing children and adults with the opportunity to discover hope and to create a satisfying life. Partners in Education at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago believes that we are called to reach out to our neighbors. We affirm the worth of all people and we strive to provide a safe and belonging place where the body, mind and spirit are strengthened and nurtured. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Ms. Truett follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Souder. Let me first ask Rev. Beasley, one of the things that we have worked with and discussed was the problem in many cases that there is a proliferation of almost every church having some kind of a program. One of the things that we talked about which you have done, which is why I wanted to make sure you were at this hearing and part of this faith-based, is you talked about it being a collaborative effort. Could you talk a little bit about you have some large churches, some small churches. Could you just put into the record, which will be in the written statement, but some of the different programs you were doing and a little bit about the different churches so we can understand what, in fact, TEAM III and how that is different than many of the social programs we see where a particular church or a denomination may say, ``This is my program. I am going to go apply to the Federal Government to try to get that.'' Rev. Beasley. I sure can, Congressman Souder. One of the programs that we have established and worked diligently with the last couple of years is the Dimetrian Program. It is a value-based initiative. We partner with value-based initiatives to get some of the people who are returning from prison connected to a mentor and help get their lives established and goal setting. They even do some of the parenting classes. We also have another program called Returning Fathers which is a very comprehensive landscape training program that teaches returning fathers how to operate a bobcat, backhoe, tractor, all the equipment that is necessary to do landscaping. In the process of doing that we teach parenting, money management, goal setting, and how to handle their money and leisure time. We use mostly Christian curriculum to do that. Not only do we do that, we have done some leadership training where we train some of the leaders in the church that will be focused on doing some of the training. We are thinking of outside sources. We are doing some asset building through the Department of Education where they are offering the asset building by depositing money in the account of the government. I am sure you are familiar with the Indiana government account. We also have been doing some youth training where we are partnering some of the youth with some associations and doing some community mapping. We are involved with some of the community organizations like Christmas Connection that goes into the homes and provides gifts very much like Angel Tree did, and still does, under Chuck Colson's ministry. We are heavily involved in that. As a matter of fact, we cover not only the southeast part of Fort Wayne but a good portion of the outlying counties of Fort Wayne. We are doing some technical training for staff and boards. We are making sure that the structure of each of the individual churches after we have assessed them is one of an organization that is accountable and that is able to receive dollars and they understand what the relationship is between government and their programs. We are doing a lot of educating other pastors and some of the staff that we have earmarked for some of the things that we have coming up. Those are just a couple things. I don't want to go on. Mr. Souder. What is the largest of the churches and the smallest of the churches roughly in membership? Rev. Beasley. Our largest church probably has about 700 people and our smallest church probably has about 6. Mr. Souder. One of the things that we have had a concern as we have shaped the bills and as administration worked with the different agencies as far as grants is as to whether the church is going to get directly entangled. Part of your philosophy was to set up this organization as a--is it 501(c)(3)? Rev. Beasley. Yes. Mr. Souder. So that it could be available as it develops to be the recipient so if there are problems or claims or lawsuits and bookkeeping, it moves to a 501(c)(3) rather than to the churches directly. Rev. Beasley. Exactly. That is the common ground for the churches to work together and it is also the common ground for us to have a relationship with government entities or local grantmakers because we have become the reported agency for those local and Federal grants. Mr. Souder. Just so people understand, this is an important part of our compromised faith-based bill that is moving through, to try to stress that these secondary groups so we don't get quite as entangled directly with the churches and this is the forerunner of what we are going to see increasingly if this kind of relationship is going to work. I wanted to ask now Mr. Hart at the Salvation Army, you made a statement that I just wanted to make sure I clarify a little bit for the record. You said that many of these people that you work with have been incarcerated for long periods of time and that they have substance abuse problems. I presume that means the substance abuse problems aren't being effectively addressed while they are in prison. Are you also saying that they are continuing to abuse substances while they are in prison and that they haven't been exactly away from that abuse during the period of time they have been incarcerated, or that they are going to return to their previous pattern? Could you elaborate on that a little bit? Mr. Hart. Sure. Those coming from an institution have entered into a comprehensive drug program in some of the Federal prisons. Part of the Federal Government is that they continue at the halfway house and continue treatment. Once they are released from us a majority have Federal probation. They also continue with their substance abuse counseling. That is for one segment. I also mentioned that we receive clients from the Federal courts and that is really a big part of our substance abuse treatment. Those coming from home who have been adjudicated to come to Salvation Army in lieu of prison. These are individuals who have failed other drug programs. This is generally their last opportunity before being considered for incarceration. A big target is the Federal court individuals who have to receive treatment. Mr. Souder. Ms. Truett, I also had--am I saying your name correctly? Ms. Truett. Absolutely. Yes. Mr. Souder. I had a technical question about your program. You said 30 percent of your students still come from Cabrini- Green and you made several references to the Horner public housing area. About how many students would you say are involved in that? Ms. Truett. Thirty percent as well. Mr. Souder. So it is about the same size. Is that area changing at all like Cabrini-Green? Ms. Truett. It is changing. I mean, there has been a dramatic change in housing as well in that neighborhood. We have not been located in that neighborhood for as long as we have in Cabrini so I am less familiar with some of the distinct changes than with Cabrini. Mr. Souder. I visited Cabrini-Green in the early 80's or middle 80's when I was with then Congressman Coates and the Children Family Committee. Then we held a hearing over there again in the mid 90's and met with a lot of the residents there and have gone through that change there. Others can come during the day. I am curious. You said some are coming back. Did most of those people push for their arrest and when they are coming back, where have they been? I wonder what the dislocation affect is and whether you've seen that with the kids. Ms. Truett. When I said coming back, maybe I wasn't careful enough to explain it. What I meant is coming back to the tutoring program. We are not yet in that phase in the plan for transformation in the city of Chicago. Unfortunately housing units are built for the residents who want to live and take advantage of the plan for transformation. People are still being more dislocated than they are relocated into Cabrini. But what I was referring to is because of a long history, 40 years of this tutoring program, is that even when students move to the west side and they move to the south side, they find ways to get back to the program. Mr. Souder. Do you see large churches like yourself as gentrification occurs at some of the--it is kind of moving inside out and we are seeing a push. Some of the lowest poverty push further out into the near suburbs. Do you see large churches like yourself partnering with large suburban churches or how are you going to work and provide assistance? Ms. Truett. Well, in the last year the Presbyterian of Chicago has taken up that very issue and now, in terms of funding from our own denomination if we are not partnering with other churches who do not have the ability to provide direct service, say a suburban church, we are really not qualifying for those denominational funds. They are holding workshops for us and encouraging us to do that. In addition, because we are one step from the actual neighborhood, we belong to the Near North Ministry Alliance which is a group of churches, some of whom are located in and some of whom are located on the fringes of Cabrini where our efforts are also attempting to coordinate, especially around high school education, kids who are going to Walter Peyton High School--who get in and then they can't succeed because they don't really have the tools to make the grade once they get there, which is very sad. Mr. Souder. We are planning this fall to do as Congressman Davis referred to in his testimony one of the major hot points and this is hiring practices. We are having a philosophical debate on that in Washington over a public policy but it is a standard practice that I ask the witnesses so we can get into the record. In your different programs, for example, Rev. Beasley, you have a very strong statement of faith. Salvation Army has historically had that and the Presbyterian church. In these different programs, and I will just ask each of you. I am not asking for commentary on it but let me start with Rev. Beasley first. For staffers in your program, do they need to agree with your statement of faith before you hire them? Rev. Beasley. Well, we have opened our program to anyone who is willing to conduct themself according to our statement of faith. It doesn't necessarily mean they have to be converted. At least while they are with us they will conduct themselves according to our statement of faith. Mr. Souder. That is a staffer? Rev. Beasley. Well, currently the issue of staffer. It was a kind of like a blanket cover. We have had some of the gentlemen who have been in the program come back to take care of a couple of those positions. The issue hasn't come up but we are willing to work with anyone who is willing to adhere to our statement of faith. Mr. Souder. Would you hire a Muslim to be one of your staffers? Rev. Beasley. I can't tell you that I would. Mr. Souder. You have to in serving serve who walks in the door. Rev. Beasley. I understand that. Mr. Souder. As a Christian church would you hire a Muslim to be a staffer? Rev. Beasley. As a Christian church? Mr. Souder. And as TEAM III. Rev. Beasley. As TEAM III it is a possibility but as my church, no, I could not. Mr. Souder. Because that is a potential difference in a church organization. Mr. Hart, in the Salvation Army for your prison correction programs, would you hire someone who didn't share the Christian faith or actually practiced another faith as a staffer? Mr. Hart. Certainly. As myself, I am not part of the Salvationist Church. We have people of all different faith and backgrounds that are hired there so we do not discriminate at our corrections program. Mr. Souder. So you would hire a Muslim? Mr. Hart. We would. We currently do have both on board as staffers. Mr. Souder. Thank you. Ms. Truett. Ms. Truett. Yes. We are open to people of all beliefs. I think the criteria would be we frequently will open a meeting with prayer so we wouldn't change that particular practice because a person from a different persuasion were present but we would not discriminate in our hiring practice. Mr. Souder. Now, in a government program that receives a direct government funding you could not open that meeting with a prayer. Would you change that in order to get direct Federal funding? Ms. Truett. That is a very good question and that is a debate which we are really engaging in. We have a task force within our church that I am sitting on to wrestle with those very questions. Mr. Souder. There needs to be an understanding of many, particularly in the minority community have, in fact, in the past received Federal funds and opened the meeting with a prayer but, as the new guidelines are promulgated, you cannot have a prayer during the period of time that is funded with Federal dollars. There will be more court decisions with that. You can have a prayer meeting before and after but this is really touchy because prayer is integrated into so many of the programs and that is what we are trying to work through as we deal with working with this. Rev. Beasley. Rev. Beasley. Yes, sir. I have a concern. That concern is when two people come to the table to make an agreement and that agreement is to provide services, that they should not be asked to change who they are to provide those services. I know I am on the record and I want to say this on the record. We are faith-based people, truly faith-based. If we take out the element that makes us who we are, then we become government. If I can share with you for just a second. If I could have 1 minute. Our program, Returning Fathers, works with the parole office in Fort Wayne, IN. We decided to work with them for referrals. They were going to give us an office in their building so that we could screen the people. In the meeting one of the parole officers said, ``If you are in our building, the people are going to look at you just like us and they are going to respond to you just like us.'' Instead we met in the church and the response was totally different. Now I have the probation officers calling the church to get reports or to find out where their people are because they will come to the church because there is help there for them. If we take that element out, we might as well do what you are doing. We want to remain faith-based. It is possible for faith-based organizations to have a relationship with government and not give up who they are. FFSA has provided over the last 2 years as a service provider for them some valuable structure that not only helped the organization where we help the people, but it has helped us in our church as we structure our church. You have some very valuable tools but if you make us change who we are, then we've lost the basis for a relationship. Mr. Souder. Let me ask you a direct question. In many of the cases and the kids you have worked with in our reentry program, in our other different things, do you believe that one of the main reasons your programs have been effective in your communities is because people have actually committed their life to Jesus Christ and changed and is that a big part of your ministry? Can you really separate the faith part from the other part? Rev. Beasley. Yes. I think you can. You can separate it to the point of providing services. We don't have to pray during the time that we are providing services for individuals. We don't have to do that. That is not a problem. But it is impossible for us to reach a community and not be--I am a pastor. I teach them life skills every day and if I never say anything to them about Jesus, they start to look at me and say, ``What he's doing is not real. Why should I believe in what he wants me to do?'' What we are really after is life change. Not the money. Not the prestige that goes along with it but to change the life of the people who are caught up in the system. It is ministry and it can be separated. We can have a relationship and I believe TEAM III shows that. If you will talk to any of the people in Indianapolis with Family Social Services Administration who grew with us during the last couple of years, we have worked with them diligently to make sure that we are not violating any of their principles. I think government should do the same. Mr. Souder. Congressman Davis. Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I must say that I am intrigued with the answers as well as the questions. I think what we are hearing helps us to understand the complexity of trying to shape legislation, that you are trying to reach a point where there is enough agreement without changing the basic structures of what it is that we believe in. That is why I always say that there are no simple solutions to very complex problems. Rev. Beasley, I am intrigued by the ability that you all have found to organize 12 churches in what sounds like a very cohesive unit, especially since a friend of mine became a pastor and he got a call to come to a church where they had a lot of difficulty with pastors. They were changing pastors just about every 2 or 3 months. After he had been there for about 6 months, he was totally fascinated by the fact that he had managed to stay that long. He asked one of the members, ``Would you do me a favor and just tell me what it is about me that this congregation likes so well?'' The sister told him, ``Well, Reverend, people at this church ain't never really wanted no pastor and you are about the closest thing to nothing we ever had.'' So I proposed this business of leadership and the ability to organize a group to become effective without everybody wanting to be the leader everybody agreeing to follow whatever the group establishes, and nobody pulling out and saying, ``If it is not my way, then it is the highway.'' How have you managed to do that? Rev. Beasley. Well, I just did a status report on that. We have been together for 3 years and we have yet to have one argument in our board meeting. It is a solvent renewal debt. That is the only answer I have for you because I don't have a formula. We are just being obedient. I told you there are 12 and there are actually 15 churches now. We have a couple more. There was a group between 700 and the 6. I think it is probably because the church that has six is mine and I am the leader. I am not sure how it happened. I think I just showed up at the meeting. Pastor White who is here with me is the vice president. Because we were working together and providing resources for one another and the effect that we've seen that it have on the people to see us working together is starting to come out of every pastor's mouth. We have to keep on doing this. We can't stop doing this. We have to keep meeting. That is how TEAM III was born. Under those grounds we've been operating. As a matter of fact, for the last 3 years we've been able to provide four staff people for each of those churches for 50 days. This year we did it again. Each one of those sites fed over 500 kids a day meals, breakfast and lunch as the pastors work together. It has to be common ground and that is what I was expressing to you when I was telling you about us working with government. We had a common goal. This is a neutral place where we can satisfy that common need. Let us do it and let us not argue. We are going to be different. We are from all denominations from the Church of God. We have some Lutheran churches involved with us. We are a nondenominational church. We have some Full Gospel churches with us. Denominational issues are not the issue. The issue is how do we get help to our community and to our children and satisfy the need and how do we do that effectively instead of the way that we've been doing it. Mr. Davis. Is