Bishop Joseph Henderson and his wife, Pastor Doris Henderson, had a very distinct vision when they established what is now the Kingdom Family Worship Center in Fredericksburg more than 40 years ago.
“We tried to basically be the little YMCA in the neighborhood,” Doris Henderson said. “So, whatever programs that were needed or whatever programs that were asked for, we tried to incorporate them in the community.”
Doris Henderson referenced one song that church leaders taught youth. The lyrics read: “If you want to be somebody, if you want to go somewhere, you better wake up and pay attention.”
Thursday’s daylong event at the worship center included a similar call for youth and adults to take heed.
The “Strengthening Faith, Family and Community Summit” featured in-depth conversations on issues that plague the Fredericksburg region and beyond, including maternal health disparities, substance abuse and a lack of parental figures in the home.
The premise, speakers said, is that all of those factors contribute to the breakdown of the family to the detriment of the community.
“This is a spiritual battle,” said Dr. Donald Stern, the former state health commissioner and former director of the Rappahannock Area Health District. “Satan would love to take the family apart. You take the family apart; you take the community apart. You take the community apart; you take the city apart. You take the city apart; you take the state apart. You take the state apart; you take our nation apart.”
The event included a keynote address by gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who discussed her faith. Del. Bobby Orrock (R-Spotsylvania) also provided remarks.
Stephanie Dunkel, the deputy commissioner for population health and preparedness with the Virginia Department of Health was part of the morning panel, as well as Stern, Doris Henderson, Dana Brown, the executive director of the Zoe Freedom Center, Rachel Murray, U.S. region director of Global Peace Women and Bishop Jerry Diggs, director of New Israelite Community Development Corporation in Baltimore.
Additional speakers hailed from Uganda, other parts of Africa and from The Naton’s Mosque in Washington, D.C.
“This is a historic occasion to bring our global friends and partners from across the world with our regional and local partners to come together to share best practices, tools and resources as we advance the kingdom agenda together,” Joseph Henderson said.
Dunkel, representing VDH, discussed the importance of maternal health, citing a dashboard that debuted on the agency’s website last week that provides data on pregnancy-associated deaths, among other statistics.
According to the website, there were 15 pregnancy-related deaths in the Fredericksburg area from 2018-22, with six in Stafford County, four in Fredericksburg, two apiece in Caroline and Spotsylvania and one in King George. Dunkel said the data collected illustrated strengths and weaknesses of maternal care in Virginia.
“I’m thrilled to share that the dashboard launched last week,” Dunkel said. “It’s new. It has data that we are challenging ourselves to think differently about and provide to our community. It’s not only a tool for tracking outcomes, but empowering communities with knowledge you need to act and advocate. Behind every data point is a person and a story. No maternal death in this community is acceptable, and that is the mission of this conversation.”
Stern discussed his experience in various roles as a health official in the Fredericksburg and Richmond areas.
He noted that he helped start one of the first statewide fatherhood programs in the nation. There was a marketing campaign aimed at attacking the issue of fatherless homes, and grants were obtained to promote family stability, fatherhood and male responsibility.
Stern said that decades and decades of providing government assistance to single mothers and incarcerating fathers destroyed communities. He said that when he became the public health director for the City of Richmond in 2006, 70% of children were born out of wedlock.
“I’m not trying to blame the victim here, but this is a parenting issue,” Stern said. “We frequently blame our children. Those coming out of single-female-headed-households are more likely to be pregnant as teen girls and the boys are more likely to go to corrections rather than college. This is a parenting issue. It’s a major community health problem, which is clearly connected to poverty, crime and violence.”
Brown, who founded Zoe Freedom Center in Fredericksburg five years ago, experienced plenty of trials before recovering from drug addiction. She is now 22 years sober after spending nine years homeless in New York City, abusing drugs and working as a prostitute.
Brown’s non-profit, faith-based organization provides 100% free addiction services to anyone in the community in need. Soon, Brown is opening the organization’s first home in Falmouth, which will house an 18 to 24-month program focused on restorative care for women dealing with addiction and trafficking.
“Up to a jumbo jet of individuals in our nation die every single day to overdose,” Brown said. “If we were to hear about a plane crashing every single day and everyone onboard dying, we would be up in arms. So, I’m calling us to be up in arms over this situation. We are losing our children. We are losing our families.”
Panelists agreed that change in the community starts with the family unit. Murray, of Global Peace Women, said that when families are healthy and whole, communities flourish, but when families are fractured, the impact stretches beyond the home and has social, economic, emotional and spiritual fallout.
“Families are key to sustainable progress,” Murray said … “Too often we look to government, schools, policies, business leaders, for answers to the challenge that we face in our neighborhoods. But true transformation begins closer to home. It’s at the kitchen table. It’s not in the board room.”
