Better Community Developers Makes Its Mark in the Community

Edward “Monty” Payne hit rock bottom in the mid ‘90s. He and his wife moved to Little Rock from Los Angeles, and he started working for Verizon as a manager. But, over time, Payne took a dark turn.

“I started using drugs and developed an addiction,” Payne says. “I actually started in high school and the military with alcohol and drugs, “ he continued. “When I showed up on the doorsteps of the Hoover Treatment Center in 2003, I had not paid child support or taxes in seven years. I was unemployed. I was intelligent, but lost.”

The Hoover Treatment Center is one of a series of life-changing programs created by Better Community Developers in Little Rock (BCD). BCD works with area churches to meet the needs of the community. For years, the Black church has met the temporal needs of its members, and BCD steps in to bolster the services churches already available.

“Part of our technical training was to train churches how to utilize government and faith groups to partner together. We provided training to assist in creating nonprofit status to operate programs so that the church would not be responsible for programming outreach ministries’ funding,“ explains Rev. William Robinson, BCD’s executive director. “Everybody comes together…based on the needs of the community.”

BCD traces its beginnings to 1981 and Dr. Nigel Wiley, former pastor of Wesley United Methodist Church located on the campus of Little Rock’s Philander Smith College. Dr. Wiley believed churches and communities could form partnerships to address social ills. Riley’s doctoral dissertation emphasized the significance of joining church and community to form a societal safety net. He and Rev. Robinson were friends.

Robinson recalls, “I was kind of drafted into the program. It was a totally new and different missionary thrust for the United Methodist Church. The community had wants, wishes, and desires; and its members knew what they wanted to do. [BCD] allowed them to dream and bring forth their desires. And we got behind them and pushed them,” Robinson notes. “When they started, the basic need was childcare. So, BCD started a childcare program for working mothers who could not afford the high cost of conventional child care.”

As BCD expanded, the issue of homelessness claimed its attention. The homeless center grew into a housing program, grooming those who were homeless, to become homeowners. “It was God and the church at work,” Robinson says.

Payne credits a specialist at the Hoover Center with helping him secure a home that BCD built in the community. Ruth Jones is a product of the BCD philosophy. She attended the childcare center.

Jones says, “I was blessed to attend the daycare center. As a child, I have watched everything BCD has done. I’ve been involved in the community for a long time.”

When Payne joined the BCD staff as a drug counselor, he gained a family. He was divorced by then and had custody of his son who is now in college. But when Payne was in the drug addiction program, he and his son lived in an apartment. He had a job throwing newspapers in west Little Rock. While throwing the newspapers, he would look at the beautiful homes and dream of owning a home. He signed up for BCD’s daylong homebuyers’ class.

He says,“When I took the classes, I knew I was going to get a house.” He decided on a home in Midtown where BCD is located. The house is a roomy 2,300 square feet. “People asked me, ‘how did you get this home?’ I told them God gave me this home. I also told them it was a woman named Ruth Jones. She just did not work with me, she was my friend.”

“I came from addiction for 15 years. … Addiction is a struggle. And no one who is in my addiction class can tell me it’s not a struggle.” But it’s beatable, as Payne has exemplified. And, he said, “I was able to come through by the help of God to get my home.”

It’s the happy ending Dr. Wiley and Rev. Robinson hoped for more than three decades ago when Better Community Developers first started.

Better Community Developers operates about 60 sites around the country. For more information on the programs offered, please visit www.bcdinc.org.