Natori Gates, 17, leads girls in a “stomp” after lunch at the Simsa camp. For 20 years an ELCA initiative has made camp for at-risk youth a possibility. The camps—Simsa (“Safe In My Sisters’ Arms”) and Simba (“Safe In My Brothers’ Arms”)—are part of the ministry of the ELCA’s Shekinah Chapel, Riverdale, Ill.
city boy or girl to go to a summer camp. But Simba’s mission was to provide more than summertime fun. It aimed at helping the camp- ers develop practical, spiritual and communal skills and tools to cope with and thrive in a society that often devalued and discarded them. They developed a rite of pas- sage program based in part on an eight-unit Afrocentric Bible study developed by Harvard Stephens, an ELCA pastor, and the Nguzo Saba, or the Seven Principles of Kwan- zaa. As a rule, there is an adult leader or counselor for every three or four youth campers.
The idea of the community has been an important element of the Simba Circle from the start. But although women participated as camp counselors and consultants from the beginning, the program didn’t have a girls’ camp until 2007, when a determined group of young women insisted it was time to start one.
One of them was Shemiah Curry, October 2013 15
the then 14-year-old daughter of Sheki- nah’s pastor, Yehiel Curry, himself a veteran of Simba Circle. Now 20, she is a junior at Bennett College, Greens- boro, N.C., where she was an orienta- tion leader at the start of the current school year. Curry said the Simsa expe-
rience has given her confidence and leadership skills.
“That first year [of Simsa] was rough,” she said, “but it has gotten better every year.”
Although she is no longer a Simsa camper, she attended the last two gatherings as a team leader and intends to continue her participation into the foreseeable future. Over the years, more than 1,500
inner-city children and youth have attended the Simba/Simsa camps. The mission is to expand into a
year-round program and extend its outreach into inner-city communi- ties. At present RRR is working on after-school programs with two pub- lic schools and St. Sabina Roman Catholic school in Chicago. Yehiel Curry said Shekinah, itself, is an extension of Simba. “The Simba experience has always had a strong
spiritual component, but a lot of our kids and families come to us from outside the religious community. Shekinah was created in 1995 as a synodically authorized worshiping community and spiritual follow-up to Simba,” he said.
The pastor came to Shekinah and Simba as a lay mission developer. He entered the Theological Education for Emerging Ministries program, an alternate route to ordination, and was ordained in 2009. He received his master of divinity degree from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chi- cago this year.
Although RRR and Simba/Simsa
are technically no longer part of the ELCA, Curry embodies a synthesis or synergy of two long-term church initiatives and outreach to communi- ties outside what was once consid- ered the Lutheran community. Thomas said the church should be proud of what has been accom- plished through Simba: “The church nourished us for 10 years and … even though it wasn’t Lutheran, it was born in the Lutheran church.” RRR (
www.rescuereleaserestore.
org) is now focusing on fundraising, acquiring its own space and develop- ing year-round programs for at-risk youth. Curry estimates it costs $400 to send a boy or girl to camp. Almost by definition, few at-risk kids come from families that can afford that.
Wk 1- Dr. Karoline Lewis: Greater Works Than These: God’s Call to Us in the 21st Century
Wk 2- Dr. Julia Fogg: A Migrant People Called by the Spirit...Evolving & Becoming
Worship+Music - Both weeks by Tom Witt & Mary Preus
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