it your position now that while Federal resources, that is money, are desirable but you really don't see yourself changing the way that you operate in hardly any way, shape, form, or fashion in order to meet the qualifications for that money should they be different than what you currently practice. Rev. Beasley. No, sir. It is exactly the opposite. TEAM III is the organization that standards in the middle that provides the opportunity for the change to take place and to do that and not too rapidly so that we make mistakes doing it. We don't have a problem complying. As a matter of fact, those were the strong points and the things that focused that we needed to change. We needed to change the method by which we reach the community, not the message. Mr. Davis. Even now on the 501(c)(3) tax exempt status organizations you couldn't do the prayer piece. I am saying you can't do what is called religious proselytizing. Or let us say a church has a daycare center in the basement. They can't teach Presbyterian philosophy as a part of their daycare operation even though they can have a daycare program but it is not called a church philosophy program. When I was a kid growing up, even in school we often started our day--we started everything with prayer just about. As a matter of fact, we would get ready to go to the cotton field to chop cotton and my daddy would want us to start praying and we prayed that the sun didn't shine or that it might rain. What I am saying is that these kind of--I mean, there is a strong feeling that many people in our country have about what is separation of church and State. That has been a part of the doctrine and philosophy of this country almost since its beginning. I am saying that is a great deal of what much of the debate really centers around. I think that is something we will be discussing. Mr. Hart, if I could ask you what are the Salvation Army's experiences with recidivism? I mean, are you finding that the individuals who come through the Salvation Army after they are discharged and complete the programs are they able to go on about their lives and their business without returning to prison at the same rate or better than or whatever than people who don't receive these kind of services and this kind of opportunity? Mr. Hart. I think that the majority who do come through a community corrections program do better. There are studies out there from Jeremy Travis and Joan Presivia from the Rand Corp. has shown that when they receive the treatment they do better. With our facility we actually hired a researcher and we hope to have some raw data next year as they complete how well we are doing. We do have statistics that we give to the American Correctional Association outcome studies and we are audited by different government entities such as the Bureau of Prisons who keep up our failure rate and shows that we have 10 percent recidivism as far as those who fail our program. Those who complete it and go on to supervision, there are certainly individuals once they have probation that they will have technical violations from probation and may have to go back and serve a term in prison and then come back through our doors again. We certainly see those individuals. We have a close relation with the Federal Probation Department. They have case loads of a minimum of 80 now because of budgetary reasons so they can't give them the type of services that our counsels in our facility who have case loads between 10 and 15 where they can do in-depth counseling. There are some who go through that revolving door. I think it is a small percentage. I think they do receive a benefit coming through our facilities as far as the areas that we identify. Our residents, we get a chance to see them and some of the life stresses as they are on home confinement while they are still under supervision with us and we can sometimes identify issues that will happen at home. Or if they have weekend passes and they are going back to family members they haven't lived with in years and they bring up those issues with their counselors and we work with them to adjust to a community life, a home life again. There are certainly issues that they experience on employment, job retention as far as punctuality and all those other things that we know and we take for granted those who are employed. We work with those issues with individuals because there are some who have problems with authority figures or people telling them what to do on the job. Our counselors talk with them to work out those things. These are things they have to do to survive. That is included in our life skills and our ongoing counseling with our residents. Mr. Davis. So you are saying that the recidivism rate is lower than for people who don't get the opportunity. Mr. Hart. I believe so. Mr. Davis. Thank you. Ms. Truett, let me thank you for your testimony. Also let me dispel for some African Americans the idea that Black elected officials don't get invited to predominately White churches. I always hear on the radio talk shows, especially when there is an election, I always hear African American suggest that, ``White politicians are coming into the community talking politics and social issues and you don't never see no Black politicians in White churches.'' Well, I don't feel like arguing at that point because I am trying to get votes but I certainly have been invited to Fourth Presbyterian and have discussed issues a number of times with people there. For those of you who don't know what Fourth Presbyterian is, it is a flag ship type church of the Presbyterian denomination right downtown, Michigan Avenue on the Gold Coast. Right in the heart of what one would call an upscale district. My question is, I mean, there are perceptions that certain kinds of institutions don't need or wouldn't make use of Federal resources to carry on program activity. The congregation can just kind of reach in its pocket and pull out whatever they are going to do. Federal resources if you were to use them would allow you to do what with the programs that you mentioned? Ms. Truett. Well, first of all, I just want to tell you that when the church was built there was only a varnish factory and a saloon there. It was on the outpost originally. To answer your question, we have put a deposit on some land on Chicago Avenue right at the fringe of the south end of Cabrini. Our belief is that as part of the plan for transformation, that there needs to be a community center that helps people live together. That you can't all of a sudden put people together in the same neighborhood who have not had exposure to one another and expect that to be successful. That is a big project and regardless of the fact that we do enjoy support from a church that has resources and assets, even currently our programs have grown beyond the ability of the church's membership or the church's budget to support. Certainly in the future as we reach out to have a facility that has sports arena, that has space for community meetings, etc., we will not be able to support that as a church. Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I have no further questions of the witnesses. I want to thank each one of you for your testimony and for your response and thank you very much. Mr. Souder. I want to briefly followup on a couple points with Rev. Beasley just to clarify again. If I understand how you are functioning, you would say that for a feeding program that you wouldn't necessarily have a prayer or religious activity with the feeding but you could before or after if you had government funds in that feeding program. If it was your own dollars, you probably would have a prayer and other things mixed in with it. But you understand if you get the State dollars or the Federal dollars, there has to be some separation but it isn't that you are giving up the religious ministry of your programs. It is just what you are using the Federal dollars for during that period you would not. Rev. Beasley. Exactly. We are currently funding through the Department of Education for our feeding program and we do not pray at the beginning of the feeding program which is part of the agreement. Mr. Souder. I don't agree with it but I understand the law and the danger inherent in this. Now, let me ask Mr. Hart because normally we think of this separation and flexibility of church and faith-based groups related to hiring practices related to do they need to be Christian and would you hire a Muslim, would you hire a Buddhist, would you hire a Hindu. Let me ask you another question. In your drug treatment program if you heard from a number of others that one of the people who was one of your prime sources of using drugs, would you fire him or would you go through a due process? One of the big things that faith-based organizations do is because faith is part of their statement, if they hear through counseling or others that someone is abusing their wife, beating their child, addicted to pornography, using drugs, they will fire them. But with a Federal grant unless we have a faith-based hiring practice change, you would have to have this person prosecuted, convicted in court before you could fire them. Rev. Beasley. Well, the answer to that is since we have a contract with the Bureau of Prisons there are things in our statement of work that says that anyone abusing drugs could no longer perform their duties there so it is already inherent in our---- Mr. Souder. The question is not whether or not anyone is abusing drugs. The question is no one is guilty under government guidelines until that has been proven in a court. Whereas in an organization often they fire when the allegation is made or they feel there is sufficient evidence. The difference between a government grant and private money is the process of when you determine they have been abusing drugs. Rev. Beasley. Once again, I say we don't have a grant, we have a contract. It is explicit in that contract that there are provisions of the Bureau of Prisons. We have to follow with that. We don't go by any Salvation Army rules or anything like that. Because we have that contract, we have to follow the agreement within that contract with the Bureau of Prisons. They tell us exactly whether or not we can ask questions with that individual or that individual has to be off work until they may bring in their own investigators. It is really already a settled issue there as far as the contract provisions. Mr. Souder. One of the things as we debate this, and we have seen this in our earlier hearings and continue to see it, is different organizations are comfortable or not comfortable at different levels. Once an organization has made a decision that you will hire a Muslim, you are still faith-based but you are no longer a Christian solely faith-based organization. You are now ecumenical. That is a decision that each organization has to make. But, in effect, what we are trying to work through at the Federal level is can an organization maintain a distinct brand of faith or do all organizations that get a Federal grant have to become ecumenical? Do all organizations have to sign such a precise statement as you have with the State of Illinois or could, in fact, they retain some flexibility because they are concerned about the witness of their organization. If, for example, this is even tougher. Drug abuse, at least, has a process but what about somebody who is beating their wife and the wife doesn't want to prosecute. Most church organizations would fire that person but a government organization is not allowed to unless charges are substantiated. We think of it in terms of homosexuality or other types of things but when you look at it as spouse abuse and child abuse, addiction to pornography, that in maintaining your integrity as a faith-based organization, that is why these debates over waivers are so critical. I thank you for your participation in this. Did you have any other comments or questions? Mr. Davis. No, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Souder. I want to thank the first panel and you are now dismissed. We will go to the second panel which is Mr. Tim Sauder, executive director of Gateway Woods Children's Home in Leo, IN. Mark Terrell, chief executive officer of Lifeline Youth and Family Service in Fort Wayne. Mr. John Green, executive director of Emmaus Ministries of Chicago. As you come in if you could each remain standing and we'll do the oath before you sit down. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. Souder. Let the record show all the witnesses responded in the affirmative. Tim, if you are more comfortable that you affirmed, I actually write affirmed into the record when I take my oath. I am probably the only Member that writes that so we'll show that in the record, too. Let me say before these witnesses go ahead, in a further comment on one of the things that Congressman Davis made a reference to about politicians going to different places, one of the challenges of this hearing is where do we hold it because this is really to cover urban, rural, suburban. It is to cover Black, White, Hispanic kids. We chose to hold it here in your district as a member of the committee in this community but we are actually trying to represent a wide diversity of people, the majority of whom, quite frankly, are not African American in this zone so we are having all kinds of people come in but we came in to your home area rather than doing it in downtown Chicago or suburban Chicago or, for that matter, Springfield or Indianapolis which would be the State capitals because we think it is important to do that. The first witness in this panel is--we need to have quiet in the room. It is hard enough to hear already. Our first witness is Mr. Tim Sauder, executive director of Gateway Woods Children's Home in Leo. STATEMENTS OF TIM SAUDER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF GATEWAY WOODS CHILDREN'S HOME IN LEO, IN; MARK TERRELL, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF LIFELINE YOUTH AND FAMILY SERVICE IN FORT WAYNE; AND JOHN GREEN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF EMMAUS MINISTRIES OF CHICAGO Mr. Sauder. I am honored and thankful to testify before you today about the meaning, role, and substance of faith-based services. In our case, Gateway Woods is a distinctly Christian ministry. Our mission is to ``Honor and obey God by providing help and healing to troubled children and their families who may then bless others.'' May I also add that Chairman Mark Souder's dad was instrumental in laying some of the groundwork for our agency near Ft. Wayne over 30 years ago and his mother served as one of our longest standing volunteers until recently. In the 1970's and 1980's faith-based services were often marginalized or excluded from much of the social services practice and academia, the very field that it launched over 2,000 years ago. It is refreshing that Christian and other faith-based agencies and services have been ``rediscovered'' and revalidated in our society's desperate and practical search for something, anything that really works. I am simply grateful to our President, to Congress, to the Governors, administrators, some good old-fashioned county judges, and all you have some common sense for opening their minds and hearts to partnerships and resources for the sake of our Nation and its people. I served as the administrator of Gateway Woods for 17 years. We are a Christian multi-service agency providing services to troubled children and their families in Indiana and Illinois. We provide substantive help and long-term hope through our services. As we say, we treat the whole person, the whole family, the whole problem. We address the very beliefs and the attitudes and behaviors that drive dysfunctional and destructive lives. The programs of Gateway Woods include residential childcare with three group homes on a 50-acre rural campus, Gateway Wood School which is a new 13,000 square foot alternative school for middle and high school students, home-based services and aftercare, specialized foster care, adoption both domestic and foreign, in-home Christian counseling, and prevention and restorative services which include mentoring and training on marriage, parenting, conflict resolution, family finances, fatherhood, etc. Some quick facts to let you know how, why, with whom we operate, and how we are held accountable, and how we know what we do really works. Our motivation is very simply stated. We have what they need and we would be neglectful, selfish, and disobedient not to share it. I understand that the most recent faith-based and government collaborations are aimed at addressing poverty. We do so indirectly but substantively and permanently by teaching spouses how to thrive in marriage, parents how to raise kids, families how to function, and kids how to learn and work. We are part of an ongoing, longitudinal effort by IARCCA, State childrens services association to carry out its landmark outcomes measures research. This project tracks such simple but critical life components as family reunification, restrictiveness of living environment, school attendance and grades, contact with the law and employment. On most measures our scores at Gateway Woods are at or above the State averages. Also our colleagues usually only follow their discharged clients for 6 months, we at Gateway Woods follow them at 6, 12, and 24-month intervals to ascertain and assure longstanding change and success. Our other accountabilities and affiliations include multiple licenses with the Indiana Division of Family and Children, accreditations by the Indiana Board of Education, the National Association of Private Schools, and a charter membership in the Indiana Association of Christian Childcaring Agencies. But our ultimate accountability is to God and our Lord Jesus Christ. We partner with numerous county offices of family and children and probation departments, the State Department of Corrections, who together refer most of our residents and clients. Whether government pays for the service or not, we will provide what is needed regardless of the client's ability to pay because we have coveted with our generous donors and our loving God. In the past year we gave away over $725,000 in free and subsidized care. We also serve as the extended family for our children and residents and foster children, even into adulthood by providing friendship, emergency finances, and scholarships for any kid who needs the help long after they have left our programs, after the government support has stopped, and case managers are gone. When the funding streams dry up, we will not. In all honesty, we have worked very well with State and local government schools, personnel, programs, and funding because Indiana, in particular, is a simple, unregulated nonbureaucratic State. I am from Illinois originally but by contrast our functioning here in Illinois is done--we provide everything free of charge and we really don't have collaborations with the government because of the bureaucracy of it. As a small agency we have been minimally involved in Federal programs because the cost-benefit ratio for us is not worth our human and financial cost or the hassles that take our time and taxpayer's funds away from what we consider to be the real work. We see a lot of needs in the system. We see a lot of ways in which we can collaborate and cooperate. We can talk about that later but I am thankful for this chance to be here. [The prepared statement of Mr. Sauder follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Souder. Thank you very much. Mr. Terrell. Mr. Terrell. I want to thank you for inviting me to testify today. Lifeline was founded in 1968. We work in three different areas: Prevention, intervention, and aftercare. We work with children as young as 3 all the way through families. Our mission is to change hearts and to bring hope to a generation at risk. I have chosen not to spend most