Remembering Willie Brown Academy

– by Danny Fong, Redeemer Community Church

Last Spring’s Health Day at Willie Brown College Preparatory Academy was our last. The school’s closure at the end of the 2010-2011 academic year marked the end of our church’s first exploration into neighborhood ministry. As I reflected on our six-year partnership with the Wellness Center at Willie Brown, I began to see how it had formed our view of partnership.

A Biblical teaching from Grace Urban Ministries’ (GUM) tenth anniversary stuck with us. Mark Lau-Branson taught from Luke 10 about how the disciples were instructed to receive the hospitality of others and to stay and minister there as long as they were welcome. We took this approach to the Bayview neighborhood. Willie Brown Academy made room for us, so we stayed for six years. Three of our members have volunteered in classrooms and played games with kids during lunch time. After a few years we settled into annual traditions of Project Magi Gifts (GUM’s Christmas gift-giving program) in the Winter and a Health Day each Spring. It was a joy to do this in partnership with the school’s Wellness Center, and to experience the welcome of students, teachers, and staff.

We had done the first Health Days on our own, but we were soon stretched beyond our capacity. I don’t remember when we first phoned GUM and asked for help. Redeemer Community Church was limited in the number of folks who could serve during the work day. This was no pretense to partnership: We truly could not have done it without our friends from Grace Fellowship Community Church. Their support was not only their help in staffing the Health Day, but their love and enjoyment of the students and their affirmation to us, saying “this is so great!” So began the tradition of our two churches serving alongside one another at the Health Day as partners in the gospel. At the last Health Day, volunteers from Redeemer and Grace Fellowship were earnestly welcomed by school staff, who recognized our faces, who had gotten used to our annual Health Day, and who had come to believe that our offer to be “partners” with them was sincere. They may not have distinguished between Redeemer and Grace Fellowship, but they knew us as the church.

“Partnership” is a rich word. The NIV translates Philippians 1:3-5 as “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.” The Greek word for partnership, koinonia, is elsewhere translated “fellowship”, “participation”, and “sharing.” When the Apostle Paul speaks of koinonia, he even speaks of sharing in the body and blood of Christ, so our partnership is also our communion with Christ. As we often say around the Lord’s Table, “by your Spirit join us with Christ and with one another… as this bread is Christ’s body for us, send us out to be the body of Christ in the world.” The communion that we share in the broken body of Christ is one with the communion that we share in ministry to a broken world.

A few of us visited Willie Brown Academy the last week of school. We were greeted at the door by one of the staff we had gotten to know over the years. She said, “I wasn’t going to cry, but when I saw you….” It was like she was saying, “you’re here, of course you would be here.” It was fitting for us to be there at the end. It had taken years for folks to trust us and to believe that we really wanted to be there. When we arrived at the Wellness Center, we visited for a long while. It was fitting to be together with the staff, and students, while they packed up. It was also fitting to receive a Willie Brown Academy Year Book signed by staff and students, a gift for our church as a tangible memory of our time at Willie Brown Academy and the people we came to know.

In our years at the school, we got to know some good teachers, some dedicated folks at the Wellness Center, and some fun and neat students. But we also witnessed a “dream school” initiative that did not come to fruition, the closing of Gloria R. Davis Middle School and its merger into Willie Brown Academy, and the closing of Willie Brown Academy itself. We witnessed firsthand the brokenness of the world the Lord Jesus came to redeem.

Willie Brown Academy was our first exploration into neighborhood ministry, an arena where we experienced the richness of partnership in the gospel and sharing in Christ’s suffering. When I remember our time at Willie Brown Academy, I also reflect on how we could not have done this alone. Thanks be to God that we are not alone, we have the body of Christ, the communion that we share at the Lord’s Table, and the communion we share in serving alongside one another.

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