Icon (Close Menu)

Churches Build Trust

From the Diocese of Southern Virginia’s news blog

Residents in Virginia Beach’s Lake Edward and Campus East neighborhoods are building trusting relationships with city police thanks to the work of Western Bayside Churches United (WBCU) — an alliance of Good Samaritan Episcopal Church, Enoch Baptist Church, and Heritage United Methodist Church.

The three churches came together in 2010 with a simple mission — to make their neighborhood a better place to live. The Western Bayside area of Virginia Beach is a community in which many residents are struggling day to day and that has had one of the higher crime rates in the city. But that’s quickly changing.

In August of 2014, WBCU teamed up with officers of Virginia Beach’s third precinct in the Stop the Violence project. “One of the resident’s sons was murdered. Nobody knew anything even though there was a crowd in the yard when it happened. They were afraid to talk to the police,” explains Pastor Michael Daniels of Enoch Baptist Church. “She asked the church what we could do to help.”

The first step was a community meeting with the police, hosted by WBCU. “We wanted to talk about what the community could do, how we can partner with the precinct,” said the Rev. Wendy Wilkinson, rector of Good Samaritan Episcopal Church. “We have to take responsibility for our community.”

Read the rest.

WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

Top headlines. Every Friday.

MOST READ

CLASSIFIEDS

Most Recent

USAID Shutdown An Opportunity, Kenyan Primate Says

Archbishop Jackson Ole Sapit: “Let us be disrupted so that we think properly and manage our resources properly.”

Church Leaders Respond to Deportation Threats

While bishops warn of racial profiling and share legal advice, one Maryland priest has become legal guardian of 15 children from his congregation whose parents are in danger of deportation.

Bishop William Cox Dies at 103

A champion of elder care and rural ministry, Cox was controversially deposed at 87 for “abandoning the communion of this church” when he asked to transfer his episcopal ministry to an Anglican province in South America.

Diocese of Cape Town Mishandled Smyth Allegations

A Panel of Inquiry faulted the church’s failure to pass on allegations about the serial abuser to an evangelical congregation he joined in 2014, and said that failures in implementing its safeguarding system leaves congregants at risk.