Finding Courage and Empowerment at Guiding Light Mission

When you think of the Heartside neighborhood here in Grand Rapids, two things usually come to mind: the pervasive homeless population, and the burgeoning urban development that seeks to revitalize the community. While these two realities are in conflict, there is a man and a mission seeking to aid in the eradication of that conflict with a plan of empowerment.

Meet Stuart P. Ray, former Burger King Franchise owner, now the Executive Director of the Guiding Light Mission. He is joining in the effort to see the Heartside community thrive, one man at a time. Ray is on a mission of empowerment, accountability and respect. When Ray came to Guiding Light in 2009, he took a year to assess the state of the mission, its inhabitants and the surrounding neighborhood. “I learned the stories of the men, got to know them individually," he says. With that knowledge, he identified the potential they possessed in areas like entrepreneurship and affinities toward monetary stewardship. He also looked at the community surrounding the mission, noticing recidivistic patterns of behavior in both the homeless community and the mission/rescue shelters that were in place to serve them, and determined that Guiding Light needed go in a new direction.

There are two models that the Gospel Rescue missions work from, according to Ray: the “Woe is me” model, a platform which most follow, and the empowerment model. It is the empowerment platform that Ray decided was the best direction for the men seeking help and shelter, for Guiding Light Mission and for the Heartside community.

 “We needed to move away from the flop house model," Ray says, when asked about the state of affairs prior to embarking on this new path. Ray painted a picture within the “blue room," the front entry room upon entering Guiding Light, where active prostitution, alcohol consumption and drug deals and abuse, were openly performed. In that same room, others would mill around watching the television that hung from the ceiling, encouraging idleness. Ray assessed all of this information, turned off the television and got to work. In order for Ray to make this empowerment program effective, he had to determine what the mission’s strengths were. "[At] Guiding Light, we are good at shelter, recovery, and chapel," he says. "Guiding Light will not take a service that others are doing well." The end result was the S.T.A.R.T. (Spiritual Truth and Recovery Training) program that was and is about empowering men to make positive changes in their lives and in their community.

As a part of S.T.A.R.T., a gospel-based program, the mission provides four mandatory months of participation, including a fourteen-chapel/week schedule that is led by volunteer local pastors and a competency-based financial planning program run by Mercantile Bank, which each resident must go through and successfully complete. Another service provided is aid in finding housing upon an individual’s transition back into the community working with Booth Family Services, which has two offices within Guiding Light Mission and extends the same services to the entire community.

Providing courage is how to best describe the empowerment that Ray and Guiding Light Mission are giving not only to the participants in the S.T.A.R.T. program, but also to the other rescue missions. Along with Guiding Light Mission, the Heartside neighborhood has Degage Ministries and Heartside Ministries, all servicing the needs of the community and making moves towards a "hand up" form of action verses just providing another "hand out."

Additional ways in which the empowerment model gives a hand up is with the practice of responsibility. You will find those who are participants in S.T.A.R.T provide reciprocity to the community as a part of their training. Doing reciprocity work is one way they give back to the community that provides them with shelter, balanced meals and practical skills and support. Some of the recent giving was the men’s participation in the 8th annual Grand River Community 5k. They also provide security for God’s Kitchen and are ushers for the Grand Rapids Symphony.

It is also worth noting that the men in the S.T.A.R.T. program are required to respond to their Friend Of the Court (FOC) payments by setting a reasonable budget to make timely payments and maintain a living expense budget, part of which includes the mandatory deposit of all earnings for those who are employed. Ray recognizes the for some of the participants, establishing these things may be difficult, and near impossible for members that have been incarcerated or are lacking in necessary documents, such as identification or a bank account. So Guiding Light assists with procuring identification and sets up trust accounts for them to make those deposits. "It is a meeting of the minds here," says Ray. At Guiding Light, they strive to listen to the needs of those they serve and meet them where they're at.

The entire goal of the Guiding Light Mission is to prepare those who walk through their doors to leave as effective members of the community. Under Ray’s direction, those who exit his program successfully achieve that by receiving support from the time they enter and when they leave. Another key component of the S.T.A.R.T. program involves connecting the participants with a network of support as they leave consisting of a mentor, a church-family and support on the job. The mission tracks the progress of the participants for a full 12 months following “graduation” from the program. “We love the gift of goodbye," says Ray, “but it never really is goodbye.”

It is the age-old principle of teaching a man to fish so he may eat for a lifetime verses feeding him for a day. Stuart P. Ray and Guiding Light Mission want to teach men to fish so that they can feed themselves, and then help to feed their communities.