Archive: Jet Landings

The inner city is filled with dead-ends and closed doors. Well, it used to be that way.

by Boyce A. Bowdon

Near the door to the Jets’ room at Pennsylvania Avenue United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City, there is a cardboard box about two feet tall. The Jets know what it’s for. It’s where they dump their anger.

Who are the Jets? They belong to a youth group sponsored by Skyline Urban Ministries. They live in the inner city. Some of their neighbors are Bloods and Crips, gangs who frequently make the news with drug deals and drive-by shootings.

From early childhood, the Jets have heard the same messages that members of the gangs have heard—sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a shout: “You are poor. You are second-class. You don’t belong. You have no power. You will never amount to anything.”

But those discouraging messages are not the only messages the Jets have heard. Actions, as well as words from people they trust, have instilled in their minds and hearts the Jet credo: “God is a good God; and the world he created, in spite of its pain and suffering and rampant injustice, is a good world. Life is good just the way it is, even though painful. The past has made me the unique individual that I am—a divine creation. I am good in the eyes of God, even though I don’t always like the way I act. The future is full of possibility, and with God’s help, I can change my situation.”

Every Monday through Friday, as soon as school is out, more than 100 Jets, from elementary school through high school, come to two United Methodist churches—Epworth and  Pennsylvania Avenue. During the next two hours they have refreshments, play games, share feelings, study the Bible and sing praises to God.

Clarice Johnson, Skyline’s director of education, says one of the ministry’s major objectives is helping Jets learn to constructively handle their anger and other negative feelings.

“At Pennsylvania Avenue Church, we tell our Jets to visualize dumping their anger in the cardboard box when they come in the door,” says Clarice. “During our sessions, if a conflict develops over whose turn it is to do something, we take time out and ask the ones who are fighting, ‘Did you forget to dump your anger in the box?’ Nearly always, they smile, walk over to the box, dump their anger, come back and work things out peacefully.”

At Epworth Church, a different method is used to help Jets work through their anger.

“During sharing time, everyone is encouraged to express his or her feelings—both negative and positive. The act of sharing spreads the load around,” says Clarice. “Once anger is diluted, it is more easily managed. We discover that we don’t have to carry our anger, or any other burden, alone—that friends are there to help us handle it; and that God is always near to help us change bad situations and to make the most of the ones that cannot be changed.”

Jets are taught that they are not helpless victims, Clarice explains. “We say to our kids, ‘You always have a choice, even if it’s a limited choice. With God’s help, you can make a difference in your life.”‘

Youth in the program are taught the Jet decision-making process: observe and judge the facts, weigh the values, make a decision, act on it and accept the consequences.

Clarice says that a student in middle school was about to get into a fist fight recently that could have caused him to be expelled, or could have ended in someone being severely injured. A Jet reminded him that he did not have to fight—even though that was his usual way of dealing with conflict. He walked his friend through the Jet decision-making process. His friend cooled off, and differences were settled without blows.

Says Clarice: “We encourage Jets to be peacemakers rather than participants in violence, but we can’t make that choice for them. We teach them that they have to choose, and that they have to accept the consequences of the choices they make.”

The Jets ministry, which began in 1975, is built on the premise that a personal relationship with God is the foundation of our attitudes, which in turn, influences our actions and shapes our lives.

Clarice knows the Jets’ ministry can change lives. It has changed hers.

“It’s difficult to grow up, period!” Clarice says. “But it’s especially difficult to grow up poor; and to be convinced that you are limited, and always will be; that this is your life, and it will never get any better.”

That’s how Clarice—the seventh of ten children—felt about herself when she was in her early teens. And the feeling was reinforced every day in her relationships, even by people who had good intentions.

“I can remember a test that I didn’t do too well on,” Clarice recalls. “The white teacher in the integrated school said to me, ‘Oh, that’s okay. You did the best you could.’ I was saying, No, that’s not okay. I’m a good student and this is not my very best. I remember being very hurt. I asked my older sister why my teacher expected so little of me, and she said, ‘It’s because you are black. She thinks you can’t do any better. And you are going to have to learn to live with that—not just from your teacher, but from nearly everybody. They think black people are dumb.”‘

“My teacher was a kind person,” Clarice reflected. “I know she didn’t mean to hurt me. She just didn’t know any better. I didn’t know anything about white people, and she didn’t know anything about black people.”

During her early teens, Clarice began to sense that for a black person in the inner city, doors to a better life seemed closed and locked. She told herself she had to accept reality and make the most of it.

But then came the summer of 1977, when Clarice turned 15 years old. She had an opportunity to earn money during the summer through a federal job training program that was set up to help youth from low-income families. She signed up to work for Skyline Urban Ministries in a children’s academy.

“I remember going into the training session,” Clarice says. “There was one other non-white person in the room. I wasn’t sure what this experience was going to be like. The leaders started talking this strange talk about how every person is unique and unrepeatable, and how possibilities are tremendous, and how the future is open for everyone.”

Clarice was skeptical at first.

“I said to myself, Yeah, the future is open. Tell this to inner city kids and they’ll laugh. But after a week of training, I felt like my future was open. My eyes were opened, too. I saw there was more than just my corner of the block. I was hearing that I could make it happen—that I had power. Me!”

Clarice began to pay serious attention to the curriculum that she was being trained to teach others.

“I was ready to go out there and give it an honest try. Not just to teach the lessons to other children, but to learn the lessons myself. That was the summer when my life began; I really started living!”

Clarice had grown up in a Christian home. “I had always been taught that God is real; and that he is in me, not just in heaven. But now, I had a new impression of my self-worth. The Holy Spirit had come into my life. I knew I really mattered. I felt deep inside myself that with God’s help, I could do something with myself!”

Clarice had a great experience teaching that summer, and she went back to school that fall with renewed determination to excel. And excel she did. She graduated from high school with honors. Clarice earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Central Oklahoma, and taught school for the next five years while finishing a master’s degree.

Then she focused on her most ambitious dream.

“My mother had taught me that a good education is the key to the kind of life I want to live. I dreamed of earning a Ph.D. It seemed like a childhood fantasy, but Skyline taught me to look beyond the barriers and to dream big.”

During the next three years, Clarice completed a doctoral program at Oklahoma State University—all the while teaching at OSU and the University of Central Oklahoma.

Clarice was making more money teaching than she had ever expected to earn. “As the kids say, I was living large,” Clarice says with a chuckle.

Job opportunities began to open. In fact, she had teaching offers from two universities. But she declined both. Instead, she returned to Skyline for a salary that was significantly less than her other offers.

Why did she turn down better pay and a chance to get away from the inner city?

“This is what God put me here for,” Clarice says. “All the doors that God opened for me led here.”

Actually, Clarice had never left Skyline. She has been serving in the Skyline ministry nearly half her life—ever since that summer of 1977, when she was 15. All through her college and graduate school days, even though she was extremely busy, she made time to work with the Jets and other Skyline programs.

She rarely works only nine-to-five; she takes work home with her. In fact, she often takes children home. Some stay weekends. A few parents have even offered to let her keep their kids forever, and the kids have not objected.

“I want to feel that I have worked at making a difference, that I have given back to inner-city children what was given to me,” Clarice Johnson explains. “This is my chance to start paying my dues. I want to help those who are impoverished, emotionally and spiritually as well as financially—who feel embarrassed about who they are—to discover that they are God’s children.”

“I pray that young people who think they are stuck in a dismal situation will discover that Christ can set them free and empower them to be who they are meant to be— ‘unique and unrepeatable.’”

Boyce A. Bowdon is the director of communications for the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church.