Alumni Profiles
Reconciliation a costly commitment
Finding her mission, Barrow helps congress assess elder care
Alumni win music awards
Reconciliation a costly commitment
By Deborah Lilly
From the time of Adam and Eve, the world has turned differences into reasons for conflict—male and female, affluent and poverty stricken, black and white, Christian and Jew. The Rev. Curtiss Paul DeYoung BA ’80 has dedicated his career to teaching people how to live and work in a diverse world. It’s called a ministry of reconciliation, and DeYoung admits it isn’t easy. “The cost is high because the moment you begin to preach reconciliation and to practice reconciliation, you have to examine yourself,” he explains.
DeYoung made an unsettling discovery about himself while a college student at AU. Born in Indiana and raised in Michigan, he was part of a family that exhibited a gender balance and comfortably interacted with people of other races. But a single incident forced him to recognize his own prejudices. He’d met a white female student he’d decided to ask out on a date when one day he saw her walking through the valley with two male African-American students. Suddenly, DeYoung was no longer interested in her, although it took him two months to realize the reason for his change of heart.
“I really believed that I was not a racist, and yet I had fallen prey to one of the oldest forms of racism in our society,” says DeYoung. “Right then it became clear to me that if I had this one to deal with, there were probably others.”
The ministry of re-conciliation became tangible to DeYoung while he was a seminary student at Howard University and a ministry intern under the Rev. Samuel Hines LHD ’85 at Third Street Church of God in Washington, D.C. Hines was born in Jamaica and known, according to DeYoung, as the leading voice in the Church of God for the ministry of reconciliation. Hines died in 1995. DeYoung explains, “What made Hines unique for me was that as an expository preacher, he was preaching reconciliation from a strong biblical context and matching it with action.” For example, Hines’ church was involved in a daily feeding program for the homeless.
DeYoung carried Hines’ influence into his own career—first as an ordained pastor in the Church of God and now as an author, speaker and president of Twin Cities Urban Reconciliation Network (TURN), a non-profit organization building bridges between race, gender, class, denominations and communities in Minneapolis-St. Paul through project initiatives, consultation and education.
In 1995, Judson Press published DeYoung’s first book, Coming Together: the Bible’s Message in an Age of Diversity. He cites passages in Genesis to demonstrate the common origin of all humankind and relies on New Testament scriptures and the life of Christ to reinforce the idea of reconciliation. Ironically, Christians have been guilty of using the Bible to justify oppression of certain factions. “The scriptures have been misused in huge ways,” says DeYoung. “Much of what I do in Coming Together is document that and then talk about some of the fresh ways the scriptures are being used in our day.”
After people read Coming Together, they wanted to know how to apply what they had just learned, so DeYoung responded with Reconciliation: Our Greatest Challenge—Our Only Hope, published in 1997. “The major focus of this book is to suggest a process of reconciliation,” he explains. “Not just for two individuals but for groups of people in society.”
The opportunity to work on a third book came when Dalineta Hines, wife of the late Rev. Hines, asked DeYoung to look at several unpublished manuscripts written by her husband. After reading them, DeYoung says, “I realized how much of my own view of reconciliation had been shaped by working with him.”
DeYoung agreed the material should be published, but he realized a few more chapters were needed for a publisher to accept it as a book. DeYoung took Hines’ manuscripts and linked them with additional chapters. “But even in the chapters I wrote, I integrated stories from his life.” DeYoung says it blends well because “it’s nurtured from that same biblical story about reconciliation and because I was trained under him.” The co-written book, Beyond Rhetoric: Reconciliation as a Way of Life, was published in February.
DeYoung has written all of his books to be used as tools for reconciliation. Chapters are followed by questions to be used for personal reflection or group discussion. Beyond Rhetoric features a workbook, “Reconcili-ation Is an Action Word,” written by the Rev. Hines and his wife. Reconciliation isn’t just a job, a personal achievement or buzz word for DeYoung. “Simply stated, to be a Christian, by definition, is to be involved in the ministry of reconciliation,” he wrote in his second book. DeYoung says, “The idea of the universality of God’s love is found from Genesis to Revelation. That counters any attempt to be exclusive.”
Finding her mission, Barrow helps congress assess elder care
David Harness
When Congress turned its attention to the assisted living industry last year, it called on Connie Peebles Barrow BA ‘85, a senior policy analyst with the U.S. General Accounting Office, to be its eyes and ears.
Responding to a request by the Senate Special Committee on Aging, Barrow teamed with two other GAO staffers to evaluate assisted living facilities, an increasingly popular, largely private source of long-term care for the aging.
Barrow’s team examined assisted living facilities in four states to assess quality of care and consumer protection concerns. The team’s findings, published in an April 1999 report to the Senate committee, identified industry shortcomings and prompted Senate hearings, industry jitters, and steps to improve consumer protection.
“Our focus is on trying to get at the truth,” says Barrow of her work at the GAO, the nonpartisan, independent, investigative arm of Congress. “We sort of go and ‘kick the tires,’ as they say, to go and be the eyes and ears of Congress.”
For Barrow, who’s been with the agency since 1991, such efforts usually involve health care and the elderly, a concern she traces back to childhood. (Her father was 59 when she was born.)
Though Barrow wrestled with a career in social work or counseling, she’s found her niche at the public policy level.
“It can be tough to be in the black hole of federal government, wondering, ‘Is anybody going to read this report? And if they read it, will that have any implications?’”
But Barrow hopes that by putting information in the hands of decision makers, she can help bring about systemic solutions—and help a broader number of people.
This sense of mission has also found expression in the local church, where she and her husband, Tom, attend. Last fall Barrow facilitated a series of Sunday school classes to educate and support family members facing elder care decisions.
“Given the baby boom, given where we are as a society, there are a lot of issues we need to attend to, at a micro-level and at a macro-level. People need to be educated. You have to realize that none of us gets out of this world alive. And then you may not die in your sleep from having run a marathon the night before—at the age of 85,” she says with a smile. “It’s good to have such hopes, but you also have to plan for all the possibilities.”
Alumni win music awards
Steven Curtis Chapman ’84 won six awards during the Gospel Music Association’s 31st Annual Dove Awards ceremony April 20.
Chapman received the association’s top honor by being named Best Artist. His other awards included Best Male Vocalist, Best Contemporary Album for Speechless and Best Pop or Contemporary Single for “Dive.”
Over the years, Chapman has received 44 Dove Awards and has been named Best Artist six times. In February he took home the Grammy for Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album for Speechless.
The Gaithers were also recognized at the Grammy and Dove Award ceremonies. Bill Gaither BA ’59, MusD ’73, Gloria Gaither BS’63, LittD ’89 and their “Homecoming Friends” won the top Grammy Award in the Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album category for Kennedy Center Homecoming. The Gaither Vocal Band received a Dove Award for Best Southern Gospel Album with God is Good.