of my testimony talking about all the very specifics that we do. You need to know we worked last year with almost 4,000 children and families across one-third of Indiana, moving into Michigan and Ohio. We are very excited about that opportunity. We are looking for that to grow even this year. What I want to basically talk about is my perspective on faith-based organizations providing community services. As was mentioned earlier by someone else, faith-based organizations have been providing community services from the time of our country's founding. The question shouldn't be whether or not to invite faith-based organizations to the table. The question should be who can provide the most effective service for the client. I understand the reservations of those of different faiths and those of no faith at all. The government's responsibility should be to help correct the social ills that are present, not to chastise those who because of their faith, have chosen to make a difference in their community. We should allow our clients to make a choice of whether or not faith is an issue. If the client is morally or ethically against faith, or a particular faith, give them an opportunity to choose to work with an organization who espouses no faith at all. By giving the client the power to choose we dramatically reduce the argument, the frustration, and the dilemma of whether or not to allow faith-based organizations to provide services. The discussion should then be who can provide the best service at the best cost. Allow the free enterprise system to work within social service. Those who produce the results will, in the end, be left standing and those who do lip service to what they provide will, like most unsuccessful private enterprises, go by the wayside. How do you determine who is successful or not? Determine what you, the government, believes is important, communicate what you believe is important, and hold agencies accountable to meet those expectations. At Lifeline, we spent the last 5 years working very hard to develop our outcome studies, our outcome measurement tools, and using those tools to evaluate our programs. Each quarterly evaluation comes with a mixture of disbelief and joy. The disbelief is where we are baffled as to why a particular program outcome is less than desired and complete joy when we achieve an outcome that has never been reached before. We desire at Lifeline to be the best at what we do and have realized that we will only be the best at what we do if we are willing to ask the hard questions and look at information that is unpleasant to review. In the book Good to Great the author, Jim Collins, espouses the importance of determining what you don't do well is just as important as determining what you do well. It is his contention that you will never be a great company, great social service agency, great school, or even a great government until we are willing to focus on getting rid of what you can't be best at. With that said, we are willing to compete with other social service organizations of faith, different faith, or no faith at all. When those expectations have been clearly determined, clearly communicated, and honestly evaluated, we are confident that Lifeline and other faith-based organizations will be left standing still providing services, and still will be providing great work. Thank you very much. [The prepared statement of Mr. Terrell follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Souder. Thank you. Mr. Green. Mr. Green. Good morning. I am Deacon John Green. I am an ordained permanent deacon with the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. For the last 13 years I have worked with male prostitutes in the city of Chicago. I would like to start by asking the Congressmen, suppose you walk outside to lunch today and you get hit by a car and you are sucking out of a straw for the next 3 years. What is going to sustain you? Hopefully your faith comes to mind, your family, your education, your friends. As I started working with male prostitutes I realized that this safety net that all of us have didn't exist for these men. About 5 miles from here is a place called the 1950's McDonalds which is an all-night McDonalds. I sat with a man named Johnny in 1989. Johnny shared that for the last 3 years he had gone home with the last trick of the night and he had woken up in a different place every day. As I started to understand his background, he shared with me about early sexual abuse that began when he was about 11 years old and continued until the age of 16. He shared with me that he was from a third generation family who most of the men in that family had spent time incarcerated. He was second generation welfare. As he began to just describe that, I realized that this is a man without a safety net. I had spent a little bit of time before that working in New York City with Covenant House and through an experience at Covenant House I began to grapple with Micah 6:8. ``Oh man, what is it that the Lord asks of you? Only this, that you live justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with your God.'' About 14 years ago I began to ask those three questions of my own life. What do I need to do to live justly in this world? Who do you, Lord, call me to love tenderly and how can I walk humbly with you? Asking those three questions has led me into working with these men involved in prostitution. We do three things at Emmaus. We develop ministries of evangelization, transformation, and education. The first two are focused on reach out to men involved in prostitution. In 1970 20.7 percent of prostitution arrests in the United States were of men. By 1998 the number had risen to 42 percent. That is from the FBI uniform crime report of 1998. During that same time nationwide arrest for male prostitution rose 16 percent in the years between 1989 and 1998, whereas arrest for female prostitution dropped 13.3 percent. Male prostitutes blend into the urban environment. People don't know about them. People don't care about them. During the summer of the year 2000 my wife and I traveled to 23 different cities around the country and we spent time talking with men involved in prostitution all over. We saw the need that exist. In Chicago about 3,000 men are arrested for prostitution each year. So evangelization. We go out in the streets at night in male/female teams. We try to set up our teams male/female, White/minority, under 30/over 30, Catholic/Protestant. We are an organization that tries to bring Roman Catholics and Evangelical Protestants and others together in faith-based work. We go into bars where men are involved in prostitution. We go into street area. We just build a relationship and bring some hope into the midst of what they are doing. As we do that, we introduce them to our ministries of transformation. The bulk of that is at a drop-in center that we have in the uptown neighborhood at 921 West Wilson. In 1996 my wife and I had some inheritance from a grandfather and we did the good thing that all young couples do. We invested in Cisco Systems. Then we wrestled with having that wealth and where your treasure is, there your heart is also. Our treasure was not in Smith Barney in Boston so we bought a crack house in the uptown neighborhood and have transformed that into a ministry center. It is a drop-in center during the day for guys that are met by our outreach teams. We have about 150 men a year that come through the drop-in center. Each year we see about 20, 25 of them off the streets. We also have ministries of education where we focus on the church trying to educate the church about issues of male prostitution and trying to get them involved. One of the things we do is we host a program called Wheaton in Chicago where Wheaton college students come and live with us each semester. We've had 37 students through that program and we teach them about urban ministry, teach them about urban living. Let me back up a little bit, our Ministries of Transformation. We also had a residential program going for about 2\1/2\ years and we had to close our residents program after September 11. We had a real decrease in funding, about a $60,000 drop. We are hoping to open up that residential program again this year. During the time that we had that residence open we had 37 different men--oops, I am confusing my statistics. Sorry. Thirty-five different men come through the residential program. Half of them continue to be off the streets and to be doing well. We started with just me and a couple of volunteers about 13 years ago walking the streets. We now have 10 staff in two cities. We just expanded to Houston, TX, last year. We are in the process of expanding to some other cities. Our budget is about $400,000 a year. We also have a volunteer program where people commit to a year of ministry with us. We give them room and board, medical insurance, and $20 a week. If you are looking for a change of location, let me know. We are hoping to expand to five other cities around the country in the next 7 to 8 years and eventually we want to open up a long-term residence where guys can come for 2, 3, maybe 4 years. What we have learned is that the amount of devastation that happens in men's lives that lead them into prostitution is not going to be solved by 6 months in our residence program or through our counseling. It is going to take long-term effort. We need to teach them a trade. We need to help them get a GED. We need to help them restore their understanding of healthy sexuality. We need to repair that damage that has been done spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally. For us that means a long-term thing. We are hoping as we get these five Emmauses going in other cities that those will feed into a long-term program. One of the most devastating things that we have found in the last few years is that we are beginning to see more and more really young children involved in prostitution. Young men involved in prostitution in the city of Chicago. When I started we would very rarely see men under the age of 18 in the city of Chicago. In the last 3 years we have begun to see 12-year-olds. 12-year-olds! I think there is a number of reasons for this. I think there is a lot of age inappropriate sex ed that is going on in our schools. I think many families have been very strongly impacted by the welfare reform that has gone on and leading many kids to that. I think also just the sexualized nature of our culture. I would like to close with challenging Congressman Davis a little bit on this preferential hiring. You talked about seeing those drug reform programs where people were singing and praising the Lord. If you take away the option for faith-based organizations to preferentially hire, you will take away that faith that you saw. You will take away that vibrancy in Christ. I am interested in getting men out of prostitution and walking in the saving knowledge and relationship with Jesus Christ. If I can get one out of two of those, I am happy. If I get both of them, I am ecstatic. But I need to preferentially hire people of faith, people who have my same values or an organization that has the same values to do that. I don't think, as some of the other presenters will have presented that is impossible to do in a relationship between government and faith-based organizations. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Green follows:] [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Souder. Let me start again by laying out a little bit more. We have written testimony but for the record a little bit about your missions and start with Mr. Sauder. His way of spelling Sauder is correct. It is the German way, but when the Sauder families first came in to the United States and Pennsylvania, there is a Sauderton and Souderburg that is spelled SO. Everybody kept calling us Souder so some of them in Illinois where Tim is from went back to the SA and in Indiana we have more of the SO. In Ohio it is mixed. I want to double make the point that you made that was really interesting in your testimony. You take government money in Indiana because the requirements and the contracting out give you more flexibility, but in the State of Illinois you do not because the requirements are tighter. Also a point I want to make for the record is for 16 years we have had Democrat Governors in Indiana and Illinois has had Republican Governors. Indiana Democratic Governors have consistently wound up with high marks from those in the faith- based community because they have given more flexibility to the faith-based community, whereas a number of the Republican Governors have not. For those who think that this is just a straight partisan issue in Washington and at the grassroots level, it is a tad more confused when you come into the State-based level because in Indiana it does not work the same way as Illinois. We have seen it flipped on its head. Now, Gateway Woods started as a direct ministry of the Apostolic Christian Church. It evolved and started to take kids assigned and, if I understood your testimony correctly, you said over half now are either coming from Division of Family and Children or the Probation Department or the State Department of Correction. Mr. Sauder. It is more like about 70 to 80 percent of our children are referred through public agencies. Mr. Souder. Could you explain a little bit of that evolution, what impact and changes it had on you and if the State required you to change your hiring practices or different things, what would you do? Mr. Sauder. There are several questions there. One, in Indiana the government provides very few of its own direct services so it subcontracts to private providers. Secular providers, Christian providers, for-profits, not-for-profits, they go out in a sense in the market place and purchase service of all kinds. It is not just residential childcare or foster care. In a sense, it is a very healthy symbiotic relationship. The government needs us because they don't have the services available. We need them because that is not only a source of accountability with these kids who often need a judge and a case manager or probation officer or someone. Also it is a source of referrals for us in finding those kids who really do have the need. About 20 to 25 percent of our children are placed privately by their families and these are kids primarily where the families are having a lot of trouble. They are having trouble with the kids and the child hasn't gotten hooked into the system yet through abuse and neglect or through delinquency. The family knows that there are big problems and they are trying to solve those problems before they get even worse. Even with those children who are coming privately, they are not necessarily really connected with our church at all. Now, as far as the hiring and so on in Indiana, we are licensed by the State of Indiana as a residential child caring organization. We are also licensed as a child placing agency. That is the title of the license for foster care and adoption in Indiana. There are a set of regulations. There is an annual license review, if you will, by State officials and so on. I may need to ask you to restate or repeat your question on some of the hiring issues. Mr. Souder. Would you hire a Muslim? Mr. Sauder. I would not. Mr. Souder. What would you do if the government said, for example, if you were counseling the house parents at the children's home and found that one of them was abusing their own children but the spouse and the child would not go forth to the court, would you still fire that parent which you could not do with a government grant? Mr. Sauder. I've got to think on that one. Mr. Souder. Because this is an important thing because religious organizations at times will say, ``We will continue to counsel you. You are welcome to come to our church. We will include you in those programs but we are not going to put you in a place if you are practicing pornography where you are dealing with children.'' But you could not get in with a government grant under some of the guidelines that are proposed and have somebody who is addicted to pornography and remove them from the position unless that has been established as a risk in a court situation because that would be a religious opinion, not something that is condemned by law. Mr. Sauder. I am not sure how the labor laws differ between Indiana and Illinois. Maybe those are irrelevant if we are dealing with a Federal grant. In our case currently there are indirect Federal funds that come to us through the State administration through education and so on, but at the moment we don't have any government grants directly to Gateway Woods. We are a contractor with the State. Also, our employees--right up front one of the other gentlemen in the previous panel, I think Mr. Terrell, also mentioned about making sure that up front everyone understood what was the agreement that they were coming into employment or work or ministry with our organization, the kind of clients they were going to work with, what their job description was, if they understood those expectations and that there was, in a sense, a contractual agreement inherent. If they were to violate that as in not fairly performing their work in whatever way it was, we would need to work through that process. We would not necessarily immediately fire that person. We would first of all try to sit down and talk, work through the situation, probably involve a counselor of their choice and to see what kinds of issues these truly were and if they were ones that were endangering the lives of the children who they are entrusted with. By law in the State of Indiana we cannot have employed at our place someone who is a sexual offender or someone who is an abuser or someone who---- Mr. Souder. That has to be proved. Mr. Sauder. Yes. And we are under a State reporting guideline that if there is suspected abuse either between children or from staff to children or from the children's parents and their children, we are obligated by law to report that. There is an institutional abuse outline and the State has a system by which that would be investigated. In fact, in all honesty, it would be the State that would force us to fire that person before we would as quickly as we would. I guess I'll say it that way. It is an issue of protecting children that takes precedent as far as I understand. Mr. Souder. Let me ask Mr. Terrell a variation. If you had somebody who on their own time like, let us say, they had 2 days off and they were drunk on those 2 days, which did not put the kids at risk but they were getting drunk on their own time or were known to be carousing around town setting a non kind of traditional family example, a moral example, would you keep that person on staff? Would you counsel them through it? Would you suspend them in short-term while they tried to work through? But if they continued that behavior after counseling, would you let a person who is, in effect, in a Christian sense living in sin continue on your staff? Mr. Terrell. Well, first of all, we will work with them. We have had situations like that. You can't employ 100 people and not have those issues. Mr. Souder. Everybody is the same. Mr. Terrell. Exactly. So our first course would be to work with them, counseling. The second part is we also look into what Tim mentioned: how does this affect the work that they are doing? Again, if we would find that it is going to have a detrimental effect, you can't hire someone that is supposed to help young men and children to be responsible when they are not responsible. You can't do what you don't possess. Again, that is an issue that we have to work with and we wrestle with. Mr. Souder. But if it is not illegal, you would still have it. Mr. Terrell. We would have to work through it and it would be a case-by-case basis. Again, we do drug and alcohol counseling with our people. Some of the best drug and alcohol counselors are ones that had that issue. But they have transformed their lives. They have changed. But if they are still doing it, you can't tell someone not to do it. Mr. Souder. Any Christian knows that the fundamental is repentance and that we also fall back and come back. The question is a hardened sinner who will not change and the behavior is not illegal, would that compromise your ministry? Mr. Terrell. Yes. Absolutely. Mr. Souder. In the contracting out of different services that you provide, you provide them for school systems, for different government contracting much like variations at Gateway Woods, different types of things, could you--well, you mentioned that even in multiple States. In Fort Wayne we have the largest population of Burmese dissidents in the United States most of whom are not Evangelical. The government has looked at providing some service to them through some of their religious communities but they would not be able to have a Buddhist outreach program under the guidelines either. In other words, we think in terms of this as Christians but, in fact, this will limit some other religion's ability to do this as well. We have seen this in Fort Wayne where there is a discussion of how best to deliver services to some of the new immigrant populations that are not Christian but don't want to have their religion secularized either. Could you explain--you elaborated a little bit but how much in what you do do you believe the effectiveness of your staff and individuals is the power of Christ and how much is that integrated into your ministry? You have other issues as well. Can you really separate it? Can you separate it in some programs and not others? I've been there. I've looked at some of the tapes. I know you work at that question but it is really a fundamental question. Would your donors continue to support you if they thought, ``We could do this in a secular way and it isn't the transforming power.'' Mr. Terrell. I think it is the most fundamental question obviously that you are wrestling with. It is vital that the people that work for me and work with the clients that we work with have similar values and the faith that we do. No question. What would it do with the donors? We raise a significant amount of our budget outside of the contracts that we get with probation, welfare, and Department of Corrections. They give to us because they know that we are a faith-based organization and that we are hiring Christians. We are hiring people with faith. They are going to make a difference. There is a statement that everyone says that people are your best asset. We have all heard that. I have agreed with that. I have come to disagree with that. The right people are your best asset. That is the most significant thing for us. Public schools are all over the State of Indiana now and we are not there to primarily make them Christians. We work with people of all faiths, but it is amazing to me. We have a curriculum that is not a Christian curriculum, but it has faith-based principles underlying it. All of the facilitators that go in are Christians. It is amazing, the results that are happening. That is not by accident. That is truly a belief that is ordained by God that that has happened. Now, we are not there to talk about our faith with Christ. If a young man asks us, ``Tell me about it,'' we are going to be open and share that. We let schools know that is where we are at. But, it really comes down to the government and our Nation need faith-based organizations to be there. If you remove our ability to determine who works with us, you will eliminate our ability to do our work. I would much rather see us compete. I have talked to Social Service providers and they hate that word. Compete with outcome measures and allow the proof to prove who is more successful. I am willing to join into that dialog and put it there. To answer your question, I truly believe that it will make a fundamental difference on how we can be successful or not. Mr. Souder. Thank you. I've gone over my time. I'll yield to Mr. Davis. I first want to say to Mr. Green, and I'll ask you some comments after Mr. Davis, but thank you very much for your ministry and your comments. We wanted to include you today because it is different than a lot of other ministries but very important part of reaching out to the diversity of challenges we face. Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Sauder, is Gateway Woods a 501(c)(3) tax exempt not- for-profit organization? Mr. Sauder. Yes, we are. Mr. Davis. What do you see as being the difference between what is being proposed for faith-based initiatives that is different than the requirements of a regular 501(c)(3) tax exempt? Mr. Sauder. I am not sure I understand your question. Mr. Davis. Let me try to restate it. If I am a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization, do I need anything else to get money from the government or to run Social Service human service programs or to get money from philanthropists or to get money from public entities? I am saying if there is no difference between a 501(c)(3) tax exempt regular not-for-profit organization and a faith-based initiative, why would I need a faith-based initiative? Mr. Sauder. When you say faith-based initiative you mean a collaboration with the government? Mr. Davis. Well, I am saying---- Mr. Sauder. We are a faith-based initiative whether the government is around or not. I am not sure if I---- Mr. Davis. Let me try to do it. Many hospitals are faith- based. Catholic Hospital is a faith-based initiative. Many colleges and universities are faith-based initiatives. That is, they are run by, they were established by religious denominations. But they have established themselves as 501(c)(3) tax exempt status organizations in order to have the benefit of not having to pay certain kinds of taxes and to operate under rules and regulations. My question is if all of this exist for the group, what would a faith-based initiative mean to them that a 501(c)(3) tax exempt status does not already mean? Mr. Green. Can I make a comment on that? Mr. Sauder. Please do. Mr. Green. I understand what you are asking, Chairman Davis--Honorable Davis. Sorry. The question needs to be asked to the government because it is the conditions that the government puts on funding. The government can write my organization a check and I'll send you a receipt and it will be tax exempt and everything else, but the conditions of preferential hiring, the conditions of no proselytizing, all those conditions you add to the funding that would come through Department of Human Services, come through the Department of Housing. I think the question needs to be asked of the government, not necessarily to a faith-based organizations because anybody as a 501(c)(3) can make a charitable donation to any of our work. Mr. Davis. But you can't proselytize. You can't get government money. Mr. Green. I am saying that is a condition that government has then set. Mr. Davis. Let us say I want to get hired as a Baptist preacher. I want to be hired as a Baptist preacher. Now, I know the Bible a little bit, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Esther, Job, Ecclesiastes, Solomon, Songs of Solomon, Mark, Luke, John. I've read some of that so I know a little bit about Christianity. My conceptualization of Christianity which comes from the teaching of Jesus the Christ, it seems to me this cat was more inclusive than exclusive. I am saying from my study of it. Somebody else may have a different notion of it. It seems to me that if I exclude people that I ain't really following what I call Christianity. I mean, Jesus went and got whoever he could get and he didn't ask them--he didn't ask the little boy, ``Look here, son, are you a Christian? Because if this fish you got and this bread, if it ain't blessed or holy, maybe I can't use it.'' I am trying to understand. Now, if they decide that they are not going to hire me because I know all this stuff that I know because I can't whoop. Black Baptists they like for people to whoop. You can know all about the Bible but if the church decides that you can't whoop, they may not hire you. Now, are they discriminating against you on the basis of faith or are they saying you don't meet their requirement to be their pastor because you can't whoop? If a person is an alcoholic, I know a lot of Christians who are alcoholics, as a matter of fact. I mean, who profess their alcoholism. Well, they go to church and they are on the deacon board and, you know, they do all the other things but they still got some problems with alcohol. You know, they have a little nip before the service starts. We used to have a cat at our church who would go out and get a shot before he would pray. Everybody in the church knew that he needed a little help before he got started. He was a member of our family, a cousin, but he was one of the main deacons. I am trying to determine what this discrimination business really is and what we are discriminating against if we decide that certain kinds of people can't work. For example, a Muslim. Well, I am trying to understand. What it is that a Muslim would project in a counseling program or social service program that would make him or her unacceptable to a Christian organization? I guess I have difficulty understanding that description of faith. Mr. Terrell. I'll try to address the question. To use your example about being inclusive and exclusive and talking about our Christ, I truly believe we need to be inclusive and to work with as many faiths and with as many people as we possibly can. But our Christ was exclusive on who he had working with him. No question about it, but he picked people from all different walks of life, tax collectors, smelly old fishermen. But the bottom line is there was a common theme that all of them possessed. That is really what we are asking to be able to do is to be able to--I do not personally have a problem if the Muslims decide to have a program to work with the indigent, the poor. I don't have a problem. I have some very good friends that are Jewish. I have no problem with that and we have lots of discussion. They would not want to hire me to talk about the New Testament even though we agree on the Old Testament. It doesn't mean that they don't do great work. I think they do great work. But I think for us to do the kind of work we need to do, we need to be able to be exclusive in who we hire so that we can do our best work. I know that is not the politically correct comment but I really truly believe that is the right answer. Mr. Davis. Well, I guess I just asked are we taking this in terms of--I think it is hanging us up and it is holding us up on what otherwise would be great initiatives. I mean, the idea is having some body who will work with male prostitutes and who will raise this. I mean, that is super commended. I mean, that is an area that lots of folk don't really know much about and don't know much about or don't have much understanding. The same thing I think is true with the whole question of sexual preference. I mean, I remember a group of ministers telling me one time that they just did not understand my position in relationship to that. I countered to them that it just seemed to me that if there was somebody who was going to understand all people, that ministers would have a better way of doing that than anybody else because of their faith and religious training and religious upbringing. Of course, they suggested at the moment that God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. I think we have come a long way in this country relative to our understanding of just what faith means. It just seems to me that in some instances we are going beyond and denying ourselves the opportunity to reach agreement on some solid points. Mr. Green. One of the issues with the whole preferential hiring, just because I would preferentially hire someone of faith and that has the same values, that doesn't automatically mean my work would be discriminatory. You mentioned the whole issue of sexuality. That is an issue that our organization obviously deals with quite a bit and we have a position on sexuality that says sexual intimacy, the context of that is one man, one woman, one lifetime period. Anything outside of that is not what God ordains. There are a lot of people and conventional wisdom in our society is going to say that is being discriminatory. That is being homophobic or whatever. With our organization I deal with men who are involved in prostitution. Seventy-five percent of men who are involved in prostitution are actually heterosexual in their orientation. Most of them are doing this because of poverty issues. I deal with guys who are transgender. I deal with guys who are bisexual. I deal with all sorts of different sexual struggles but our organization, and the staff of our organization, have a very historic view of sexuality. Yet, we don't discriminate against any of those men. All of them are welcome to come to our organization and welcome to come into our drop-in center. Even if they say, ``OK, John. I disagree with you on my sexuality. I want to stay a transgendered individual.'' ``Fine. We are going to try to work with you as best we can. We will try to find you housing.'' Mr. Davis. Would you hire one? Mr. Green. Absolutely not. Mr. Davis. You would not hire one no matter how much experience they may have had or how good they are or how well they can relate to other people? They just simply would be denied the opportunity? Mr. Green. To work for us, yes. Mr. Davis. Even though they have all this experience. They can put themselves in the shoes of a person who is going through what they have gone through? They probably have a better understanding of it than most people. I have always been told if you really want to understand an Indian, try walking in his or her moccasins. I mean, that is something I don't understand. Mr. Green. Yet, if you go to the hospital and your doctor says you have cancer and he does not have cancer, are you going to not believe him? Mr. Davis. No, but I will tell you what. I wouldn't want to go to a hospital where someone told me that even though I have all the requirements to be a doctor, I have all the medical training, I have written 12 books, I have operated on 200 people, I have done all the stuff that you do, but because I am a Muslim and the hospital is something else that I can't practice there. I would say take me on to some place else and treat me. I am saying I feel that strongly about discrimination. Maybe it is because I am African American in the United States of America. Maybe it is because my foreparents were only counted as three-fifths of a person when the Constitution was established. I wasn't counted as a whole man or a whole person. Or maybe it is because of some of the other discriminatory practices that I have experienced. I remember my brother and I were looking for a job one summer. We would go in a place and I was told that I had too much education. I had a masters degree and he was about to finish college and he was told he didn't have enough education. We would come out and compare notes and we just kind of got used to it. People have a tendency to become and to think as they have experienced. Maybe that is why the discrimination opportunity looms so greatly with me because I think that we just need to become more inclusive than exclusive. Mr. Green. Yet, you do discriminate, Congressman. Don't we? Mr. Davis. Yes, we do. It is a common practice of life but religion to me says that we are always becoming. Just because we discriminate today, that doesn't mean that we keep trying to discriminate tomorrow. I mean, when I go to church I hear songs like, ``Just a Closer Walk with Thee.'' You know, ``Nearer My God to Thee.'' ``I am Coming Up, Lord.'' I have never seen a Christian that had enough religion so just like we are becoming as individuals in our lives as related to Christianity, it seems to me that our Nation would be becoming and trying to get a little bit better than what we have been. Trying to understand things that we have not understood before and trying to reach that point where, as I guess Martin Luther King would say, God's children will be able to walk hand in hand and say we are an intimate part of this great Nation that we have created and we just want to make it better. That is how I see the discrimination question. I really hope that we can resolve it so that we can get on with the faith-based initiatives, that we can get on with what the President is proposing so that some institutions--I mean, the thing that amazes me the most and intrigues me the most is I believe that faith-based programs can probably do much more in some areas because of the faith orientation than a nonfaith- based organization. Since money is so tight and we have lost so many jobs and the economy is in bad shape and I don't see it getting in good shape soon, I just want to make use of all this resource that we have in people of faith. I hope we will be able to do that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I have gone over my time, too. Mr. Souder. Thanks. I am going to do a little bit more and you are welcome to as well. Let me first ask Mr. Green. Do you know if the people who are trying to reach out on the streets who are male prostitutes, is government doing anything to help them? Mr. Green. Is government doing anything to help male prostitution? Yes. Mr. Souder. Are there programs right now in Chicago that, in fact, you see out on the streets when you are trying to help these guys? Mr. Green. Yes. I would say there are others that work with generally the homeless population. We have not met another organization in the country that specifically works with male prostitutes. It is just too hot of an issue. It is just too difficult of an issue. We have met three other faith-based organizations that have outreaches to the homeless in general and are starting specific programs for male prostitutes. Mr. Souder. Years ago when I was Republican staff director of the Children and Family Committee in the mid-1980's I would say I went with Covenant House in Chicago all night on one of the vans distributing sandwiches and lemonade. It wasn't targeted specifically toward male prostitutes but a fair number were either transvestites or male prostitutes who we met in the van so while that ministry wasn't targeted, Covenant House locations around the country I think have done some in the ministry targeted to that group. Mr. Green. And I worked for the New York Van Program for 2 years. Mr. Souder. What has been kind of interesting, and you got a taste of our Washington debate and why I have been very cautious at urging any faith-based organization that wants to maintain their traditional Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, whatever their orientation is, Jewish, about applying for government grants, because you heard a little bit of the difficulty of distinction of the historic trend that churches never before in contact, even if they had government funds, have been asked the questions on hiring that they are currently being asked because it was viewed as a Constitutional protection for people to hire people of their own faith if you are giving money for that faith. If we are going to tap into those faith-based organizations, which are probably the majority of faith-based organizations in the United States, but not all because some churches are more ecumenical, but if we are to tap into these services, we have to figure out how to reconcile it. I am fast coming to the conclusion this is going to be very difficult. I, for example, give to numerous Christian ministries and I am interested in them as Christian ministries, not in government watered-down ministries where faith is not a key part of it. This is a very difficult question because it hits into a fundamental question that none of us