A Lesson In History
“When I first came to Ninth and O in 1993 we had just closed the school and wasn’t really doing much missionary work” explained Dr. Jeff Elieff, Executive Associate Pastor at Ninth and O Baptist Church. His position was created when the new senior pastor Dr. Bill Cook was brought ten years ago but was not able to fulfill the normal duties of a senior pastor as he is also a full time professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I questioned him about this as with a history dating back to 1906 I thought the mission and community service history would be greater than what I have learned. “The school was one of the first Christian schools in the area and also had a full time weekday daycare service.” Dr. Elieff talked about. These were ended in 1993 for many reasons, cost, training on teachers and volunteers, facilities, and the board just felt it was the right time.
(Dr. Jeff Elieff, Executive Associate pastor, Ninth & O Baptist Church)
“It was close to twelve years ago when I actually took my first missions trip, leading a youth mission to Ecuador, and while I was an amazing trip spiritually, it was very sad also.” Dr. Elieff would go on to talk about “while helping at orphanages, we learned most of the children had at least one living parent, and while they could not take care of the child and placed the child in the orphanage, they would not give it up for adoption.” This really made me think because since coming to Ninth and O, my wife and I have discussed adoptions since meeting so many wonderful families in the church with adopted children.
(Our most recent mission to New York City, just returned last week)
“We as a church family are raising over one hundred thousand dollars per year to sponsor mission’s trips, and this year we have seven or eight different missions planned, in the United States and internationally….We have been ranked as the top church for 2010 from the North American Missions Board in terms of giving, and that is truly a blessing.” Dr. Elieff excitedly told me as he showed me the certificate he had just received. This is an amazing accomplishment for a church of just under one thousand members. Learning about this only inspires me more, hoping to learn more about the history and about how to further support these great causes. I would go on to ask him about some of the current local missions
Locally we have just finished our vacation bible school, which is a large undertaking and requires a vast number of volunteers to help us with all the kids. We also had our Easter outreach to the local community prove to be highly successful. Our current missions that we are working on include our downtown mission, feeding and ministering to over one hundred of our cities homeless on the first Sunday of every month, and our summer of service missions. (Elieff. Personal Interview)
The summer of service missions I know about as I am a participant in the Honoring Hero’s missions. A group of volunteers who during a ten week stretch reach out to local police and fire departments and try to minister to their needs. We have included making and bringing snack and thank you cards to them for their service, cooking them a full meal, and providing them with deserts for their families. We also have car washes planned for them, and a babysitting night for those with children. “That is one of many missions we currently have going, including “loving lawn care” taking care of the lawns for the elderly and those who are not capable of doing it themselves, and “reaching Willowbrook” a local apartment complex that is ethnically diverse and will be trying to minister to them practically as to what they need and what can really help them.”Dr. Elieff told me.
I learned much in my time meeting with Dr. Elieff and knowing some of the history and what is going on currently excites me for what is to come. Trying to find some background information before hand was difficult, but from the local government website I found out that we partnered with the metro government and MSD in 2007 to help remove graffiti.
I was pleased when Ninth and O approached us with a desire to help out in the district and appreciate the utility companies and MSD stepping up as well. Graffiti has become a significant concern in District 11; this partnership will provide us with the tools to address this problem more efficiently. (Kevin Kramer, District 11 Councilman.)
My place is now even larger to me than it already was. During the conversation I could not help but think of some of the history I had already researched “Our history is rich and blessed. From before 1916, Ninth & O Baptist Church has reached out to the local community and the world. We have sent missionaries to the four corners of our globe. We have fed the hungry and clothed the needy.” These were the words from the history on the website, but what Dr. Elieff was saying was just the same thing in different words to me.
I’ve done service projects for most of my life through the boy scouts and through Junior ROTC in high school. I’ve always got such a great sense of satisfaction with helping people who need help and helping to serve my community, wherever that may be. The idea that I could find a place that would fulfill my spiritual needs and my need to serve and help others was not something I thought I would be able to find. It all brings me back to the emotions I feel just being in my place.
