225BatonRouge.com

“Free garage sale” may be a contradiction in terms, but what else do you call 250 volunteers from 13 area churches banding together to give away clothes, household items and supplies at BREC’s Ben Burge Park on Gardere Lane at GSRI Avenue? There, on a street mostly heard on the nightly news in connection with regular shootings, more than 1,500 residents received free medical evaluations and a free lunch at what has been not only the most successful outreach effort yet from Connections Ministry, but a flashpoint for a more consistent, cross-denominational and indigenous approach to needs-based service throughout the community.

After years with Campus Crusade for Christ, leading a church in Atlanta and working in the software industry, Clayton Hays founded Connections in 2006 to rally diverse groups of Christians into serving together on projects like the Gardere giveaway—but with a unique approach. The way to be consistent and effective, he says, is to assist and equip the churches within impoverished areas for service rather than running the show for one day every few months and leaving.

“As simple as that sounds, it really hasn’t been done here before,” Hays says. “You really kind of scratch your head and go, ‘Why not?’ It’s a model we hope to repeat in North Baton Rouge and eventually New Orleans. But right now, with the response we’ve had, the Gardere area has our complete focus.”

Hays has connected more than a dozen mostly white middle- and upper-class church-goers with the leaders and congregations of First Presbyterian Living Word, House of Repentance, Sixty-Aid Baptist Church, and El Aposento Alto for what he calls “total ministry” within low-income neighborhoods. “Poverty is a huge deterrent to spiritual growth,” Hays says.

Hays’ theory is that those holding down two and three minimum-wage jobs to feed their families don’t have time for their children, much less a Bible study. They need job training and literacy skills first, and he wants Connections to make that happen.

“Things don’t have to be the way they are,” Hays says. “If we work together, God will use us to make a difference. We just need to think about it, take action, and stay with it.”

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