want to talk about and that is discrimination. It implies judgment. Now, many denominations, all religions, believe that their religion is the right way or they wouldn't practice that religion. Each of you represent a Christian based organization. Is it correct to say that unless somebody accepts Christ, you wouldn't define them as a Christian mission? If that is the case, do you believe that each of your ministries are commanded by scripture to be a reflection of Christ? Not perfect but the reflected glory of Christ? Each of the witnesses said yes. Now, if they are to be a reflected ministry of Christ, then just as a Muslim or a Buddhist would reflect their ministry to be that. If you have somebody else, your ministry by definition would change if you had people who were not reflecting Christ. This is not a new question. It is not a question of trying to go around condemning people. It is a fact that people are giving you money, people are volunteering in your organizations because they share that commitment. The reason I ask the question is because your ministry is a terribly important ministry of some of the hardest to reach and hurting people. I just can't commend you enough. Those of us who are living in comfortable lifestyles feel terribly guilty and will go right back to living our comfortable lifestyles but we very much appreciate your sacrifice. Mr. Green. You need to ask that question how we live justly, though. Mr. Souder. God will honor you for that and less than honor some of the rest of us who aren't doing it including me. It is interesting that the faith-based programs started in government in the homeless area and nobody asked these programs who they were hiring or what their hiring practices were because it actually started with AIDS because people thought they were going to catch AIDS so nobody asked the Christian organizations, Mother Theresa or others, but in the U.S. Evangelical Lutheran, whatever the religion was, whether they were hiring preferential practices because nobody else would do it. Since nobody else was taking care of the AIDS patients, they didn't ask them the question. When we went to the homeless area, once again we don't have enough people doing this, so nobody asked the churches what their hiring practices were because everybody was so relieved that different organizations were getting involved with the homeless. This question has become hot as we have moved into categories where you are competing with others and it is now going back so when an African American church wants to compete for a Head Start Program grant, all of a sudden the Head Start people go, ``Well, we don't know about the rules they are under.'' Similar in drug treatment as we saw in San Antonio where we had several witnesses who forthrightly said that some of the other faith-based drug treatment programs shouldn't get the money. They would rather have it go to the traditional establishment people who know how to write the grants, who get the government grants, and not to many of those people in the communities who are faith-based who don't want to go through all the government hiring practices and who want to have flexibility to do it as those churches always have. But they are saying, ``No, we've got to do that.'' That is partly what has brought on this pressure that we are debating and that what we are working through. What is really discouraging is that because the faith-based has kind of expanded, some things now are going to go back to some of the people who are getting government grants or indirect grants and the government is potentially going to come back to those groups who now have the money and say, ``Unless you change the practices in your church and your religious group, even though you have been getting this money for 10 years, you can't do what you have been doing.'' This is particularly going to hit many in the minority community where the churches are more integrated. That is still an exception in a lot of the suburban and rural areas where the church may or may not be as integrated in as it is culturally. The question is are we in government actually going to force changes that will change the nature and the definition to be instead of a Christian church or a Muslim or Jewish Synagog, that we are going to make everybody so amorphous that nobody has a clear mission. This is the very debate we are having that you have heard today over the definition of the word faith. What faith means really has not been clear and there is absolutely no understanding, point blank, on either side of what the previous Constitutional provisions were that protected and made churches unique. That is why the Rev. Beasley thing of the 501(c)(3) as Lifeline has done and as Gateway if they are going to continue to do what they are doing, and if you want to get into different government grants, I believe there is going to have to be these groups that say, ``Well, maybe our computers can be paid by the government.'' Maybe our building can be paid but what we are doing on a day-to-day basis is so much wrapped up with our faith that we don't want to get tangled up into this governmental debate. Do any of you have any comments on that? Mr. Green. One comment I would like to make is when the whole faith-based initiative came forward I read a book called Seducing the Samaritans by Joe Laconte. A wonderful book. He actually traced the history of, I think, 13 or 17 nonprofit organizations in the Boston area and they all began as vibrant, Christian ministries. They were all essentially seduced by Federal funding. All of them have lost all of their Christian components. They would say they are based upon the Gospels or whatever but there is no effort to really live out the Gospels in a concrete way because they were seduced by government funding. I think that is a wonderful resource to look at in the midst of this whole discussion. Mr. Sauder. I don't know if I have the answer but I keep coming back to the question what works. Do we care about making sure that we have covered every little nuance of each Congressman's or each judge's list of things that are dos and don'ts and in the process kids and families continue to fall apart. I know I maybe am being idealistic but I want to keep coming back and reminding Congress, encourage you, challenge you, and pray for you that you will not lose site of the fact that who needs help. Political correctness and our checklist does not need help. Kids and families need help and I think that is why this whole faith-based thing has opened up because our society, our government programs, our nongovernment programs are looking for things that will work because it is clear that they are not and our society is quickly disintegrating while we debate these issues. I know they are difficult but I guess my challenge and my prayer is that you keep coming back to let us make sure, let us get down to the ground level and see where the rubber meets the road and needs are being met and where kids are being helped and where families are being helped and try to limit the bureaucracy in the process if we can. Mr. Terrell. Maybe I will be the last one. I don't know. Ask the clients if they care. They want to go to where they can get the help and they can be successful. Who is being successful? Make that the judgment. I had a judge in northern Indiana ask me, ``Are you a faith-based organization?'' I said, ``Yes, I am,'' knowing there would be a consequence to that. He said, ``If the worse thing that happens is they become flaming Baptists, so be it.'' I am not Baptist, by the way. It doesn't matter. His idea was how do we help those people. Again, we, at least I'll speak for Lifeline, we can help those people best by having people who have similar values and similar missions and that is what we would like to see happen. Mr. Souder. Let me ask one more question of Mr. Green. Would you spend the time and do the mission that you do which is helping people if you didn't believe that Jesus Christ was real and that was the only way? In other words, I am not asking whether you view it as a Christian mission but what motivates you to go do and give up what you have given up? Do you believe you would have done this if you weren't a Christian? People do. Mr. Green. People do. I would say because my atheist sister is our largest supporter of Emmaus. I think if I wasn't doing it, she would. I think when we encounter people like I did this work--I was going into business and different things but I did this because I encountered a person whose life I touched and they touched my life as well. I think it is in that transformation of life that we are transformed. Isaiah 58 talks about fasting and what is true fasting and all these different things, loosing the chains of injustice and breaking the yoke and welcoming the homeless into your home and feeding the hungry. Then right after that it says, ``If you do these things, your healing will quickly appear.'' It says nothing about people no longer being hungry, no longer being thirsty. It says, ``If you do these things, your healing will quickly appear.'' In some ways I do what I do in a selfish way because I am transformed by doing this work and I am transformed by living out the Gospel as best I can. Would I do it if I didn't believe in the Gospel? I would like to think yes because of the values and morals that my parents taught me which I think contributes to why I do it. Mr. Souder. But part of this debate is some people do things for secular reasons. Some people do things for other faiths. But Christians many times do it because of their Christianity. What we are in effect saying is that unless you do it for reasons other than your faith, you can't get government funds. That is a legitimate debate. One other thing. Congressman Davis compared it to a doctor with technical skills. This is a little variation of the same question. You said you wouldn't hire someone who didn't share your faith. Do you believe that because the faith part of your ministry--in other words, if somebody stays a transvestite and would stay a prostitute--in other words if they will change, you would hire them. I mean, they would actually be possibly one of the most effective hires you could make. But if they haven't changed, that is part of what is being a good doctor is on your staff. Mr. Green. Absolutely. I mean, we get people--the men that I work with get just covered with stuff whether it is poverty or whether it is self-abuse or abusing others. I think there is a certain point where man-made intervention can work whether it is the 12 steps or whether it is counseling or whether it is therapy or whatever. There comes a point where your life has been devastated to such a degree that I think and I believe that the only thing that is going to solve that is a transformative encounter with the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ. If you deny me the opportunity to provide that, you are going to deny them who are so wounded, who are so broken in life that is the only thing, I think, that is going to reach them and that is why I do what I do. Mr. Souder. Thank you. Do you have any questions? Mr. Davis. Yes. Just one thing. I was thinking of a scripture in Isaiah. I believe it is the Prophet Isaiah said, ``If you would put an end to oppression, every gesture of contempt, build it on the old foundations, you will be known as the people who rebuilt the walls.'' When I read that, it suggests to me that--it is kind of like the blues thing, ``Yesterday is dead and gone. Tomorrow is out of sight. It is so sad to be alone. I need somebody to help me make it through the night.'' It seems to me that we have reached another plateau in our being. I think of the Prophet Michael. You have to love mercy and walk humbly with your God. It just seems to me that the ultimate in this country is our notion that the majority rules. I am saying fundamental to our sense of democracy is majority rules. I am saying if we didn't have that concept, we would probably be like lots of other countries where coup d'etat and coups. Every time we disagreed somebody would grab their rifle or machine gun or a bomb or whatever it is that they use. But we have come to accept this notion of majority rules. If we can arrive at a majority opinion and then certify that into law as part of some legal requirement and operation, then it just seems to me that we, too, would be known as the people who rebuilt the walls. That is the common ground. I didn't feel like putting on a tie this morning. A lot of days I just as soon not wear a tie. I would love to just get up and put on my blue jeans and t-shirt and come on down here and do what I do. I could do it probably just as well with blue jeans and a t-shirt on as I can with a tie, but there is some expectations. Oh, my God, I have a press conference today so I can't go down to Fourth Presbyterian with my blue jeans and sneakers on because they expect something different. It seems to me that as we come together there is some level of societal expectation and compliance with what those expectations are as we seek to become more cohesive in our determination of who we are and what we are. Mr. Chairman, I thank you very much and I think this has been a great discussion. I really appreciate the position and views and programmatic responses of the members of this panel. Mr. Souder. Well, thank you. I want to say that your seeing and living legislative discussion and interaction here, the difference between what we agree has to function as a country which is democracy and a republic and the tension that puts on individual faith and how to reconcile that when you have increasing diversity of faiths in America because I love that passage in Micah. I have it posted. And I love the Isaiah passage but for many people of the Christian faith, they believe that the old testament is, in fact, a disproof. That without the death and resurrection of Christ and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit we are incapable of practicing compassion and mercy on a regular enough basis. Christ came down because of the failure of humanity to do that and that is really what is behind a lot of the missions. That is what we are really trying to figure out. What if a majority of the people don't agree with that and don't want their tax money to go to groups that do that. In a democracy we work that through. At the same time the practical matter of that is that groups that are effective in performing outcomes for those who are hurting are then withdrawn from that system and the people who are hurting are punished because of that debate. But it is unlikely that we are going to change the religious. I am a Christian but people of other religions are going to be equally passionate on theirs and how do we keep a democracy functioning and not have it break down to what we are seeing in other parts of the world where religious extremes then want to kill those who disagree. This isn't about killing each other. It is about how we work with the government funds. I'll let you have the last word. Do you have a comment, Mr. Green? Mr. Green. I would love to have a conversation with Congressman Davis because I don't see in scripture where the majority rules. I see that the road is narrow and I see that the way is rough. It was the one thief from the cross that was saved. I think it is not about the majority. It is not about the economic balances. It is about the economy of grace. I spent an exorbitant amount of time and effort reaching out to men who are considered expendable in our society. The John Wayne Gacy's and Jeffrey Dahmers all preyed upon male prostitutes because nobody cares about these guys. Yet, I think the economy of grace calls us to. It calls us to make economic decisions sometimes that in the world's sense seems foolish but I think in the Gospel sense seems wise. Mr. Souder. But as elected government officials we have to work within that democratic framework because you can't have one group saying, ``And we are the anointed and this is the way to do it.'' Even if they happen to be right that they are the anointed, in a democracy you have to work through it and that is our difficulty. If the third panel could come forward. Ms. Mary Nelson, president and CEO of Bethel New Life of Chicago, Mr. Richard Townsell, executive director of the Lawndale Christian Development Corporation of Chicago, Mr. Emmet Moore, 11th District Police Steering Committee in Chicago. Mr. Davis. Ms. Nelson is not here but Steaven McCullough. Mr. Souder. Steaven McCullough is representing Ms. Nelson. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. Souder. Mr. McCullough, could you spell your name for the record so we have it? We didn't have it. Mr. McCullough. My first name is spelled S-T-E-A-V-E-N. Last name is spelled M-C-C-U-L-L-O-U-G-H. Mr. Souder. Thank you for your patience in waiting so long as we have gone through this. We thank you for participating in today's hearing. We will start with Mr. Moore. You are up on this side. Thank you for your testimony with the 11th District Police Steering Committee. Looking forward to hearing your testimony. STATEMENTS OF EMMET MOORE, 11TH DISTRICT POLICE STEERING COMMITTEE IN CHICAGO; RICHARD TOWNSELL, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE LAWNDALE CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF CHICAGO; AND STEAVEN MCCULLOUGH, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, BETHEL NEW LIFE, INC., CHICAGO, IL Mr. Moore. