That s how it all began. Today, more than 100 churches and 100 businesses support the Raleigh Jobs Partnership. For us, it took a year and a half of working it and finding pastors with a vision beyond the barrier. The process paid personal spiritual dividends, too. The emphasis on building relationships is evident once classes start, too.
Every participant is assigned a mentor to reinforce the lessons.
Johnny Crudup, executive director of the local Raleigh partnership, says the friendships between mentors and the mentored are the No. 1 reason the program changes lives. By the time the hoodlum graduated, three months later, he had given his life to Christ and traded his weapon for God s Word. But he got to the point where he wasn t just looking at me as a friend, and not even as a father figure but as a big brother who he could tell anything to. Maybe that s why none of the program s leaders seem too worried about the big guy with the thick neck and the shaved head who spends most of a February class doing little to conceal his disinterest in what Dwayne Mitchell is saying. Everyone else in the room five other students and a dozen or so mentors, business partners and friends of the Jobs Partnership listens intently as Mitchell chronicles the emptiness of his life when he wasn t living for the Lord.