Coping with Hard Times: Man4Man, Ziklag fight poverty on the street

May 25, 2009 02:05 am

— By Ryan Hutsell
For The Herald Bulletin
ANDERSON — Bob Blume’s method of fighting poverty and combating crime is to help felons get their lives together as soon as they’re released from prison — before they get into trouble again.
Blume, a co-founder and current executive director of Man4Man Ministries, says that immediate intervention is necessary.
“We catch the guys as they’re getting out and work with them to help them change their lives,” he said.
Man4Man helps the former prisoners find jobs, from which they can draw a sense of self-worth. Blume says the ministry tailors its assistance to individual needs, treating the men like people instead of parts on an assembly line.
“We are just one beggar helping another beggar find food,” he said.
There’s a correlation between poverty and incarceration, according to Blume, but not for the reasons that some might think.
“The difference is the poor get punished and caught more,” he said. “The people with money are doing the same crimes, but because they have established some kind of position or power, they may not go to prison as easily. The poor do get caught in the legal system, which can perpetuate the issues that keep them there.”
Some perceive the poor as lazy and therefore getting what they deserve. But Blume said they just get tired of fighting a system that inhibits their success.
“Those in the middle and upper class do look down on people in poverty as lazy,” said Blume, “but we also don’t do enough to provide adequate employment for them. Employment drives it.”
Tired of “running wild,” Paul Wilkins, 34, came to Man4Man on April 6 to seek help getting his life under control. Wilkins says he found a father figure in Blume to help him address a “poverty of the soul.”
“Man4Man helped me come out of my spiritual poverty so that I could deal with economic poverty,” Wilkins explained.
The Anderson man said Blume and others at Man4Man have helped him find peace by putting his life in the hands of Jesus Christ. Wilkins is working for Man4Man’s lawn service and hopes to find a permanent job soon.
Daniel Whalen, who worked with Blume in establishing Man4Man and just completed his doctorate at Anderson University’s School of Theology, has started an informal street ministry called Ziklag.
The organization takes its name from an Old Testament account of David being on the run from King Saul and ending up in a “marginal place outside the empire.” Ziklag’s mission is to build relationships with people who are on the fringes of society.
“Very few people in the middle class have ever experienced poverty themselves,” Whalen said, “even through personal association or involvement with someone who is in poverty.”
For his part, Whalen learned about poverty by becoming immersed in it himself — choosing, he said, to share the powerlessness, circumstances and alienation of the poor.
“There were times when I was on the street that I didn’t have enough money to buy a cup of coffee,” he said. “I know what it’s like to have to beg.
“What became abundantly clear to me is that while I always had a way out, there are a lot of people out there that, for whatever reason, are unable, in and of themselves, to reverse that process.”

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