Bridging the Gap in the Inner City

For eight months last year, Calvin College freshmen Jacob Melton and Megan Sloterbeek attended the Bridge Street House of Prayer Mission School located in a struggling neighborhood near downtown Grand Rapids, Mich.

Living in a nearby apartment building owned by the school, they were up early every day for communal prayer, spent time learning about the character of God and other biblical topics, worked in various ways with groups that connect with the West Side neighborhood, and, when needed, helped some of the neighbors in that area.

They also had the chance to go overseas to teach in a Christian school.

Each of them enrolled at the Mission School during what is known as a gap year, a period after high school is which young people are increasingly taking time to sort through what interests them and whether college or some other training is right for them.

“I liked the idea of being able to pursue something like that wholeheartedly without all the other class stuff on the side,” said Melton, who attended the Mission Program after graduating from Northpointe Christian School in Grand Rapids.

“In my senior year of high school, I was looking for more,” added Sloterbeek, who graduated from South Christian High School in southern Grand Rapids.

“I didn’t know what I might want to do in college. I didn’t have very clear ambitions for a career, and I didn’t want to just spin my wheels taking general ed. courses somewhere. I was really hungry for God.”

As of January 2017, students who participate in the Mission School program at the Bridge Street House of Prayer are now able to earn six elective credit hours and fulfill Calvin College’s Cross-Cultural Engagement core requirement.

Will Katerberg, associate dean for programs and partnerships at Calvin, says gap years can serve as a bridge for students who aren’t sure where they want to go after high school. A gap year program gives them the time and experiential learning they need to figure things out without having to wager a huge investment in college tuition.

Foundation of the House of Prayer

Ryan Waalkes, a Calvin College graduate in civil engineering, and some friends felt nudged by God a dozen years ago to buy and move into a house across from what is now the Bridge Street House of Prayer.

“We had no intention of starting a full-time ministry,” said Waalkes, who directs the Mission Program, sitting at a table in the cafe called the Pavilion at the Bridge Street House of Prayer on a recent afternoon.

As he spoke, folks from the neighborhood dropped in for a cup of coffee, poured and handed to them by one of the students in the Mission School.

“We came here at first simply to pray together and be intentional neighbors,” said Waalkes. “We prayer-walked the neighborhood and found people who were facing a lot of struggle and blight.”

Then, as they prayed, the group sensed God had a specific purpose for them, which at first was to rent the building across from their home for their daily prayers and eventually to open the space, after extensive renovations, as a Christian cafe.

“We named this after a phrase in Psalm 27:5, which says ‘In the time of trouble, he will hide you in his pavilion.’ We wanted this to be a safe place and refuge for the lost and broken on the west side of Grand Rapids,” said Waalkes.

Thinking about the cafe, Waalkes said a miraculous sign that God wanted them to do this has come in the form of coffee.

“We sensed God telling us the coffee wasn’t for us to sell,” he said. “So we have never asked or paid for coffee. It has always been provided in one way or another. A church might hold a coffee drive for us, or someone might walk in with a big box of coffee for us.”

After the first couple of years, they had the notion that the Lord wanted them to branch out and offer short-term summer urban immersion programs for area youth groups coming from Christian Reformed and a range of other denominations and backgrounds.

From there, said Waalkes, they were led to start developing the Mission School, in response partly to the gap-year trend but also especially because they believed that Bridge Street House of Prayer had messages and things to teach young people about spiritual formation, working with others, and assessing their own strengths and weaknesses as they prepared for the future — while doing all of this in an urban environment filled with people coming from different backgrounds and walks of life.

Working in the cafe that day was Aleesha Devries, who enrolled in the Mission School after graduating from Byron Center (Mich.) High School.

Before attending the school, she planned to study fashion design at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Mich. She was attracted to the glitz and glamour of that industry.

But now, after teaching overseas and learning in the school about the biblical demands for social justice, she plans to study the labor market and how clothes are made and sold in Third World countries. In addition, she has decided to also study the sociology of human trafficking.

“Doing this wasn’t even on my radar screen before I came here,” she said.