Mission Lubbock worker seeks to transform lives

Posted: 8/04/06

Mission Lubbock worker
seeks to transform lives

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

LUBBOCK—An abandoned church sanctuary may seem like an odd place for people to try on shoes, select clothing and pick out kitchenware. But Judy Cooper sees it as a vast improvement over where the ministry to Lubbock’s low-income multi-housing residents started.

Cooper heads Mission Lubbock—a multi-housing ministry she launched in April 2005, patterned after the successful Mission Arlington model. She runs the ministry from the facility Carlisle Baptist Church occupied until last fall, when the struggling congregation closed its doors and gave its property to the association.

“Until then, I was operating Mission Lubbock out of my house, and it was getting pretty claustrophobic with all the boxes and clothing everywhere,” she said.

Lubbock Area Baptist Association is creating a multi-faceted missions center in the old church facility. In addition to serving as headquarters for Mission Lubbock, the association is in the process of turning part of the building into dormitory-style housing for out-of-town missions volunteers.

Cooper has served three years as volunteer multi-housing coordinator for the association. About 75,000 people in Lubbock live in multi-housing communities—roughly one-third of the city’s population—and more than two-thirds of the people in multi-housing have no church connection, she noted.

As she began to minister in the apartment complexes and mobile home parks, she soon realized many residents had significant needs.

“A lot of people moved into apartments with nothing to set up housekeeping and sometimes with just the clothes on their back,” she said. “We want to meet the people where they are and help them get back on their feet.”

Last year, Mission Lubbock worked with a Royal Ambassador camp at Plains Baptist Assembly and area churches to collect school supplies for needy children whose families live in multi-housing. The ministry provided supplies for 533 students, in partnership with New Millennium Baptist Church, a predominantly African-American congregation in Lubbock.

Mission Lubbock also gathered donated items for a winter clothing drive to benefit children in need. “Then we didn’t have much of a winter, so we have plenty of hats, coats and gloves left over for this next winter,” Cooper said.

In addition to its ministry to multi-housing residents, Mission Lubbock also works with the chaplain at a nearby prison to supply toiletries and personal hygiene items to inmates.

Mission Lubbock does not provide financial assistance to individuals, but it distributes without question donated goods to people who have needs, said Larry Jones, associational director of missions.

Cooper recalled one woman who had lost her job and timidly asked whether Mission Lubbock might provide supplies for her children—unsure whether she met the criteria for receiving assistance.

“I said to her: ‘Do you have kids? Do they need school supplies? Then you meet the criteria,’” Cooper recalled. “If somebody takes advantage of us, that’s between them and God. We’re here to meet the needs of the people God gives us.”

About 15 churches in Lubbock Area Baptist Association participate to some degree in Mission Lubbock’s multi-housing ministry, and Cooper wants to see that number grow. “I try to encourage smaller churches to partner with the larger churches,” she said.

Cooper remains convinced that once churches commit to working in multi-housing ministry, God will call out the volunteers needed.

She pointed to Bacon Heights Baptist Church in Lubbock, where a young-married Sunday school class decided to conduct a Vacation Bible School at a low-income mobile home park. Their efforts resulted in 14 professions of faith in Christ—and an ongoing one-year commitment by the class to continue serving the mobile home park residents.

“It changed their lives,” Cooper said. “We’re here to touch lives and change lives.”