Calvin Students Learn at Perkins Center

Twenty nine Calvin College students are currently spending their spring break learning the “Three R’s” — Relocation, Reconciliation, and Redistribution — at the Spencer Perkins Center in Jackson, Miss.

The center is named after John M. Perkins, a civil rights activist and community developer. After arriving last Friday, they have attended worship services, broken into small groups, had Bible studies, and walked through the nearby community of West Jackson.

But, especially, they have had the chance to interact with Perkins and others, learning about the Three R’s.

Rachel Haverkamp, one of the Calvin students, says she has learned that “Relocation calls leaders to live within struggling communities and to personally identify with their neighbors and the needs they may have.”

As for Reconciliation, she says, it “breaks down barriers that exist between fellow people, restoring their relationships, therefore strengthening or forming new bonds within the community.

“Lastly, Redistribution seeks to provide opportunities to people and help them build capital for themselves.”

Haverkamp says they have also learned that the Three R’s are the core values of the center as well as the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA), which Perkins and his wife, Vera, founded.

The CCDA works in West Jackson and communities all over the United States and beyond, spreading the message of the Three R’s.

Along with other students on the trip, Haverkamp is part of the new John M. Perkins Leadership Fellows program at Calvin, which offers a two-year, renewable $2,500 scholarship. The program is available to first-generation college students, those whose parents never attended college.

Perkins, a contemporary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke this year at the Calvin January Series, where he praised the liberal arts college for developing a relationship with him and his community-development center through the fellows program.

“Dr. Perkins institutes a radical ministry that focuses on becoming a member of the community that you relocate to, just as Jesus became flesh to save us,” says T.J. Noa, one of the students.

“I have been truly blessed to be a part of this group – I do not know anywhere else where I could find information valuable as this, alongside so many extraordinary people.”

In all, Calvin has 140 students going to 10 different locations for service-oriented spring break trips this year.

Perkins is a sharecropper’s son who grew up in Mississippi amidst dire poverty. After converting to Christianity, he established the John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation & Development, Inc.

The foundation’s focus is to advance the principles of Christian community development and racial reconciliation throughout the world. The Spencer Perkins Center is a branch of the foundation.

Jeff Bouman, the director of Calvin’s service-learning center who helped start the fellows program at Calvin, is serving as a mentor on the trip. He says meeting with Perkins has been a highlight for the students.

“Here’s a living legend—someone who knows scripture, and knows how it applies to leadership and social justice issues,” says Bouman.

Bouman also says that he is optimistic that participants in the fellows program, by learning from Perkins and others, will be able in coming weeks and months to assume leadership positions on campus. Some have already done that.

Sarah Stripp, a senior at Calvin and the student leader of the trip, says students are having the the chance to learn about civil rights history in Jackson, “as well as different ways to approach community development in general, especially asset-based community development …”

Melissa Rivera says she especially appreciated the chance, following a discussion on Christian Community Development, to join a group that took a walk through the streets of West Jackson surrounding the Spencer Perkins Center.

The center has been working for many years with the people of West Jackson.

As they strolled along, says Rivera, she got a sense of the significance of the center’s ministry and how it has had a tremendous impact the neighborhood.

“I can see how the center provides the community with a place to come together and for children to develop into leaders for God’s glory despite the reputation and barriers that exist.”