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Congressman Davis. Good morning to everybody here. My name is Emmett Moore. I am a community police volunteer for the last 8 years. I am also working with the police department and the city government and the district advisory committee. That is the committee that sits down with the police district commander, and we strategize as to how to fight the crime problem. I also chair a committee called Court Advocate Subcommittee. That puts me in court maybe three and sometimes four times a week, an average of about two times a week. I have been doing that for the past 8 years so I am close to this subject, and I see the faces behind the crime. I am also an advocate for victims of crime. I see this problem that people we are dealing with here today have brought violations before us and will bring us down if we don't change. One thing we have going for us that other Nations don't have, we have a written Constitution which is, in my opinion, is the best there ever was and the best there ever will be. The problem is are we living up to that Constitution? I don't think we are doing that but are capable of doing it. Now, the subject we are dealing with today, faith-based initiative, what little I know about it and from what I have heard here today I have a concern. My concern is, No. 1, that when we talk about the church and the church's role in our society, I think they do their best work when dealing with moral issues or moral fitness, dealing with character and things like that. That's their best work and the best thing they have done, and they have done a very good job at it until about four decades ago when we had so much going on and somehow we lost sight and moral standard decayed. Now, that happens because customs change. The one thing that never changes, and I think the church overlooked that, and that is character which deals with right and wrong. What we are dealing with today we have no right and no wrong. Everything goes. If we don't change that, I don't see how we are going to survive. I am here, and I am 78 years old. Sixty-one years ago, about 4 months before my 18th birthday, I volunteered: I had a choice of going to TWA or going into the military. I volunteered for the Navy, and I had 3 years and 2 months in the Navy. I survived that war which was cake compared to the war we are in now because we knew who the enemy was. We could strategize and plan and attack that enemy. But the world we are dealing with today is much more complicated and is much more difficult. It should really not be complicated because we should go according to the principles of our Constitution which is equality of opportunity. That is the thing to make us what we were. That is my wish that every individual regardless of what faith you are, we are all in this together. Every individual has a role to play. When we talk about equal opportunity, that means every individual for the benefit of society should be given the opportunity to progress to his fullest potential to be a contribution to society, not a drag on society. We are going, it seems to me, in the opposite direction. Another concern I have with faith-based is the limited resources we have. Even if they wanted to do good work, they don't have the money. We could use $100 million right here today in East Garfield and North Lawndale something like--what do you call the war plan? Whatever it is. You know what I am talking about. It would be a good investment here. The corporations, everybody is involved in this. The big corporations who right now are shipping jobs out of the country, they have to bring some of that money here. I have here a thing called the bell curve. I am trying to buildup that process with crime and I am trying to understand that. What they are saying if we don't keep the curve, the bell ringing, there is no end and you are going to lose. As we get this thing, the rich and the poor, all our power and all our strength to keep us going comes from that 68 percent, and that is shrinking real fast--we better get a handle on it and turn it around. That is for everybody. I don't know how to do it. I am not that smart, but we ought to do it. Losing is not an option. I am not saying the government has to put out all the money here. The corporations have a responsibility to save this society. The corporations will have to come out here and invest in our community. In the beginning of the 21st century--I hope I get this right. I know some of you have read it before what Teddy Roosevelt said about the same thing that we are talking about. We are all in this together. Anything I have said I have read it somewhere. I am not that smart to think of this myself. What he said back 100 years ago, and I hope I get this right. You can look it up and make sure you understand what he said. He said that all of us are together with a long-time social benefit. Long-time social benefit for all of us is that everybody has an opportunity to be what he can be. If he falls on the way, pick him up if he wants to get up. Now, if he don't want to get up, that is his problem. Crime as we know it is out of sight. We have always had violent crime. We have a history of violent crime but about 40 years it went downhill. It was noticeable. We didn't have to worry about what we worry about today. During the 1960's we saw it go up 500 percent. We have to find a way to deal with that problem. Thank you. Mr. Souder. Mr. Richard Townsell is the executive director of the Lawndale Christian Development Corp., a long-time activist. That organization has been a huge impact. I appreciate you coming to testify. Mr. Townsell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Congressman Davis. My name is Richard Townsell. I am the executive director of Lawndale Christian Development Corp. I also happen to be born and raised in this neighborhood. Our church has been in existence--this is our 25th anniversary as a matter of fact. Our church, 25 years ago was started by 13 young people. Those young people, high school students primarily, made no distinction between personal salvation and systemic salvation, systemic transformation so we are going to work both on the social gospel as well as preaching the Gospel. The church has, for those 25 years, been involved in after-school educational programs. Currently we have a program called Hope House where we house 50 men who either were in prison or on drugs for a large part of their life and help them get cleaned up and sober and rededicated back to their families and get jobs. And housing for homeless people and all sorts of things that churches do. We have a health clinic that sees about 80,000 patients a year. We have over 200 staff. Just down the street, as a matter of fact, they have a second site near here. We have been offered about $30 million worth of development in this neighborhood over the past 11 years that I have been executive director. Most of it has been housing related, economic development. We also run after-school programs for young people to deal with the digital divide and help them learn how to design Web sites. We have helped hundreds of young people go to college and graduate from college. I am honored and privileged to be here. As I think about the faith-based initiatives that the President is putting forth, I think they are wonderful, but I think there is one big problem and that big problem is there is no money with it. What they are dong now is opening up opportunities for others to participate on an equal footing, faith-based providers and others to participate on equal footing with nonfaith-based providers. The dilemma is, as the brother to my right said before, we need something in the realm of $100 million just in this neighborhood. With the budget being what it is and deficits being what they are and taxes being slashed and all those wonderful things, to really make the faith-based initiative go, there is a scripture that says faith without works is dead. A lot of faith without money is dead, too. We need to be thinking carefully through. I have listened to the panel before and all of the objections and trying to figure out who gets it and who doesn't. It is easy to figure that out when the pie is a little bit bigger. It is not easy but it is easier. Our dilemma is faith or nonfaith with the kinds of things in our economy and what is happening in our Nation, one of the things that all of us say is a good job solves a lot of social problems. If we can create ways to help jobs get created in neighborhoods like this and others, I think many of the social problems that you see will go away. Now, they all won't go away from I do know that as it pertains to young people and families, you can only do what you see. If you see someone going to work every day you can aspire to that. If you don't, you don't. The dilemma for me with the faith-based initiative is not Constitutional questions and establishment clause and all those sorts of things but where is the money. If we can begin to impress upon the President that if he really wants to see this happen, if he really wants to see the faith community get behind it, then he has to put the appropriate amount of resources in it or else it is just happy talk. Thank you. Mr. Souder. Mr. Steaven McCollough is representing Bethel Newlife, Inc. Mr. McCollough Good morning. My name is Steaven McCollough and I am chief operating officer of Bethel Newlife, Inc. On behalf of Mary Nelson who could not be here today, I extend a welcome to all of you. Bethel Newlife is a 24-year-old faith-based organization, community-to-community development corporation that serves the West Garfield Park and communities of Chicago. Bethel Newlife evolved from Bethel Lutheran Church. In 1979 we started with $9,000 and two staff people to rehab a small apartment building in the community. Today Bethel has an annual operating budget of $12 million and a staff of over 300. Bethel has been faith-based since before it became a popular term. Our mission statement is from Isaiah 58:9-12 that Congressman Davis has mentioned. Bethel programs are in five mean areas in employment and economic development. Bethel sees close to 300 individuals in the community, many in our employment center, many of whom are ex-offenders returning to the community. Bethel operates two individual development account programs called Smart Savers and Sowing Seeds in which we have over 70 graduates and 50 new IDA savings accounts. We also began construction in June for a new commercial center at Lake Implaskie with funds from the State of Illinois, Office of Community Service and EPA. Another area is services for seniors. Bethel operates four senior residential facilities, three of which are fully supported by HUD. The fourth is a combination of HUD and the State of Illinois Supported Living Program which is a first in the Chicago area. Other programs for seniors include adult day services, in-home services, and community-based residential facilities. In the area of housing and real estate development Bethel Newlife manages over 350 rental units of subsidized and affordable rental housing. We continue to develop over 60 single-family affordable housing initiatives through programs such as the city of Chicago's New Homes for Chicago program and Illinois Housing Development Authority. We also provide supportive housing services in two locations for the homeless. One is for intact families and the other is for women with young children. Also in this area we have adaptive reuse which is culminating in the adaptive reuse of a closed-down intercity hospital that used to be St. Ann's Hospital in Thomas. It is a multi-use facility that houses seniors, childcare, and other activities. In the area of community building and cultural arts the core of Bethel Newlife is an organizing organization. We work with clubs, local school councils. We also operate a community technology center with over 20 computers and 15 laptops that are available for checkout to residents of the community. We support a balance prevention program in collaboration with Cease Fire which is a program that is operated out of the University of Illinois, Chicago. We do counseling, industrial retention, and providing space for cultural arts programs everything from plays to poetry readings and musicals. We also provide family support. We have a women and infant children program and Chicago Family Case Management program, as well as a program called Project Triumph which supports parents and young children's development. We operate a 80-child daycare facility and will open soon alternative hour childcare facility at Lake Implaskie. Our views on faith-based perspectives is this, and I am quoting from Mary directly, ``What it takes to operate a faith- based organization is God, guts, and gasoline.'' You have to have God as your primary source and the faith in God and, the belief in individual assets and community assets, and the belief that everyone has an opportunity to change. Everyone has an opportunity and everyone has a right for economic opportunity and a right to prosper. We need to take on tough tasks. I think faith-based organization have that ability to take on those tasks whether it be working with ex-offenders, working with the homeless, or working with families that just need a leg up. I think the ability for faith-based organizations to have staying power contributes is the gasoline. Faith-based organizations have the gasoline to sustain over time with government funding. When foundation support is on the wain, it is the faith-based component that sustains this organization and other faith-based organizations to keep going and doing mission of the organization. Finally, in terms of government support, I think voting needs to be expanded for capacity building for smaller CDCs to assess need of funding from the government but the New Life is a 24-year-old organization. We do a lot of collaborations with the government at the city, State, and Federal level. But Bethel is not the end all or be all in the community nor in the faith-based community. Small organizations need that same capacity so in providing funding to get that capacity whether it be training, resources for various activities is desperately needed. The second thing is new allocation, new funding for programs not rearranging existing funding is needed for organizations that serve the community, especially faith-based organizations. Additional funding for housing subsidies for development and rental assistance as well as home buyer assistance is critical for us to maintain and keep a stable community. Those are some of the things that the government can do to help support faith-based organizations in the community. Thank you. Mr. Davis. Thank you, gentlemen, very much. Let me just say that we certainly appreciate your testimony. Mr. Townsell, I am obviously intrigued by the fact that a group of individuals just out of high school could decide to become urban pioneers, in a sense, and come to the North Lawndale community which has been called a cure for every problem and ill that exist in urban America. We look at it right now and we see that it is somewhat on the rebound. I can remember when there were 10,000 people who worked right in this spot where we are right now every day. There used to be 10,000 people who came right here to work every day. As corporations began to move out and move away and go to other places, that created a tremendous vacuum. How has your organization been able to develop and work successfully, especially given the fact that you are in practically what has been an all-Black community and your organization is not an all-Black organization? As a matter of fact, the people who started it there are probably very few Blacks in it I would imagine at the time. How have you been able to bridge that kind of gap and work effectively in a big urban center like the North Lawndale community and develop all of the things that you currently now have going? Mr. Townsell. I think first and foremost we have little bitty problems and a great big God. I think faith is at the center of everything that we have done. I think the other misperception, Congressman, is that organization was started mostly by Whites. Those 13 young people primarily are from this neighborhood. I was born at 1537 Avers so I have been around the church for 23 of its 25 years. While our pastor is White and while the guy who started our health clinic is White, most all the other people that started the church were African American and still live in this neighborhood so their hopes and dreams mixed with others who have resources and faith. Frankly, the answer is I don't really know how we did it other than by God's grace and by a lot of perseverance and reading through every single document and showing up at things and praying about them and praying over proposals and those sorts of things. I think for myself I have a burning passion because I am from here. I think a lot of the folks on our staff, most of the people on our staff are from the neighborhood where I am living now. They have a burning passion to see their neighborhood rebuilt because they remember a time, just as you suggested, Congressman, where we had 10,000 people working here and they want to return to that and they want to do it in a way that honors God. The long and the short is this is not unique to us. It is not even unique to some folks of faith but you have some folks who put their hand to the plow that decide they are sick and tired of being sick and tired and they are going to press on and do what they need to do in order to rebuild. Sometimes that is without money and sometimes that is with money. Mr. Davis. You obviously receive Federal dollars for the community health center and other programs. Mr. Townsell. Nothing from my development corporation and nothing from the church. Mr. Davis. But the community health center receives Federal support from the Bureau of Community Health? Mr. Townsell. Right. Mr. Davis. And do you find anything that prevents the church from carrying out its mission because of the receipt of these Federal dollars that you obviously comply with all of the guidelines, all of the rules and regulations to receive? Mr. Townsell. They are all separate 501(c)(3)'s so the church's mission is to preach the gospel and help homeless families and men. The development corporation has its own 501(c)(3). Art Turner is the chairman of our board and he runs that operation. Then you have the health clinic who has its own separate board so they are all distinct, all born out of the church, but are born really to, as we started in our early days, begin to think about and pray about what did God want us to do. All these problems kept arising because we were from here. The only thing that we could do back then was to get a washer and dryer and start a laundromat in the church because we are a little small store front church and that is about the only thing we have the capacity to do. God continued to honor our faithfulness and today we look like we have a lot going on but there is still more challenges than we as one institution can deal with so we partner with and collaborate with other institutions around the city to do what we do. Mr. Davis. Steave, let me just ask you. Of course, Mayor Nelson is one of the four most actively involved persons in the country when it comes to community development. I often say that Mayor Nelson is the most creative community developer that I have ever known and I have known the mayor long before Bethel Newlife started. As a matter of fact, the Mayor and I served together at the old Christian Action Ministry where she was on the staff and I was a member of the board. Then after some problems existed there, Mary went out and organized through Bethel Lutheran Church. My point is that I have been interacting with Mary now in faith-based entities for more than 30 years. I have never heard them suggest that anybody had to become a Lutheran or that anybody had to be a Lutheran. Dave was the pastor of Bethel Lutheran Church, our brother, for a number of years until he finally retired and then ultimately passed away. My point is that I have been interacting with them for all this time and everybody knows that Bethel Newlife is faith constituted, faith-based, but I have never heard them suggest that anybody had to be Lutheran to work there or be Lutheran to participate or be Lutheran to receive any of the services or benefits. They still push not a heavy dose of religion but, you know, they like to talk about the blessings come down and different things like that. It is all kind of community spirited and community related. Is there anything that keeps you all from carrying out your faith tradition? Mr. McCollough. There is nothing that prevents us from carrying out our faith tradition. Mr. Davis. And you get a lot of money from Federal Government. The mayor will get money from anywhere that is money. I mean, if there is money, the mayor knows about it and she goes after it and has done an outstanding job with it. Mr. McCollough. Absolutely. The only requirement to work at Bethel Newlife is that if you believe in transformation, if you believe in helping individuals transform to improve their quality of life and their family, if you believe in transforming the community physically and building assets that belong to the community and for the residents of the community. That is the only requirement. We have a dynamic organization in terms of staff of all faiths. We have people of the Jewish faith, people of the Muslim faith. I myself am Baptist. I am not Lutheran and I am second in command so that is not a requirement. The only requirement is if you believe in individuals and in the community and wanting to put your best efforts toward that. We have the most talented staff. I would compare my staff to any for-profit organization, let alone non-profit or faith-based in the country. I think our staff by the length of tenure, as well as their abilities and education get the job done. Mr. Davis. They also obviously believe in hiring young people for responsible positions. Plus, what you described, if a person didn't express those values, let me just tell you, they couldn't work for me either. They couldn't work for me if they didn't convey to me in some way, shape, form, or fashion that they internalized the values that I hold