We are launching a new Saturday workout at John Chavis Memorial Park in southeast Raleigh. The park is about .75 miles east downtown, next to Shaw University, on Martin Luther King Blvd. I have it on good authority that John Chavis is related to Daniel and Danny Chavis, the twin brothers in The Veldt – an atmospheric Brit-pop band that almost broke worldwide in the mid-1990s.
Many of the neighborhoods in southeast Raleigh have challenges related to income, employment, and crime. The statistics are what they are. Typically, when an organization plants its flag in the community, the assumption is that they are going to find ways to help serve the needs of the residents in those communities.
That is not what we’re doing at Chavis. We are not attempting to identify—and certainly not trying to solve—some of the socio-economic challenges in the community. Other groups are far better positioned and called to do that. We want to build a bridge to men in the community in the same way we are building bridges to men in the communities we are in now. The key difference is that we will be connecting with men that we may not regularly see at our jobs, our pools, our cookouts, and our churches. But there is no reason that F3 cannot be as successful in Chavis as it is at Catalyst.
It’s probably going to take a while to build these bridges. We are not coming in to talk, to preach, or to try to change anything the community. Just the opposite. We are going to spend time watching, listening, and learning from those who have the credibility to help us perfect our message and our mission.
And that mission is simple – it’s the same as any F3 launch: To re-invigorate male community leadership. And we only know one way to do that. By doing these workouts in the dirt and the dark. By building fellowship through these workouts. And by sharing faith through that fellowship. As White Shoe ably said (the one time he ably said something): “We really only know how to do F3, so that’s what we’re going to do.”
So we’re going to be present. Every Saturday at 7 am. (We moving right into Del Boca Vista).
We’ll look for opportunities to be present in other places where the opportunities arises. Like a flag football event. Or moving stuff out of a truck for a charity event as part of a workout (like CountryWide did last week). But mostly we will be in the gloom, doing what we do, listening to White Shoe go on and on about this guy.
See you at seven.
