Breaking the Cycle

It’s such a beautiful church, with its lovely stained-glass windows and its double stairway leading to a balcony that’s perfect for wedding pictures.

The Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church of Phoenix is tucked into a Downtown neighborhood – it has been since 1928 – but it’s not just the solid block structure that gives it a sense of stability and permanence.
Its name is based on German roots that go back to the 1500s, and the “evangelical” part is a familiar word to anyone who has watched the religious right become prominent in American politics.

So it’s amazing to learn that Grace isn’t one of those evangelical churches.

“Jerry Falwell used the ‘e’ word, but that’s not what it means to us,” says Pastor Roger A. Thompson. “To us as Lutherans, evangelical means ‘the good news’.”

And the good news for Phoenix is that this is one – dare I say it – helluva church.

Grace Lutheran Church has a lot of community bragging rights. It has been honored as a “distinguished parish” and has won a City of Phoenix Human Service Award, but it holds a singular distinction in the entire nation.

It is the only church in America that sponsors a federally funded family planning clinic.
And what a difference that clinic is making.

ne hundred percent of the 1,600 women and children who walk into the clinic have no health insurance. All are poor. Most speak Spanish as their first language. Most have had only skimpy medical care – some have never had any in their entire lives.

But they’ll get top-notch care from Breaking the Cycle Community Health Care Clinic, which operates out of the church’s annex on Third Street.

Professors and students from Arizona State University’s College of Nursing staff the clinic; nurse Gail Petersen directs it. During the course of a year, 100 student nurses will do their practical experience rotation here.

“We have a responsibility to advocate for people to get health care,” Petersen says. “And in our education system, we need to have culturally competent people who understand the barriers people face. Seventy-five percent of the nurses who work at our clinic say they want to work with the under-served population.”
She’s proud of the awareness coming to those nursing students, as well as how this work will spread as they go out into the world. And she says the need is not only large, but it’s also growing.

“If you have a temporary work permit, you don’t qualify for any preventive medical care under Medicaid,” she says. “If you have a green card, you have to be a permanent resident for five years before you’re eligible for any preventive care. So immigrants, either legal or illegal, can be seen in emergency rooms for health needs.”

Not only is that costly, but wasteful in a medical system that is already stretched. And emergency rooms don’t deal with family planning services. For many of the women who use the clinic, it is the only option they have.

The clinic provides physical exams, pap smears, breast exams, testing and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy testing, infertility screening, counseling and birth control. It does not perform abortions. It is funded with grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through the Arizona Family Planning Council, contributions through the Friends/Amigos of Breaking the Cycle through the ASU Foundation, and Grace Lutheran Church.

“This clinic is truly a community collaboration,” Petersen says. “We aren’t just tenants of this church, but partners with it. The congregation is really here for us – it keeps me and the staff going. They are raising the rational religious voice.”

“People want to be part of something,” Pastor Thompson says. “Our involvement with the clinic has come back to us in many ways.”

While some religions prohibit family planning – Arizona Catholic Bishop Thomas Olmstead has called contraception the No. 1 social problem in America – Pastor Thompson believes it is part of being a good family. “Family planning is planning to have the best family you can afford,” he says.

Petersen puts it another way: “Family planning is about healthy families – the focus isn’t on contraception or abortion, but counseling women about their health. A healthy mother is the center of a family, and that’s what it’s all about.” And for those who try to equate family planning with abortion, she puts it simply: “Family planning prevents abortion.”

Sometimes the cases at the clinic are heartbreaking. One 30-year-old woman came in for fertility testing – the first time she had ever had a medical exam – and found out she had cervical cancer. She died just weeks later. Another woman with five children came in crying: She’d gotten an IUD because her angry husband told her he’d divorce her if she got pregnant again, but her priest demanded she take it out or he wouldn’t give her communion. She had the IUD removed. It’s not uncommon to see babies who have had no prenatal care.

The clinic grew out of a community assessment of health needs for homeless children completed in the 1980s by Dr. Phyllis Krause-Primas. The health clinic began operating in 1991 – often out of several locations, from schools to homeless shelters. It moved into the Grace Church annex in 2001.

Petersen is the perfect person to head this clinic, since her dedication to reaching those underserved by the health care system goes way back. “I was a school nurse in the early ’90s and had my eyes opened to the barriers families face in obtaining health care,” she noted when she was nominated as a Phoenix Business Journal Health Care Hero in 2003.

“I was the only health care provider available to approximately 30 percent of the children in my school. I made a commitment to focus my career on programs that help to eliminate disparity in health care for the underserved.”

With this clinic, she thinks she’s finally got it right. “I have the best nursing job anyone could have,” she says. “I get to serve people, I get to educate nurses and I get to build community advocacy.”

Grace Lutheran Church went through the typical “suburban flight” problems as folks moved out of central Phoenix in the ’50s and ’60s. At least five different churches emerged out of congregations that once called Grace home.

The church saw its population not only diminish, but change dramatically – the annex buildings were originally built for two large nurseries when the children now known as “baby boomers” were toddlers. By the 1980s, the nurseries were empty. About 15 years ago, it was clear the church was like an oasis Downtown – its relationship to the neighborhood no longer existed.

“They needed to reach out and let people know what a great church this is,” Pastor Thompson recounts from days that precede him. “So they decided to do a breakfast and invite the neighbors. Not one homeowner showed up, but 50 homeless men did. To the credit of the congregation, they didn’t back off. Instead, they decided to do a breakfast every month.”

From that start came the weekly Sunday breakfasts that have become a mainstay for the homeless community of Phoenix. And Grace isn’t alone in providing the sausages and pancakes and juice.
One Sunday each month, a church from Tempe provides the food and volunteers to serve the meal; another, it’s a church from Scottsdale; another, a church from Peoria.

“Our congregation now includes a number of homeless people,” Pastor Thompson says. “When I came here seven years ago, the average age of our congregation was 68. Now we have as many kids under 10 as we have people over 70.” He counts 300 members, and Sundays usually draw at least 200 to worship. “Our people don’t have a lot of income, but they’re very generous with what they do have.”

His church is open to everyone, he says, adding, “Everyone means everyone. Our DNA has always been about outreach.”

When the idea of the family planning clinic was first raised, the president of the congregation was the late Jackie Steiner, a former Republican lawmaker known for her sense of fairness and community spirit.
“Our main concern was, does what they do fit with what we do?” Pastor Thompson says. “We decided to host them and not charge them anything because it is consistent with what we do. This congregation has always had that heart.”

Which is why the weekly schedule at this church now includes:

• Monday through Friday: in partnership with the anti-drug program TERROS, breakfast for the homeless or anyone from the community who needs a meal.
• Mondays: free clothes and toiletries provided to the homeless from a “store” off the main dining room, with all items donated.
• Wednesday: a sack lunch provided to anyone who needs one; dinner for the homeless.
• Saturday: Bible study for anyone.
• Sunday: pancake breakfasts for anyone.

Pastor Thompson knows not everyone will embrace his church’s outreach or its philosophy, but to him, he’s just following the teachings that guide his life.

“We need to get off the deal where ‘I want to make you think like me’. I am where I am. I’m not interested in fighting. Jesus said everybody is a child of God and God wants everyone in the Kingdom. That’s where I am.”

And that’s where you’ll also find the congregation of the Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church of Phoenix.

Thank God.