Katy Friggle-Norton, Board of Outreach chairperson at Central Baptist Church (CBC), Wayne, Pa., was one of more than 50 American Baptists enabled to attend April’s Mobilization to End Poverty in Washington, D.C., thanks to reduced registration costs provided by National Ministries’ support of the event.

Friggle-Norton joined approximately 1,100 Christians from across the United States urging Congress to put the fight against poverty at the top of its agenda and to begin a movement that will ultimately decrease poverty both domestically and globally.

Along with four other CBC members, Friggle-Norton slept for a nominal rate in a classroom at Calvary Baptist Church, only four blocks from the convention center. “I’m grateful that National Ministries and Calvary supported CBC’s mission and leadership development,” Friggle-Norton says.

Each member of the CBC group plans to write a church newsletter article about his or her most empowering experience at the mobilization, Friggle-Norton says. Referring to her own personal renewal and renewed commitment, thanks to the event, Friggle-Norton says it clearly fulfilled National Ministries’ mission of “transforming leadership, transforming lives.” “I felt a call of recommitment to go out with the river that heals and nourishes the broken, hungry world,” she says.

Touching people’s lives in this way is exactly what National Ministries’ support of the mobilization was meant to accomplish. Says Executive Director Dr. Aidsand F. Wright-Riggins III: “National Ministries’ engagement in the Mobilization to End Poverty is an expression of our response to the Jesus Manifesto of Luke 4:18. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus sounded the clarion call to proclaim good news to the poor. Toward the conclusion of his earthly ministry, he declared that the Great Criteria separating the righteous from the unrighteous was how they responded to those in our midst who are broken. This mobilization gave us the opportunity and the tools to truly be the hands and feet of Jesus.”

Ultimately, the mobilization’s goal is to cut domestic poverty in half by 2020 and to cut extreme global poverty in half by 2015, according to Adam Taylor, senior political director of Sojourners and associate minister of Shiloh Baptist Church, Washington, D.C. Sojourners, the event’s host and main sponsor, was joined by a variety of partners and co-sponsors, including National Ministries.

The purpose was “to help to mobilize and equip church leaders and activists from all across the country around the biblical call to overcome poverty and to show that the church is united—despite our denominational differences—around this issue,” Taylor says. In addition, the event sought “to show Congress that people of faith care deeply about this issue and to influence Congress to make fighting domestic and global poverty a clear priority.”

One presenter—who helped to prepare attendees for the event’s “Capitol Hill Day” and their meetings with Congress members or their staffs—was the Rev. George C.L. Cummings, Ph.D., a leader of People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO) National Network and pastor of Imani Community Church, Oakland, Calif. Cummings spoke about PICO’s successful lobbying on behalf of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and his presence in the East Wing of the White House in February when President Barack Obama signed legislation that reauthorized and extended SCHIP.

Among those inspired by attending the event was Cindy Johnson, who led a group of six high school-aged students and four adult chaperones from First Baptist Church (FBC), New London, N.H. Director of FBC’s Youth and Education program, Johnson is also co-coordinator of the Penny Project, in which the church’s youth raised awareness about children in poverty by collecting 60,000 pennies and meeting with their governor before donating the money to local food pantries and homeless shelters.

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