Stand in the Gap ministry to mark 20 years
Buddy Stone found himself in an unusual situation 20 years ago.
He was 45 years old and retired after selling his very successful Stone Computer Supply.
Stone is now preparing to retire again, this time from Stand in the Gap, the ministry he and others founded after his first retirement. Stand in the Gap will celebrate its 20th anniversary this month. Stone will step down next year.
An important influence in Stone’s life 20 years ago was a book, “Halftime,” which was about pausing to take a hard look at the first half of one’s life in order to move from success to significance, Stone said recently.
Having come from a dysfunctional family, he said, he decided he wanted to spend the second half of his working life helping people facing life challenges.
And he wanted to do that by connecting them with a “mercy-hearted person” who would walk with them and help them.
“We found out in short order that was a formula for disaster,” Stone said.
The needs of the “clients” quickly overwhelmed and burned out the mercy-hearted person. “We had no clear boundaries.”
Stone did not give up but, working with professionals and clergy people, developed another approach that has become the backbone of Stand in the Gap: putting needy people in therapeutic communities, small groups of people who will pray for and with them, guide them, teach them and give them emotional, but not financial, support.
Stand in the Gap now has three primary areas of focus: developing communities of support for young people aging out of foster care, for women getting out of prison and for widows.
Stand in the Gap has about a dozen full-time and part-time employees, a budget of $535,000, and more than 1,000 volunteers who last year logged 22,000 hours, worth another half-million dollars.
The ministry served 3,475 people last year, including 1,238 women either incarcerated or recently released; 2,156 widows, working through more than 100 participating churches; and 81 at-risk young people.
‘Warms the heart’
How does Stone feel about seeing the growth of the ministry over the past 20 years?
“It’s an incredible feeling, but it doesn’t compare to the feeling of the individual stories.
“Stand in the Gap is not a Band-Aid ministry; it’s a life-transformation ministry. You have to invest incredible hours for that to happen, but when it happens, it really warms the heart.”
Francois Cardinal, executive director of the ministry, said many of the clients of the ministry, called neighbors, have experienced a lifetime of brokenness and hurts.
Volunteers are asked to commit to a year of being a part of a small group, meeting several times a month for several hours.
He said it takes two to six months for a group to develop the trust necessary for healing to begin.
‘Lives changed’
In addition to the small groups that are the heart of the ministry, Stand in the Gap’s Women in Transition, headed by Rhonda Bear, takes a 12-week curriculum into the prisons, teaching life skills to more than 1,000 women.
Women in Transition also helps women after they are released to make the transition to life outside the walls. “We are seeing lives changed,” Bear said. “This is an intergenerational ministry,” she said, in one case helping four generations of women in one family.
Recidivism is low among women who complete the program, she said.
T.J. Warren, who heads the ministry to young men, said people aging out of the foster care system have experienced “crushing trauma.”
“Loneliness and isolation are more deadly than smoking two packs of cigarettes a day,” he said. “If just a few people can share a little bit of that burden, it can change their lives.”
Stand in the Gap will tell its story through the stories of its clients on Tuesday at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City, and on Wednesday at the Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa.