“Okay, Lord, I hear you”: Darlene Sowell and CHHSM

Darlene Sowell’s life changed one day while she was watching Rosie O’Donnell.

It’s not what you think. The show wasn’t touting a self-help strategy or the latest exercise fad. Sowell was watching Rosie when a headhunter called, and that’s what led her to health and human service ministry and the congregation of CHHSM.

That headhunter convinced her to have a job interview with Tom Vanden Berk, president and chief executive officer of UCAN, a CHHSM ministry in Chicago that works with more than 13,000 children each year. “When I met Tom,” recalls Sowell, a member of Trinity UCC in Chicago, “he talked first about mission and his commitment to kids.” She also met Zack Schrantz, then development director and now COO, who told her that UCAN was a UCC ministry.

“Okay, Lord. I hear you,” Sowell remembers saying. “I knew it was right before I left that day.”

Sowell joined UCAN in 1996 and stayed twelve years, first as vice president for human resources and then as executive vice president for human resources, facilities and housing programs. During that time, she became a CHHSM board member and Tom Vanden Berk became her mentor and friend. One day in 2008, after the two had agreed it was time for her to begin looking for a more senior position, he suggested that she interview at another CHHSM ministry as a way to build her career skills.

That skill-building exercise led Sowell to become executive director of CHHSM member Neighborhood Houses in St. Louis. Although the change meant moving 300 miles and assuming new responsibilities, she says, “My CHHSM relationships made the transition easy. I couldn’t have done it without them.”

Since Sowell arrived in St. Louis, CHHSM president and CEO Bryan Sickbert has provided support and training for the Neighborhood Houses board, while her CHHSM colleagues and fellow Diakonal ministers Chris Cox, Mike Brennan and Greg Cardwell-Copenhefer are peers always ready with help and advice. Jerry Paul, president of the Deaconess Foundation in St. Louis “has been supportive personally and professionally,” she says, and the foundation”s capacity building program has increased Neighborhood Houses” ability to assess its needs and respond to changing economic and social service conditions.

The support from CHHSM”s congregation is amplified by the investment of the United Church of Christ in Sowel”s new ministry. “The church support here is unlike anything I”ve ever seen,” she says, praising especially the St. Louis Association and the Missouri Mid-South Conference of the UCC.

Using this help, Sowell hopes that Neighborhood Houses will move families and communities to self-sufficiency, foster the arts and healthy food in urban neighborhoods, and offer excellent early childhood education. “We have much of what we need in place to do wonderful things,” she says of Neighborhood Houses. “It’s where I’m supposed to be. I firmly believe that. It came together, instantly.”

CHHSM Member Helps UCC Congregations Invest in City Housing

In Worcester, Massachusetts, UCC congregations are working together with CHHSM member Worcester Area Mission Society (WAMS) to improve the lives of communi- ty residents by investing capital into Worcester’s distressed neighborhoods.

Through the Community Loan Fund, launched with WAMS’ leadership more than fifteen years ago, congrega- tions can invest a portion of their endowment or reserves in the Fund for a money market rate of return. In turn, the fund uses the capital to provide financing for acquisition of and construction on targeted properties. The fund also provides finance startup costs for inner-city entrepreneurs. UCC congregations and their individual members, as well as the Massachusetts Conference, are longtime leading investors in the Fund and have been joined by many others from the wider churchand secular community.

Known as a tugboat lender, the Community Loan Fund pulls new capital into areas where conventional credit has been shallow. By providing the first dollar into projects, the fund leverages the participation of banks and other lenders to create a significant multiplier effect. Community Loan Fund financing has built more than 300 units of housing, seeded 12 small businesses, provided 16 home improve- ment loans and made more than 200 down payment loans to first-time homebuyers. In 2007, the Loan Fund created two new financial tools: a refinance product to rescue inner city homeowners with good credit who have been vic- timized by predatory lenders, and a mortgage product to help young families and municipal workers stretch their buying power in order to afford entry level homes in their communities.

The fund, which currently has $2.5 million in assets, is professionally managed as part of Worcester Community Housing Resources, Inc., and has been designated by the US Treasury Department as a certified Community Devel- opment Financial Institution. All investors have been re- paid on time.

To learn more about the Community Loan Fund and other Worcester Area Mission Society projects, please visit www.wamsucc.org .