The following article was printed in The Herald-Sun on November 19, 2009.
Where everyone belongs
Reality Center an after-school program for all Durham teens
by: Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan
DURHAM — If a seventh-grade boy calls your community center “the best place ever after school,” that’s a good sign you’ve accomplished your goal of providing a fun place for adolescents to go after school.
Daniel Al-shahed, a Durham School of the Arts student, was referring to The Reality Center at the intersection of Lamond Drive and Gregson Street across from his school. Many of the middle- and high-schoolers who head to The Reality Center in Trinity Park after school come from nearby schools. Others take the bus from the John Avery Boys and Girls Club. There’s a city bus stop right in front of the building, too.
Open just a year and a few months, the center founded by Jeff McSwain has seen more and more kids coming each month. On Monday afternoon, 79 youth signed in to the center with choices of basketball, small-group discussions, homework and tutoring, classes and a game room with two pool tables, air hockey, foosball, ping pong and a Nintendo Wii.
The Reality Center is housed in the former Trinity Community Church, which sold the $550,000 property after the congregation dwindled. McSwain said the former pastor had hoped the Christian Missionary Alliance church building could be like Jesus’ kernel of wheat parable — that the kernel that dies produces new seeds. Anonymous donors helped McSwain and Reality Ministries buy the property outright. There are six staffers and about 75 volunteers.
Now the former church sanctuary is a basketball court and Sunday school classrooms are filled with youth on weekdays from 3:45 to 6 p.m. It is free. The only requirement to go is basic registration. There are at-risk and no-risk teens as well as those with cognitive disabilities. Most of those who attend are black or Latino. McSwain wanted the center to be a place for everyone.
“One of our goals here is to look a lot different than the school cafeteria, with everybody separated,” he said. So while there is some special programming for what he calls their “friends with disabilities,” everyone is together. The center’s Tuesday Night Live programs pair up a disabled teen with a volunteer buddy for an evening of pizza, music and fun.
The center is part of Reality Ministries, a Christian-based nonprofit McSwain, 47, started after he left Young Life two years ago. He had spent nine years teaching high school history in Alexandria, Va., before working for Young Life for 15 years, first in Appalachian Virginia and Tennessee, then leading the Christian youth ministry in Durham and Chapel Hill. It was a difference in theology that led to him leaving Young Life, McSwain said.
“I was saying you belong in order to believe, and they were saying you believe in order to belong — repent and you’ll be forgiven,” he said. “I came to be utterly convinced that if you belong ‘if,’ then you don’t belong; you’re forgiven ‘if,’ then you’re not forgiven.” Kids see right through those kind of conditions, McSwain said. Instead, he operates in an economy of grace, he explained. McSwain believes a person does not need to make a decision of faith to belong to God.
So he started his own ministry to youth with others who left Young Life. He wanted to provide a place for teenagers to belong.
“I feel like its absolutely transformed my life, as I begin to understand God’s grace, I begin to have more assurance of God’s forgiveness,” said McSwain, who said Jesus Christ embraced him at his worst.
Incorporating youth with disabilities has taught McSwain the most about God’s grace. There is just one gospel for everyone, he said, cognitively abled and disabled.
“We want every person that comes into this ministry to know the deepest reality of their lives is God’s love for them,” he said.
The center has a religious message, but it’s not forced. There is no required spiritual formation at the center.
“Everything we do here is Christian programming because we want a scarlet thread throughout. Because we want them to know the reason we’re for them as a staff and volunteers is because we’re for them,” McSwain said.
A banner on the basketball court simply says, “I Am For You,” a reference to Romans 8.
Small groups called Real Women and Real Men led by adults give teens a chance talk about their personal lives and learn Biblical references.
On Monday, the Real Men group talked about commitment in relationships and how that impacts lives as teenagers and as adults with families. Duke Divinity School intern John Albano led the group. Other nights, McSwain leads the group. In both the male and female groups, the friends with disabilities sat next to the other teens.
In a group meeting of Real Women and Girl Talk, the girls and volunteers took turns talking about their highs and lows for the week. Highs included family coming for Thanksgiving and good grades. Lows included health problems and upcoming standardized testing. High school students in the group were from schools including Hillside, Early College and Jordan.
Volunteer Real Women leader Lakeisha Blake said she thinks teenagers have so much to say and so much in their hearts. Blake thinks the center is a place to stay safe.
Claudia Green, a Jordan High freshman, takes the Boys and Girls Club bus to and from The Reality Center on Mondays. She found out about the center from volunteer coordinator Olivia Korman, who used to work at Boys and Girls Club.
Korman said she loves that her job involves making friends. Plus, she likes being part of the lives of younger people.
After Claudia began attending Real Women, she became attached to it and the friends she made. She learned what real friends are, she said.
“I like the way everything is positive — you can tell your opinions,” Claudia said.
Daniel, the DSA seventh-grader who said the center is the “best place ever after school,” said that the Real Men group is helpful and teaches them about life. He heard about the center at school, and starting coming there last week.
Terance Reddick, a DSA freshman, and Demarkee Midgett, a DSA seventh-grader, played basketball Monday night. Terance said the center is a fun place to be, and Demarkee agreed.
Marquis Butler, a DSA eighth-grader, has been coming for a year. He does his homework, plays basketball and on some Tuesdays, stays for Tuesday Night Live and buddies up with the kids with disabilities.
“It’s a good place to come hang out and you don’t have to worry about what you say. Most people around here are cool,” Marquis said.
