Today we’d like to introduce you to Jerry and Amy Mitchell.
Hi Jerry and Amy, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
After getting married in 1990, we spent 11 years in full-time church ministry, pastoring churches in Ontario and Indiana. Throughout that time, we always had a passion for and initiated ministries to serve children and families. As Jerry ventured out into the business world in 2001, Amy continued her focus on children and families through positions with local nonprofit organizations in Cleveland. During this time, Amy obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees in social work, with a focus on child and adolescent trauma, while working closely with families living in poverty, resettled refugees, and children and teens experiencing grief and loss.
In 2011, Jerry began to pray about where God would have him spend the best hours of his days. Those times with the Lord resulted in the formulation of Joshua and Caleb Leadership Center. Having both come from homes where our fathers were not present, developing a ministry to serve un-fathered and at-risk kids and their moms felt like a perfect fit. Joshua and Caleb Leadership Center was launched in 2015, serving only boys, with Jerry as a part-time staff member, and using space at Luther Memorial School in Cleveland. Since that time, the ministry has expanded to include girls and three full-time staff. We currently serve 40 children and teens on a weekly basis, another 25 participate in monthly activities, and we are present in two local schools every week.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The work we do is challenging on many levels. We enter in a 9-year process with each child and their mother, bringing a Christ-centered Mentorship Team around them. Many of our families come from generational patterns of financial instability, fatherlessness, addiction, trauma, and educational disparity. These patterns are not easily broken and require a lot of support, patience, and encouragement. We are asking them to make a paradigm shift.
In a world where we can acquire most things very quickly, it is difficult to find donors and volunteers who understand and are willing to invest in such a long-term process. We are also asking volunteers to enter into ministry with families that can be very broken. It is not easy.
COVID added additional challenges for us, as it did everyone, in that we had to quickly figure out how to stay connected and effective virtually. A number of volunteers chose not to return after COVID due to continued fear of participating in group activities. The children in our program continue to struggle with academic and emotional difficulties in a post-COVID environment.
As you know, we’re big fans of Joshua and Caleb Leadership Center. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about the brand?
Joshua and Caleb Leadership Center’s mission is to “develop un-fathered and at-risk boys and girls into global-minded leaders of God’s design.” We focus on helping kids grow in their relationship with God and their leadership skills. Most of the families that we work with have come from generations of brokenness. Just as Joshua and Caleb were the only two of the twelve spies that God sent out to scope out the promised land that were able to see God’s vision for their future, we help these families to see beyond their current circumstances to what God’s future is for them.
We invite the children and their mothers into a 9-year mentoring relationship where they are surrounded by a team of Christ-centered people who are committed to walk beside them. I think this is what sets us apart from other mentoring programs. Not only that we work with the mothers as well as the children, but that we enter into a 9-year relationship with them. Trust is a difficult thing for many of our families. It may take three years just to get to the point where they will trust us with difficult truths about their lives and allow us to walk alongside them in those truths.
We look at the children and their mothers from a holistic approach. Our curriculum focuses on seven areas of life; spiritual, emotional, physical, financial, intellectual, moral, and social; we meet with kids in weekly small groups, monthly large group events, frequent one-on-one times, and for annual weekend Leadership Conferences. Our partnerships with local schools allows for us to work in tandem with the school staff and administration to support the kids in academics, athletics, social situations, and accountability. One of our staff members is a licensed social worker specializing in child and adolescent trauma. She meets with children during and after school to provide counseling and support groups. We also provide a monthly support group for our mothers.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out.
Wow! I could share so many of my mistakes here. I think the most important life lesson that God has taught me from my mistakes is not to run away from a difficult situation. There have been times when I ran away rather than waiting for God to open a door and call me away. I think I missed out on seeing the fruit of my labors in those situations because I was not willing to wait.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://joshuacalebleaders.org/
- Instagram: jclc_cleveland
- Facebook: joshuacalebleaders.org
- Youtube: @jclc970
