Churches lending a helping hand

With one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, the Dalton area has been hit hard by the recession. Many residents have turned to local churches for assistance.

“We probably are seeing an unprecedented level of requests for help. I tell our folks it’s a hard time to be in the church, but it’s a great time to be in the church because we have never had so many people so needy for some good news,” said Bill Wilson, pastor of Dalton’s First Baptist Church. “We are seeing a lot of folks, and not just the traditional, obvious needs. It’s not just homeless people looking for a place to stay, though that’s part of it. It’s also people who have never had to face an economic hardship, who are suddenly experiencing things they have only read about.”

Many local churches support organizations such as Providence Ministries, the Salvation Army and the Dalton Organization of Churches United for People (DOC-UP) and funnel assistance through them.

Wilson says people are finding themselves grappling not only with financial distress but spiritual distress as well.

“People are asking, ‘What do I really want? What am I waiting on? What can I really trust? I can’t trust my broker, and I can’t really trust my employer, and I can’t trust my bank.’ Those are the kind of conversations that we are having,” he said.

What does Wilson tell them when they ask whom to trust?

“I tell them it’s printed on your money. Pull it out and look at it. It’s there. ‘In God We Trust,’” he said. “Our February worship services have been tied around the theme ‘tough times, tough people.’ We refer back to other people who have gone through tough times, and we talk about how they did it.”

Wilson says the church has also hosted a Sunday evening program called “Surviving the Storm.”

“The first week we talked about how to survive the storm in terms of your family. We had a family therapist talk about that. The second one was how do you survive the storm in terms of your finances,” he said. “The third one will be on Feb. 22 on how do you survive the storm in your body because stress takes a physical toll. We’ll have doctors and physiologists and nutritionists.”

The program is open to the public.

Mickey Shealy, pastor of Dalton’s First Presbyterian Church, said the anxiety level in the area is high.

“There are a lot of folks who’ve been on the job 20 years and never had any concern whatsoever about having a job next week or next month that now have those concerns,” he said.

“As a minister, my responsibility is to remind people that Jesus Christ is our ultimate hope, that the Gospel is always good news, and that perhaps there is a silver lining to our current economic situation that we can go back to the basics of our faith,” he said.

Shealy said First Presbyterian will soon begin a program called Fit for Him, where people will weigh in, then in following weeks a personal trainer and nutritionist will advise them on how to lose weight and get into shape.

“It’s a way for us to say to our members that physical health is important, and if we lose our physical health, we lose the rest of our health as well,” he said.

James Gwin, senior pastor of Varnell United Methodist, says requests for aid have “probably tripled over last year.”

But Gwin says he advises people to look at the current economic problems as one of “the storms of life.”

“We see storms as destructive. But God uses storms to create. He uses them to restore balance, and I think there’s some of that going on,” he said.

Gwin says his church has been offering classes on financial planning, called Good Sense, for several years.

People interested in the program should call the church office at (706) 694-8023. The next session is scheduled for Feb. 28 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Gwin said those interested should call soon.

Rex Frost, pastor of Dalton’s Seventh-day Adventist Church, says that church hasn’t seen a large increase in calls for assistance.

“We are surprised. We are puzzled about that,” he said.

Most churches report at least some members have been laid off or have seen their hours cut, but they say they haven’t seen a large drop in donations.

“Our local contributions have fallen off a bit, not significantly,” said Frost.

Gwin says donations so far in 2009 have remained fairly steady.

“Last year, we had more brought in by the end of the year than the previous year. This year it’s too early to tell, but we haven’t seen any significant drop,” he said.

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