After our conversations I walked around the church thinking about what was said and just taking in the place for a few minutes. One of the few days I’m not rushed to be someplace else I can sit back and reflect on my thoughts. Growing up I was never overtly spiritual, I believed what my family believed and that was a mix of Jewish tradition and southern Baptist religion. Since being married, and having a family, I have been drawn to my faith even more, to learn about it and to learn how I can help promote it. There are a lot of people I talk to that has a bad view of the church. Through scandals in the news, preachers on television who seems only to want more money and who seems to have more money than anyone needs, and the view of the church being to political, since for the past decade at least religion has been aligned with the conservative right here in America.
I hope to be able to be part of the solution to changing that perception in the future. Through what I have learned and what I see needs to be done hopefully we can continue to succeed in our goals of aiding those in need in our community, currently and in the future. I think this is the hope for all organizations that rely on volunteers and all organizations that try to aid in improving our community.
One of the problems I found doing this summer of service project is the problem of retention. I haven’t seen it personally this summer, but it has been talked about in meetings. Our goal was to not be a fly by night church that shows up with gifts and promises of being around to minister and to help those we meet, and then maybe only show back up once or never. This is another way people view churches when trying to take on community service projects and one that we strive to break the mold on.
While not seeing our numbers go down substantially this summer, I have seen some weeks we have more help and others we have very few. The retention rates of volunteers doing community service are a problem all organizations find themselves having when undertaking a community service project. Sometimes the retention rate is so low that the organization has to abandon the project all together or scale it back to a more manageable goal. I have recently, through researching community service projects at my church seen how the retention rate affects even small projects. If someone who you are counting on doesn’t show up it might throw off the whole plan and have to rework it at the last minute, or cancel it all together, luckily we have not had that problem. Community service is something a lot of people talk about doing, or wanting to do, but not many are willing to put in the time to do it. Most people don’t realize how little time is needed usually if everyone works together to do even a large project.
The leadership of these organizations I believe is where to start with the issue of retention of volunteers. Our community does a lot of volunteer work and most of it is successful. Those organizations must have different ideas on how to keep their numbers up to complete the service projects and my proposal is to research these organizations and try to figure out how they retrain there volunteers.
Is it the particular project that draws the volunteers to stay and see it through? Is it the caring of the local community that brings out volunteers in numbers to help others in need? Is it the love of the organization itself that inspires people to volunteer and the product of that is the helping of others or the community?
The WHAS Crusade for Children is an amazing success story. Through the work of mostly volunteers they collect millions of dollars to help the local children in our community that are in need of medical treatment and other needs. It is through volunteers that stand at intersections for hours at a time, and go door to door collecting money that this is possible. I believe it is the love of children and the love of the organization that has grown over the years that allows this to be as successful as it has been over the years.
The idea is to increase retention rates of the volunteers and hopefully increase the numbers of volunteers that will aid in helping our community. I have not proposed one idea to make that happen but hopefully through research I can find different ideas that will allow the leadership of these organizations and the projects themselves to be more successful when undertaking community service projects. I want to research and find out how other local volunteer organizations are dealing with retention rates, especially in this current economy. I wish to find out how they deal with them currently, and how they have addressed them in the past. I wish to find out what current plans are in use, what is working and what is not working, and propose a solution, hopefully, or a combination of ideas that will help all organizations deal with the problem of not only finding volunteers but keeping them once they have them.
I will focus mostly on other churches in the area, but will branch out to other local organizations and find out how they are tackling the problem. Many people don’t realize how important volunteers are to our community and what they actually do. To do the research on this I will be contacting organizations and volunteers groups and there leaders. I will try to find statistics to back up any facts I find, and will use the internet to try to find more sources I might not be aware of.
My ideas about what the church had done in the past during my research for unit 2 has been greatly expanded through the information i have gathered during the oral history and through reading more history about the church. Researching more about how to make the missions and community service more successful through learning what other organizations have done will help the community as a whole and my church as an organization accomplish the goals they set.
(Beach Blast Kids Mission, Summer 2011)
Works Cited
Elieff, Jeff. Personal interview. 6-28-2011
Metro Council Newsroom. "District 11, Ninth and O Baptist Church, MSD and Utility Companies Partner to Remove Graffiti - 2007 - LouisvilleKy.gov N.p., 16 Oct. 2007. Web. 19 June 2011.
"Ninth & O Baptist Church / Welcome / history." Ninth & O Baptist Church / Welcome / Welcome. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 June 2011.
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