IN THE BEGINNING

It was a spring day in 2017, and Rev. Paula Durren was, as usual, at work at Church of the Mediator when her administrative assistant, Linnea Berg, approached her.

Dr. Berg possessed a PhD in communications from Northwestern and had retired from nonprofit work. She was doing consulting work for the Pokagon Fund, which offered grant money. Could their church help? Rev. Durren’s answer was immediate. “I said yes! Money to help people have gas cards, get to the doctor and their jobs, get food to the table, real milk? When I put the question to our congregation, the church was 100 percent behind me.” Before becoming a priest, Rev. Durren had earned a master’s degree in counseling and had worked as a therapist for decades. “Our founding need was that we didn’t have the resources down here in our part of the county that they had up north—child family services, mental health counseling, department of social services. For folks here locally, it was a challenge to access help. Our case manager would help them fill out the paperwork and link people to services up north that would stabilize their lives. It grew from there. It opened the window. We started the mobile food pantry. We were seeing homes in need of repairs and were able to get volunteers and build that program. We started to help people pay utilities, because those were skyrocketing.

“Transformation has always been an important word to me. It was when I was a therapist, and it was when I was a priest. How can I help you to transform your life so you can be all you were created to be? "

And the transformation that goes on at Neighbor by Neighbor—I don’t take it for granted", Rev Durren says. "We started with the food pantry, gas cards, rent or utility money—whatever people need to stabilize their lives, then we provide financial counseling. Because if you’re struggling all the time, thinking ‘who do I pay first and how,’ you don’t have time to think about your goals and get a firmer foundation going forward. So we look at, do people need help with a GED, or to go to Lake Michigan College, or do they simply just need a ramp built? We meet the person where they are so we can help them get where they would like to go.”

Reflecting on the impact of Neighbor by Neighbor, Rev. Durren feels a combination of pride and gratitude. “I think of the things I’ve done in my life—one of them was to marry an amazing man, have two children and five grandchildren—but this is a legacy. Long after I’m gone, this agency will still be helping people. It’s going to go on giving when I cannot. The impact of watching this community has built my faith. This community has embraced being a neighbor. People are good.”