dear as an elected official and if they didn't have an appreciation for what I tell the voters every 2 years when I go out and ask them to renew my contract, then not only don't I want them to work for me, I really don't want them anywhere around me other than for me to try to help them understand what they need to be about and what they need to be doing. I don't see any conflict in that but I would see some conflict if you said you have to be some particular religion or profess a certain kind of faith in order to work for Bethel Newlife or for a Lawndale Christian Reform entity. Thank you gentlemen. I don't have any other questions, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Souder. Thank you. Mr. Townsell, could you say the three things again? Mr. McCollough. McCollough. Mr. Souder. McCollough. Excuse me. Mr. McCollough. God, guts, and gasoline. Mr. Souder. You said that you don't require somebody to be a member of any particular faith but you said they had certain principles that you asked them to have. Mr. McCollough. Well, the principles are belief in transformation of individuals as well as the community believe that everyone has an opportunity to access both economically as well as access to services to support their family. Another belief is that not only transformation access but also opportunity to gain access to resources and to support themselves and their family. Mr. Souder. I wanted to clarify just for the record because that is not an atheist group. Is that true? Mr. McCollough. That is correct. Mr. Souder. Would you hire an atheist in your organization? Mr. McCollough. We would. Mr. Souder. If the majority of qualified people coming in the door were atheist, would you hire them? Mr. McCollough. If they can do the job and they believe in our principles, yes. Mr. Souder. Then you are not a faith-based organization. Mr. McCollough. We are a faith-based organization. Mr. Souder. You can't be. If the majority of your people could not believe in faith, you by definition---- Mr. McCollough. It depends on what you define as faith. What we define as faith are the simple principles as in the Bible so---- Mr. Souder. The same principles as in the Bible you couldn't be an atheist. Mr. McCollough. The principles are---- Mr. Souder. For example, the Bible says the only way to heaven is to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior. Mr. McCollough. That is in the Bible. If the person is an atheist and wants to work at Bethel, our principles allow for atheist to work there. Mr. Souder. You have a right and there are many nonprofit organizations that do that and in government you do that, but the difference, and this is what is really important, the definition of a faith-based organization, the question is what does faith mean. If it is a secular humanist faith in transformation, that is fine. Those organizations can get grants and do that. What this program was designed to do is say programs that are uniquely faith-based that believe whether it is in the Prophet Mohammed or in Buddha or whatever, if they are part of their faith that they would be eligible. But what you are saying is you don't have a faith-based criteria or a defined faith-based so you are technically not a faith-based organization. Mr. McCollough. I tend to disagree with that. I think our actions--I mean, our foundation is rooted in faith based out of Bethel Lutheran Church. Mr. Souder. I would agree with that. Would you agree with this? The U.S. actions are routed in Judeo-Christian traditions and that many nonprofit groups are organized off of the teachings of Christ and how to treat other people, compassion, and mercy and so on, but that wouldn't mean that while there are echoes and practices of that does not make them a faith- based organization. Mr. McCollough. We are not the government. I mean, we are a community-based, faith-based organization that is grounded in the church as opposed to individuals. You asked about if an individual were an atheist would they work there. Yes, but we determine what is faith-based by our actions. What we do as an organization is for the church and the community. Mr. Souder. Mr. Townsell, do you have similar hiring, would you agree with that? In other words, a majority of your staff could be atheist? Mr. Townsell. No. Mr. Souder. Does the staff have to--I need to step back a step. Do all your staff have to be Christian? Mr. Townsell. Yes, but there is also some Christians that we wouldn't hire. Mr. Souder. Amen to that. What we are distinguishing, and this is really important and you said it very eloquently in the beginning, is that I would say, and each person has to define precisely what they mean by this and it is a lot in interpretation, but there is a difference between the faith and the works, but works are a manifestation of your faith and without faith works is dead but faith without works is dead also. Too often we don't see that. You said from the very beginning that Lawndale Christian Community has that mix. In other words, the goal isn't just to sit in a room and pray. It is to go out and help people. On the other hand, you understand that moral basis is the interactive of that. Mr. Townsell. The most personal transformation and societal transformation. Mr. Souder. And there are many organizations in America that started with a very explicit faith-based mission that evolved into the work side which is very important for the community. We have all kinds of nonprofit groups in America. We have all kinds of organizations. It is just there are differences in that some of these groups are further along in that transformation. My bet is that if I went to Bethel Newlife a majority of the people there are, in fact, Christian and, in fact, practice that and would reflect that. But the nature of your organization is defined such that could evolve because you don't have that now as a defining sense of the mission in the hiring. The mission could change. It may not because the individuals--people may not apply it to Bethel. The name Bethel actually has connotation and Newlife has a connotation. It could evolve because you don't have the firewall. The question in the government debate here is that your organization, Bethel Newlife, does not need faith-based legislation because you are already eligible for any government program. In other words, there may not be enough dollars but I don't think you would be excluded currently from anything that the Federal Government does. Mr. Townsell. That's correct. Mr. Souder. Whereas Lawndale has set up different division because they know if one division--is this correct? Some decisions, the health center, if they are going to get government funds which made them become more of a secular mission practice by Christians. Mr. Townsell. Correct. Mr. Souder. And then other missions that are overtly Christian don't necessarily get those government funds. Mr. Townsell. No funds. Mr. Souder. The question we are debating is should some of those missions that haven't been just the pure works side without the Christian faith side be included as a choice for an individual that they can do to. Where this becomes very clear is in drug treatment. For example, some drug treatment programs have faith components as a critical part of it. Others don't have it. They have the 12-step process or other processes. The question is should government dollars be able to go to a program where faith is an integral part of the program, or should they have to do it just on private sector. What if for some communities that to get the first step-- anybody agrees in drug and alcohol transformation the first step is commitment. What about if the faith part actually sets up the other and those in many cases are the most effective programs to long-term rehab. We in the government say they can't because they have faith as an active component in that and that is where the rubber hits the road. Bethel Newlife is already covered. Some of Lawndale Christian Community is already covered. The question is where on this continuum are we going to move? It isn't to say one program is better than the other necessarily. It isn't to say that individuals aren't. It isn't to say that, for example, a United Way in a small town which is clearly a secular program, that 100 percent of their employees in Lagrange, IN are probably Christian in my community, but United Way isn't. It isn't to say they don't practice Christian works. It isn't to say they aren't good Christians. It is just the organization they are part of. GM may, and probably does because it is in the United States, have a majority of Christians, but GM by nature isn't a Christian organization merely because the majority of people who are there are doing things that Christians would be expected to do, show up to work, perform well, and do that part of their career, too. Do you have a comment? Mr. McCollough. Well, I was just going to say that Bethel Newlife is not a church, we are not in the business of converting people to the Lutheran faith or any other faith. Our purpose is to serve. We leave the church's role to the church and leave Newlife Bethel separate from that. But what Bethel Newlife does as an organization is based on the faith and belief of the church. Mr. Souder. But, for example, Lutheran Social Services has not applied for government grants because they don't believe they are able to separate that cleanly their faith from their works. Lutheran Social Services and Lutheran Churches are divided in the United States as to how to do that. Mr. McCollough. There are different models. Yes, exactly. It is up to individual organizations to come up with their own model that works best for them, their church, and the community. Mr. Souder. And what we are wrestling with is those who choose the model where faith is interactive with their works and they don't see a separation, should they be excluded from the delivery of social services if tax payer dollars are involved? In the faith-based initiative there are really several prongs. One where we all agree in Washington, and I and others are discouraged that the dollars aren't more, is we ought to give tax credits including for those who don't take deductions that you can give to faith-based organizations. We have a sign-off on that between the different sides. Nobody is arguing the tax side. We also have a training fund side to help more religious- based organizations set up 501(c)(3)'s so they don't get sued and we have negotiated that. What we haven't agreed on between the two sides is the eligibility of those who currently can't get government funds, and Newlife can, but that can't get government funds should they be allowed to without changing the nature of their organization that they have Constitutional protections. That is what has held up the money because the Compassion Capital Fund was supposed to be for those groups. Congress has not passed that legislation for the Compassion Capital Fund. What we have done, which I still believe is good, is allowed those groups through the executive branch--Congress has not but the executive branch in some of our pending legislation that would be allowed faith-based organizations defined as those who can't separate the two to be eligible to bid. I believe this will still lead to the leveraging dollars and efficiency of staff volunteering but that is where the debate is. The additional dollars beyond regular will come if we can resolve whether these groups are, in fact, eligible. One thing I also wanted to get on the record is I believe Lawndale Christian Corp., are you affiliated with the John Perkins national organization? Mr. Townsell. Correct. Mr. Souder. Could you explain a little bit because I want to make sure we get into our record of hearing that we have been doing things about prisons, about schools, about juveniles, about male prostitutes, about childcare centers, but we haven't really had anybody thus far in our hearings who has talked about the importance of community development and how that would be involved in the Christian mission and what you have done there relating to how does a church say this is what we need to do to get jobs for people. This is what we need to do to train people. We have some on job training but what is the philosophy behind Christian community development in your corporation? Mr. Townsell. The CCDA, Christian Community Development Association, was started about 15 years ago by John Perkins, a gentleman from Mississippi, an African American, who was almost killed in the 1960's registering people to vote. During that time he was in prison after the sheriffs had beat him and stuck a fork up his nose and tried to kill him. God told his heart that he was supposed to love people who are of lighter hue. He was supposed to love White folks. He did do that. John has been sort of the Moses of the Christian Community Development movement and has helped us and groups all around the country. Basically he taught us all that he knew about community development and other groups all around the Nation. Where we have had a lot of success is trying to figure out how to do affordable housing and job training and those things in addition to after-school programs and Bible clubs and all those things. One of the three tenants of Christian Community Development is relocation meaning that folks who have graduated from college who grew up in neighborhoods should relocate and live back in those neighborhoods instead of escaping to the suburban utopia. That was a challenge for me and for my brothers and others who grew up in this neighborhood then left and came back but he believes that folks of God should be OK in coming back to communities. The second is reconciliation. We should be reconciled. The cross is really the ultimate symbol of reconciliation, man to man and man to God so we should reconcile across race and class and gender and those things. Finally, redistribution which is really about economic development. How do you do community development well and how do you get the local economy to rebuild and how do you support local banks and how do you support local insurance companies. We use African American architects and surveying companies and, to the extent we can, construction companies, African American and Latino. So that has been part of our mission is redistribution and how the dollars begin to circulate back in the neighborhood. John has really taught us how to do that. That is a critically important component. The difficulty is particularly in housing. It is a very complicated issue and there is not a lot of Federal support to be doing housing. HUD is moving more into the home ownership branch which is important. We do home ownership counseling and we sell homes. Also for supportive housing and those sorts of things. Our city budget is overwhelmed by the number of requests. Our State budget is overwhelmed by the number of requests of people who want to deliver affordable housing and can't. Also, what is affordable. I mean, how do you define affordable. Is it 60 percent of the median in the city which the median is $75,000 so you are helping people that make $42,000 a year, or is it much lower? Trying to give HUD--you know, again this is a question of resources. How do you get HUD to pay attention and create a Federal housing policy I think would be instrumental in neighborhoods being rebuilt. Mr. Souder. Let me ask, if I may, just a couple of followup particular questions with that. How do you--because I think it is tremendously admirable about coming back and resettling in the neighborhoods. How do you--we are dealing with this in Fort Wayne, how to get a balance and where the balance tips toward either middle class identification in the lower class, lower-income people who may not have a job and then move out and are unwelcome. How do we address that question? Do you have suggestions on how we get blended communities and maintain it without tipping one direction or the other? Mr. Townsell. I mean, it is a difficult question because who really governs the market? Some people would say that you should have affordable housing set aside. That we should be in developments like there are hundreds of units being developed and there should be a certain percentage that is set aside for people with certain incomes so they don't get moved out of the neighborhood. I think you need the market to come back so that you have goods and services so that people don't have to drive to Opark to get stuff. At the same time we don't want that to be the wheel that drives people out of neighborhoods so you have to be constantly thinking. That is why I think the role of the church is important because we have all kinds of folks in our congregation. We just don't have rich folks. We have poor folks, unemployed folks. The church being at the center of that and being accountable to that base of folks because 85 percent of our members live in the neighborhood. We have to be sure that we aren't doing something that is going to move Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith out of the neighborhood. It is a very complicated question. I don't know how you get around it without somehow there being land policies with land trusts or something like that to make sure this stays affordable for 40, 50, or 100 years. I don't have enough time right now to talk about it. I have ideas about it. Mr. Souder. Before I go to Mr. McCollough, I am going to ask a second question here and then I would like you to address both of them, too. I have been a supporter of Congressman Davis' effort of what we do with the people who are returning offenders who are some of the hardest to house and find housing. As we have locked up people at increasing rates, often in poor communities of which we see just as the Chicago Tribune and New York Times and USA Today is reporting today crime has gone down. Partly crime has gone down because we have locked so many people up. Now they are going to be coming back out. How do we not have the cycle start over again? Do you see that as a pressing problem because many times as you bring back middle class people, they are concerned about obviously crime in the neighborhood and who their neighbors are going to be. Do you have any suggestions to us other than support Congressman Davis' bill which gives funding toward it. Mr. Townsell. I would say yes and amen to that. There are other things that need to happen in addition to that. I think not just middle class people are concerned about crime. All people are concerned about crime. Poor people are concerned about crime as well. I think the way Jolice Wilson talks about it is---- Mr. Souder. But lower income people have less ability to escape it. They don't have to come back to it. Mr. Townsell. Sometimes less ability to organize it and hold accountable the police to be able to protect and serve in the same way they do in other neighborhoods. I think the issue is that we need to be anticipating men coming back and building job training centers in places like Lawndale. I think Washburn was many years ago to help people learn how to be brick masons and plumbers. I went to Dunbar High School which is a vocational school. In my school you could repair helicopters. You could do masonry. You can do carpentry. You can do all those sorts of things and you can go from there to an apprenticeship into the union and get a great paying job. Well, Washburn is gone and there are not many things like it. Westside Tech is revived. They are doing landscaping and horticulture and some of those other things. There is not a place to help men and women learn how to do a trade. Most of their training programs are in the suburbs so they are not accessible to folks in the city. If there is one thing that Congress could do to help would be to build a world class training facility like Bill Strictland has in Manchester, in Pittsburgh, and North Lawndale not too far from here accessible to public transportation to help people who are returning from prison to move into a trade and learn carpentry and electrical and then move into the union and have a well-paying job. I think that is a critical thing and that is something that I hope you two gentlemen will fight for. Mr. Souder. Mr. McCollough. Mr. McCollough. You talked about displacement identification. I think in ways you support the current residents with low-income versus middle and upper-income residents moving in the community. I think one way of hoping to support lower-income residents is continuing to provide rental subsidies and continue to provide funds for low-income rental and affordable home ownership. Those are the two key things. There is such a lack of affordable housing in Chicago and across the Nation. What that does is forces many families outside of the community that they were born and raised in. I grew up here as well. I was born in Troublin, OH and lived here in the community for 27 years so I know what this community is about. People need to have a stake in it. I think home ownership as well as rental. In the community itself through the 1960's and the 1970's there were so many units of rental housing that have been destroyed that is being replaced by $50,000, $100,000, $300,000 townhomes. A lot of folks can't afford that. We need subsidies to make those affordable. That is what the government can do. You also talked about ex-offenders. The reason people don't move into neighborhoods are, two things, schools and crime. This needs to be put on both of those. All five of our area public health schools are on academic probation. A number of our elementary schools--most of our elementary schools are on academic probation. There needs to be additional resources and training for teachers. I think that leads into the No Child Left Behind Program but there needs to be funding behind that to support that. As far as ex-offenders that is the primary issue in our community today. It is not just jobs. It is also housing. It is also education. It is also economic opportunity. It is also about the family. It is a family issue. Ex-offender who are back in our community affects children, affects the ex-offender themselves and their family. All of those things I mentioned will help support that work. We are in full support of Congressman Davis' bill. Mr. Souder. Mr. Moore, maybe as kind of the elder here you probably have about as many years as these guys combined. Could you give some of your comments on what you see the challenges are with some of the ex-offenders and how the community would respond. Also what our committee predominately focuses on, narcotics. We also do faith-based and other agencies like HUD. That is why I was also asking housing questions. What do you think are the most effective things we are currently doing in drug and alcohol and where we should target that, the most effective areas that you see having your experience as a police captain. Mr. Moore. I deal with drug traffic and gangs. In answer to your question, that is a tough question because what I see in the courts, especially drug traffickers, drug users, but for drug traffickers in most cases people testify in court that drugs make them second class. Just to give you an example of where I am coming from here, we have a drug conspiracy case where the people range in age from 18 to 45. We had a 45-year-old grandfather who testified in court, ``That is the only way I am going to put food on my table. I have grandkids. I have a family. I volunteer. I am an ex-offender. I can't get a job. You are forcing me to sell drugs to feed my family.'' That is real. That is the real question we are going to have to deal with. He was sentenced to 8 years on top of what he has already been in. Now, he is going to be OK but his grandkids and his other family members out there who have no income, most likely those people are going to fall through because nobody cares. To get back to I quoted President Teddy Roosevelt that people stumble. We are not perfect. I am a court advocate and I deal specifically with victims. There are some people who have committed crimes who should not be able to walk amongst. That is why I have a problem with these ex-offenders because that includes everybody who has committed a crime. We have to deal with people who have done their time, what the States say you shall do, and they come out and, yet, we reduce them to second class and we force them to go back into crime and every time they go back they commit a crime. Not in every case but in most cases they commit a crime which is a little more severe than the one they was in there for in the first place. When you factor in the cost of incarceration, it seems to me that it is just plain common sense that it would be better if we could find a way for those people who have done their time and not reduce them to second class status and force them back into that crime but to try to pull them back into the mainstream which is what we talked about with this bell curve here. We have to bring the mainstream back because as this side grows which is the rich, and this side grows which is the poor, we ain't going to have no middle class. That is the only thing that keep us going is the middle class. I am not only talking about money because I don't always equate class with money because you can get rich, you know. Most people do get rich without dishonesty. We are going to find a way, I think. Here is a question I have for the people who provide this service. We are volunteers, mostly seniors, and we deal with young people. We have a kids program. We try to have character building programs. Now, I have been dealing with seven young men who are exploring a gang. They are associated. They are not gang members but as the Supreme Court said--I don't like to use that word gang because they said a gang member is not a crime. That is a status. Criminal conduct is what we should be dealing with. I want to ask these providers of this service, I know their resources are limited. These young people, I have two young men that want jobs. They don't want food here today or something. They want jobs where they can earn a living and make a contribution to society. They don't want no handout. They don't want to be second class. They want the opportunity to work and find a job. I can't tell them where to go. We can't tell them where to go. We can't tell them to go to this place or this group. They don't have the jobs to give them. What do we do with them? Now they've got to go out. We are forcing that 19-year-old who wants to go straight. We get our democracy from each other. We talk about it all we want to but really democracy comes from how we relate to each other. That is real democracy. I don't care what we say. We don't have it until we live in peace without fear and we relate to each other on the principle that we are all going to treat each other right. That is democracy. I think people with the money, you can keep it if you want to but you can't buy a hamburger on Madison Street. These people over here, this group is growing. Sooner or later they are going to pull you down. You can't spend it. You got to spend everything on security. You can't enjoy life. Money is good but they got the money and they are going to keep it. That is human nature. ``I am not pulling out. I am going to keep it.'' They put all the jobs out to maximize the money they are going to bring in. They don't care about this group over here. I am here to tell you you better start thinking about them. You better start thinking about them because crime as we see it coming is going global. This is something out here that is real. Crime is a way of life. It is a way of feeding the family. It is a way of survival. Internationally drug traffickers with an endless supply of money wants to come in and organize street gangs into their network, which they are already trying to do. Crime is going global now. Every ethnic group in this world is involved in some kind of way in this drug trafficking thing. Now, if they want to do that, we are lost because drug trafficking and the crime and the destruction that goes along with it. Somebody said about 30 years ago, one of the drug lords out of Colombia when he was arrested, he said, ``I found a way to get rich and destroy the United States.'' What I am trying to say the international drug traffickers and the international terrorists have the same agenda. If they ever hook up with the endless supply of money up here, we are in major, major trouble. It is on its way now. Drugs is everywhere. It started right here within a half a mile of here 45 or 50 years ago and spread nationwide. Now it is spreading worldwide. I think the people who make decisions and the people who control the money should think about the Nation first. Everybody in it is part of it and you can't force people into a life of crime and then expect them to play according to the rules. It just doesn't work. Mr. Souder. Thank you. Mr. Davis. Let me just agree with Mr. Townsell in terms of the need for vocational training and technical training. That is something that needs to be pushed much harder. In addition to the government, though, we also need the unions because the unions have been deterrents to individuals coming in as apprentices and moving up. There have been grandfather clauses and all kind of other things. If your granddaddy was a union member, you could get in or if your daddy was a union member. But if nobody in your family or nobody vouched for you or whatever, then you couldn't get in. That has been a real deterrent and that is something that needs to change. The other point is that the whole business of rights in a democracy. That is something that we can't get around. The reality is that my rights end where the next person's rights begin. We always are trying to protect and that is one of the things, too, that has made us great. We can talk about atheist but I don't know any. I was just trying to think as the discussion went. I don't know a single person that I could describe as being atheist. There may be some people who know them but I don't know one. Not a single individual do I know who would fit my definition of an atheist. So there are some things that we talk about and there are other things that are real. My mother used to always tell us that what you do speaks so loudly until I can't hear what you say. What you say really just don't mean a lot but what you do means a great deal. When I think of Bethel Newlife, for example, as an entity, obviously what you do speaks to what you are. I don't think there is any way to deny that. The testimony that we have heard and, Mr. Chairman, I would like to just indicate for the record a gentlemen left a little note who said that, ``Faith-based organizations can keep doing it the way they want to but it is not Constitutional to use my tax dollars to promote your religious beliefs. Find other sources of funds. Federal funds are not the only source.'' Then he ends by saying, ``Don't use my taxes for discrimination.'' He is saying you do whatever you want to do with your money. You can do whatever you want to do with your resource but don't use his money. Well, you know, if there was a grant for $1 million, chances are a few pennies of his money might get mixed in there. I don't know how you get his money out. He has got a right to his opinion. The thing that I have had to learn most in this business is that individuals have rights even when they have the right to be wrong. There are a lot of opinions that are basically that, and that is opinions. You have a right to those but we also have a responsibility and the chairman knows that well. That is why all of this is so relevant and so important. We have a responsibility to shift through those opinions. We have a responsibility to hear those opinions but then when the rubber hits the road, we have to make a determination. We have to make a decision. Lobbyist come to see me all the time. I listen to them and I say, ``You know, I agree with what you say but there was a guy that just went out the building who said a whole lot of stuff that was different than what you said and I agree with a lot of what he said also.'' It makes me feel kind of like the young fellow who had two girlfriends and wanted to get married. He couldn't figure out what to do. He eventually wrote himself a poem and he said, ``I've got a love for Angeline but I love Caroline, too. I can't marry both of them so what am I going to do? My God, Angeline can cook and how Caroline can sew. They are both super intelligent and, Lord, I just don't know which way to go.'' Of course, he never got married. When issues come up for both, no matter what we are thinking and no matter how much good stuff we have heard on both sides, when the chairman puts the question, you have to be aye or nay. I mean, you can slip out and not be present. You can do that but you can't vote present. I mean, you can be aye or nay. That is why we go through hours and hours of listening. There are a lot of folks who don't understand these hearings but that is the democratic way. That is to give every person his or her opportunity to be heard. Now, if there are some people who don't understand it and don't take it, then the only thing that we can do is try and help them understand it. But at the end of the day we have to do like my pastor when he opens the doors of the church. I mean, he'll open the doors of the church and if nobody joins, then he often would say, ``If Israel never repents, we are discharged of our duty. If Israel never repents, Jacob won't lose his reward.'' What he is really saying, ``I have done the best I can do and didn't nobody bite.'' The apple has been put out there but if nobody came in and took a bite, Lord, remember I've done my best. That is what we have to do as we listen to all of you is simply say like Abraham Lincoln said, and that is when it comes to the issues of public policy Lincoln said, ``I just do the best that I can and if at the end it comes out all right, people will swear what a great guy I was. If the end comes out all wrong, then a legion of angels swearing that I was correct won't make a bit of difference.'' We thank you for your testimony. We thank you for sharing with us. I must confess, Mr. Moore, with all due respect to you, it is really refreshing to me to see two young men who grew up in this community as things were changing and transitions were being made who themselves have made a commitment to come back and serve and make use of their talents and skills and become part of the leadership to help rebuild those walls that have crumbled. I thank all of you and thank everybody for coming. Mr. Souder. I want to thank Congressman Davis for again hosting us here. It is tremendously helpful and such a different atmosphere than we get in Washington. Our discussions tend to be a lot more open with people willing to say controversial things and argue with each other than in Washington where it tends to get very intimidating and you kind of get this cold, dry debate not in context to where people actually live. It is really helpful to do this. We will continue to have these. The fundamental debate item has come up in every hearing and we have heard lots of different types of people debate that. But we have also heard what many diverse variations of faith-based groups are doing in their communities and the fundamental question we have to decide in Congress by democratic vote at some point and the court's rule and the interpretation of the Constitution is are clearly no one can discriminate with tax dollars as to who they serve. All these different groups that we have met with in all three hearings and we will see in the future are trying to serve at-risk people. The question is can diverse faith groups participate in that system without changing who they are. Many organizations in the United States choose to do that and currently are participating but we have a large segment whether they be evangelical or very conservative Catholic or Orthodox Jewish or conservative Lutheran or Buddhist or Muslim or Hindu that do not choose to participate. Those people are varied about and a lot of their support for government services has backed up because they believe that a lot of these solutions require faith in solving these problems and they are not going to support. In Indiana where we have a Democratic Governor or Illinois where we have a Republican Governor, the amount of dollars going to social services is not going up. The number of kids and adults per probation officer is increasing all the time in every State regardless of party because the middle and upper classes will not support and have not supported increases as the needs are going. They will say the problems are getting greater but the will to fund the taxes aren't there. The question is can we supplement this and can we get more support if we have blended types of funding. But those groups will not tolerate watering down their faith. They may even be a minority of the country but if they withdraw from that participation, it has consequences for the public funding side as well. This is a huge dilemma and one that has become partisan which is unfortunate and we need to have these kind of discussions so we all understand. The Republicans need to understand the magic of faith-based does not solve the resource problem. There are dollars. What we are arguing for some on the other side is to say, ``You need to understand that there are many people of multiple faiths who believe this just isn't a funding problem. It is a morals and ethics problem and just pouring more resources without having that as a component we view as a waste of our money.'' This is a really tough dilemma as we work through these expenditures. I appreciate those of you from Chicago. Those of you who have been in the audience if you have additional things you want to submit, we'll do this. This is likely to be because we have had really good hearings likely to be the Congressional debate record that will be behind the report that will come out at the end of the 2-years summarizing a lot of this of the faith-based issue because you can't have a better discussion and debate with people who have really spent their time down in the trenches helping people than we have had today. First and foremost, those on the panel, those in the community, the first thing is thank you as public elected representatives, as Congressman Davis has said, for what you do because you are actually helping real people. We are trying to figure out how to make it easier for you to do that, how we can supplement it, but you have sacrificed your lives to do it and we really appreciate that very much. Mr. Davis. Mr. Chairman, two testimonies I want to make sure that we--the testimony that I read from the gentleman that left, his name is Sam Ackerman so I want to make sure that Sam's name is reflected in the record. Also I have testimony from Mr. Otis Wright who is the director of intergovernmental affairs for the Chicago Housing Authority. I would like to make sure that their testimony is reflected in the record. Mr. Souder. Both of those testimonies will be entered. If you have additional, submit those. With that, subcommittee hearing stands adjourned. [Whereupon, at 1:03 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] Mr. Souder. I'm going to reconvene briefly. I have been stating multiple times--the current Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is actually a close friend of mine. We have traveled around the world. He is a relatively new Governor. This State had Republican Governors who made most of the legislation about what we are debating. But Rod would not like being called a Republican. [Whereupon, at 1:05 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] [Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows: [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]