Julie Fleurinor understands how relationships can help restore lives and communities. She learned and lived that lesson as a church-based community developer for seven years in Jacksonville, Fla., a ministry supported by The United Methodist Church’s annual Human Relations Day offering.

New Life Community United Methodist Church in Jacksonville lived up to its name when its founding pastor, the Rev. Candace Lewis, found Fleurinor on a college campus in 1996 and invited her to become part of the new church start. Although raised a Mormon in Haiti and Miami, Fla., the young student with a troubled past was searching for a new faith experience when she encountered Lewis’ community-focused approach to ministry. It caused her to rethink church and what it could mean to her life and the lives of others.

Fleurinor joined New Life and then became its community developer in 2001. An admittedly outspoken advocate with “a passion for helping people,” she worked at finding vital resources and building productive partnerships between the congregation and its community.

Those partnerships led the church to start food distribution on the streets of the city, a summer camp for youth, advocacy for support of local domestic violence shelters, registration and mobilization of new voters, and a dynamic youth enrichment program named Access.LUMAS (for Leadership, Unity, Mentoring, Arts/Academics and Spirituality).

“I had a lot to learn,” said Fleurinor. “But I began to understand social justice, societal concerns and the fact that the church really could make a radical difference in people’s lives and not just stand by helpless.”

Today Fleurinor is in her third year at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill., earning dual master’s degrees in divinity and social work. She is one of many community developers in the program’s 42-year history who have been inspired to pursue God’s call to ordained ministry.

When she finishes seminary, Fleurinor, who left Haiti when she was 6 but speaks fluent Creole, wants to return there to rebuild lives amid the devastation caused by the deadly January 2010 earthquake. She wants to help birth a new church and new educational opportunities for young people. Already she’s helping to find aid for church-based youth programs in Haiti and among Haitian-Americans in Miami, still employing her valuable community developer skills.

“I grieve for the losses my people suffered and for the poverty conditions that were already terrible before the earthquake and now are worse,” said Fleurinor. She has returned to Haiti several times on mission trips and still has family there.

“It will take someone who’s not afraid to face strongholds and get hurt or even die if necessary to bring about real change,” she explained, “someone not afraid to speak the truth and to build partnerships that can help people. I want to be that person.”

Your gifts to the Human Relations Day offering support the work of the Community Developers and United Methodist Voluntary Services programs, both administered by the General Board of Global Ministries, and the Youth Offender Rehabilitation Program administered by the General Board of Church and Society.

---by John W. Coleman, freelance writer

To learn more about the Human Relations Day Sunday offering click here.