Community Share Ministries offers a second chance
Blessings come in many forms at Community Share Ministries.
The day starts with the morning prayer, when participants in a men’s and women’s ministry who are given work in the organization warehouse on North Main Street. Jason Slaughter, founder and leader of the Polk County-based non-profit, leads the group and asks for divine help for the others holding hands. One has a pending court date. Another is just beginning their journey in Slaughter’s program.
All are here because they’ve hit rock bottom in life, and have found a place to receive a second chance.
That’s been the goal of Slaughter since he first received a vision of providing help to those with the greatest need with a variety of programs, from helping people build back up their lives to a new effort to help other non-profits with needed supplies.
Slaughter began the ministry seven years ago with the goal of having everything up and running in 10 years, but instead had the pieces together in three years.
“We have 40 acres out here on Piedmont Highway,” he said of one of his many plans for the future of Community Share Ministries. “Our goal is to develop a subdivision for foster families to live in.”
It seems like an outsized goal, and something to his knowledge has never been tried before. Build homes, recruit families who want to care for children and provide them with what they need: food, water, shelter and utilities. Even in the back of his mind to have a parent stay home at all times, providing a stable environment for those foster children to be nurtured and grow up.
“It’s going to be called Safe Haven Ranch,” Slaughter said. “It’s already got one home, and the original is called the Hallelujah Haven. Each home will have it’s own name. And what the ministry is going to do is run alongside the foster parents and they won’t have any rent, power or water.”
He said “there’s nothing like this in the state of Georgia. There’s not another foster home subdivision or community in the state at all. We’re looking for funding to help make it happen.”
Once established, Slaughter sees it as another off-shoot of the ministry, and keeping families together locally is just one step in the process of healing.
“There’s a lot of people in need, especially those who don’t have anyone to take care of their children while they are trying to go through recovery,” Slaughter said. “We want to be able to help them with that too.”
Just like the original kernel of his ministry, Slaughter’s vision to help Polk County starts with one goal in mind, and then begins to encompass many more. And this is just one of the many ideas going through Slaughter’s mind. Less than a decade ago, he was the owner and operator of a Verizon Wireless store.
Now he’s helping to save lives through giving them a chance to work back toward a stable life, or providing stores for local pantries.
A ministry of recovery
His vision started as a way to help people get back on their feet in a variety of ways, but now has a lot of moving parts that centers around a men’s ministry, a women’s ministry and children’s ministry all located in the area and providing services for those who have fallen on hard times.
“We get phone calls every day,” he said. “We’ll get calls from DFCS or the police department reporting that they’ve found a mom and her kids sleeping in a car. We want to do something to say ‘hey, we can help you.’”
The goal isn’t to break up families. On the contrary, with the trio of ministries it gives mothers and fathers and the children shelter and food, but not without having to give back. Before anyone can start looking for work, first Slaughter gives them a reality check. No phone, and no money for three months.
“Mostly when people walk in the door, for the first 90 days they’re going to be working in the ministry doing something,” he said. “They’re going to be working on themselves and getting them back to where they need to be.”
His goal by keeping them from working or communicating via cell phone is to ground them back into a place where those things don’t matter as much, and to provide a distance from a previous life where quick cash and a phone call might land participants right back into a past life of drug and alcohol abuse, or other ways they might get into trouble.
Slaughter’s philosophy is that idle hands do the devil’s work, especially those with money and means. So instead, he keeps those who choose to participate busy.
Once the 90 days is up, Slaughter then helps people finds jobs, and housing and get back onto their feet and into life again.
“They can stay in the house for a while after they get a job if they want to, and sometimes they need to,” he said. “Money is the biggest trigger. A lot of people say ‘well if I just have a job, I’m ok.’ Well, that’s not always true.”
He pointed to a longtime success story of the program Jeff Arnold as an example of how well it can go for some people who are willing to keep within the rules.
Arnold, who came to Community Share Ministry in need of help, more than half a decade later now continues to work within the organization’s Thrift Store on North Main Street next door to the Dollar General.
“His life has been changed through this program, and he’s seen many women and men’s lives changed through the program too,” Slaughter said. “At least 50 percent of the people who go through the program come out of it successful, if they listen to what we’re trying to tell them.”
It hasn’t all been good. Slaughter said some people who he tried to help weren’t listening, and though he didn’t provide specifics said previous participants left and have since passed away.
Though not always rosy, what Slaughter can promise people who seek help is this: without conditions, the program will work.
But to get out to more people, Slaughter has another idea in store that is meant to change the way the community gives back as well.
Charity, not cash
One change that Slaughter hopes the community will jump on board with is to stop giving out money to those in need on the street. Instead, he wants you to send them to his organization, where more than enough goods are available for all.
Really, it’s quite packed at the ministry’s thrift store and warehouse on North Main.
Instead of giving money away to people in need and asking in a store parking lot or on the corner, Slaughter instead allows people to purchase vouchers on a sliding scale -- starting at $30 and upward to $2,500 for corporate givers -- that can then be given out to people in the community. In turn, those who have been given a voucher can come to the Community Share Ministry Thrift store and exchange it for an item in need, each point representing a dollar.
“So if someone sees a single mother who needs diapers and this that and the other, they can hand over a voucher and the mother can come here instead,” Slaughter said. “If they need bedding, or anything they need to get back on their feet, they can get it here.”
Slaughter said the goal is to give people the benefit of knowing their money is being used to help both the ministry and people in need, rather than being unsure if the intentions of the charity are being fulfilled. It’s easy to hand someone $5 on the street, but knowing what it is used for once the cash is turned over is a different story.
Now with the voucher program, Community Share Ministries can provide that faith in giving, and people who actually need the assistance and want to build themselves up have the opportunity to do so.
It provides the added bonus of allowing people who purchase the vouchers to use them for their own needs as well, and take away a variety of items available through the ministry that have been donated from the community at-large.
The amount of good available is staggering. The warehouse inside the former hardware store is packed to the gills with everything from clothing to toilet paper. The workers who are being helped via the ministry do a lot of the heavy lifting together of pallets, moving around bins and unpacking goods to go in the attached storefront where the Community Share Ministries Thrift Store operates out of almost daily.
And if people can’t get to the store for lack of transportation to get things they need, the ministry brings food and clothing to their doorstep instead.
He’s scaled the idea up a bit to help other organizations in town willing to make donations as well. Plans are in the works for additional space - to be decided between Polk and Floyd County at the moment - where non-profit organizations or say local law enforcement agencies - can pay a annual $600 fee, and $30 a visit to access the vast amount of supplies that are built up and can be useful. They’d only have access to the area for 30 minutes at a time, and only once a week.
However bulk items like paper towels and reams of printer paper that usually cost organizations thousands each year could soon be on offer for pennies on the dollar.
All of these programs and more are in the works, and those interested in taking part can contact Slaughter through the Community Share Ministry website at helpcommunityshare.com.
Because ultimately the blessings that Slaughter wants to help bestow upon the community will require the help of those willing to give back to the fellow men and women, and know the charity is doing the greatest amount of good for all.