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May/June response: Program Advisory Group Visits Nashville NMI
Bethlehem Centers Provides Services for Children, Youth, Seniors, Families
by Audrey Stanton-Smith
For nearly 50 years, Bethlehem Centers of Nashville has been an integral part of Steve Fleming’s life.
“I got my first immunization shots here at Bethlehem Centers when I was 3 years old,” Fleming, now CEO of Bethlehem Centers, told members of the United Women in Faith Program Advisory Group during their field trip to this National Mission Institution from their meeting site at nearby Scarritt Bennett Center on March 7.
One of eight children raised by a single mother in the public housing units across the street, Fleming found himself connected to the National Mission Institution long before he even knew what a National Mission Institution was. The immunization program opened his mother’s eyes to day-care opportunities the center provided, and by middle school, Fleming was tutoring the kindergarteners and first graders in the center’s after-school program.
“I got my first working opportunity there through Bethlehem’s summer youth employment program at the age of 14,” Fleming said. “It is my mission to give back. It is my ministry to give back. It is very fulfilling to give back to my home community, to the place where I come from.”
Fleming’s testimony and tour of the facility—which offers programs for pre-kindergarten students, programs for children through eighth grade in the summers and after school, Meals on Wheels and other senior services, a community garden, and homelessness prevention through its Family Collective Program—allowed program advisory group members to get an up-close look at love in action.
“I truly treasured being able to visit the Bethlehem Centers,” United Women in Faith President Jana Jones said. “I love being able to see, in-person, how lives are being touched. Seeing the smiles and energy of the children, and the programs that are in place at the center confirmed to me the vital work that they do and how essential our support is to their work. I wish everyone could visit an NMI to understand the importance of their donation to mission.”
National Mission Institutions serve and advocate for marginalized women and children. United Women in Faith helps support 85 such places throughout the United States. It’s a part of the organization’s history.
“We are very appreciative of United Women in Faith,” Fleming said. “They are vital to the success of this ministry. We’re thankful for their prayers, dedication, donations, support, and their kindness. Their love takes us a long way.”
Bethlehem Centers of Nashville began as United Methodist Neighborhood Centers back in 1894, when a group of Nashville, Tennessee, women associated with the Methodist church were actively involved in helping immigrant families.
Two years later, they established the Door of Hope Mission, which offered early child-care services and a rescue mission for young girls.
Bethlehem Centers of Nashville. Reed, who delivers Meals on Wheels to seniors, grew
up in the North Nashville neighborhood that the center serves. Photo: Mike DuBose
In 1901, Nashville Methodists led the way when the City Mission Board established the first full-fledged immigrant settlement home in south Nashville, the Wesley Community House. It offered educational and recreational services for the disadvantaged.
A few years later, the Warioto Settlement House opened to support predominantly rural migrant workers in the northern part of Nashville. In 1907, Sallie Hill Sawyer, a Black former schoolteacher, urged Methodists to extend services to Nashville’s indigent African Americans.
Sawyer, a Fisk University graduate, and Estelle Haskins, a missionary from the Missionary Training School, merged services to open a kindergarten, well-baby clinic, sewing circle, and recreation program. These two women broke racial and gender barriers of their time to impact the lives of others and provide essential services for the working poor.
In 1969, Bethlehem Centers was admitted into the organization that later became the United Way. Shortly thereafter, the settlement houses were consolidated under the name United Methodist Neighborhood Centers, with Bethlehem Centers serving as the administrative agency. The name changed in 1992 to Bethlehem Centers of Nashville.
Today, Bethlehem Centers of Nashville continues its ministry of “Changing Lives and Building Futures” with a commitment to the education and care of at-risk children, youth, and seniors.
“This center is the lifeblood of the community because it has touched so many generations,” Fleming said, noting how he loves hearing stories from people in their 80s and 90s who talk about skating and other fond memories they have of the facility.
Some of those seniors returned recently for a Valentine’s Day dance, and they’ll be back soon for aerobics, or to volunteer, or to participate in a healthy cooking workshop or a seminar on computer literacy and protecting themselves from online scams.
Those seniors will use the same computers students use for their after-school homework and tutoring, in a small computer lab not far from the site of a safe and secure pre-K program and a kitchen that is busy making and packing meals to deliver to Meals on Wheels clients.
Come summer, many teenagers will experience their first real jobs at Bethlehem Centers, paid $12 an hour for up to 25 hours a week to work in the center’s community garden or as helpers with younger children attending day camp. They’ll learn job etiquette and participate in job evaluations, vital steps along a pathway to self-reliance and positive life choices. It’s an opportunity much like the one Fleming had all those years ago as he grew from a toddler getting immunizations into a teen paid to work with younger children, and all the steps along the way to his position as CEO.
Fleming isn’t alone in his lifetime commitment to the center that helped guide him along his path. Roy Reed, a delivery driver, shared a similar story with the program advisory group.
“I’ve been here more than 20 years, and this is my heart,” said Reed, who was mentored by a Bethlehem Centers employee as a young teen in the 1990s. When he turned 18, he left his janitorial position at the center to take a job driving meals to seniors in need.
“I couldn’t imagine having a different job,” he said. “I love this. I even visit them on the weekends, when I’m not working. I take them to the store. I enjoy the people. … If this center wasn’t here, I don’t know where I’d be right now. The environment I was in, I saw all kinds of stuff. God brought me to this place, and he kept me here.”
For more information on Bethlehem Centers of Nashville and other United Women in Faith National Mission Institutions, visit uwfaith.org/what-we-do/what-we-fund/national-ministries.
Audrey Stanton-Smith is editor of response.
