New Bethany Ministry’s Two-Year Recovery
Bill Lewellis
Diocesan Life, Dec. 2001
When the U.S. economy was cruising in the late 1990s, Bethlehem’s New Bethany Ministries embarked on an ill-fated expansion that nearly ran the agency into the ground when it ran up a debt of $500,000.
This year, New Bethany Ministries balanced its $700,000 budget for the second year in a row.
“What makes this story so dramatic is that we did this over a really short period of time,” said New Bethany president Bob Wilkins. “It really boggles the mind.”
By mid-1998, New Bethany was buried in debt, many halted their contributions, and low morale had spread through the staff as its executive director and two executive board members resigned. The staff had to be cut from 16 to 10.
Wilkins, retired senior vice president of finance for Bethlehem Steel and former Bethlehem city administrator took a leave of absence from his business to serve as interim executive director during New Bethany’s crisis when the ministry was having a hard time finding the $1,000 a day in donations (half the budget) it takes to operate its shelters, subsidized housing and meal programs.
The trouble started when the charity embarked on a personal care facility Restoration House to treat the mentally ill. The project was losing about $20,000 a month and bleeding New Bethany dry. Donors were pulling their money out because of New Bethany’s shaky future.
That, in turn, spun the charity deeper into debt. “The organization was close to going out of business because it no longer had the funds to function,” said the Rev. William J. Kuntze, executive director of New Bethany.
That’s when the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem, New Bethany’s 1983 founder, stepped in.
The diocese provided New Bethany the security for a loan and lent the charity $200,000 without interest.
Bethlehem Bishop Paul Marshall convened a “Blue Ribbon” panel of leaders in business, social service, church and philanthropic fields to explore the problems and challenges facing New Bethany.
The panel met during the last quarter of 1998 and offered a series of recommendations to the New Bethany board, including that New Bethany’s primary focus be “transitional housing for families and individuals, with related services providing meals, day care and counselling for vocational training, acquisition of life-skills, drug and alcohol abuse, and short-term mental health problems.”
The panel recommended also that New Bethany “phase out its ministry to persons with long-term or permanent mental health need. These services are more appropriately provided by other agencies. However, we urge that all care be taken not to eliminate these ministries until the persons served are being cared for elsewhere.”
The board turned Restoration House into ten subsidized apartments for the homeless. Soon, other helping hands began pulling New Bethany from the ashes of debt.
The city of Bethlehem committed $125,000 to renovate the ailing Restoration House complex.
The Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley committed federal Housing and Urban Development grants and ran the facility as a transitional home for nearly two years.
Now New Bethany administers the $110,000 HUD grant and runs the program itself. “It’s a sign of HUD’s view of our growing strength,” Kuntze said.
It is a strength shown through numbers. The charity cut its annual spending plan by $100,000. It is back up to a full staff of 16. It is offering just as many services as before its financial fall. The Representative Payee program, which offers financial case management for mentally ill people on disability income, has increased from 35 clients in 1999 to 65.
It has installed a new telephone system, computer system and a playground. It has completed $25,000 of exterior renovations to the Victorian home (Wyandotte Apartments) that houses up to seven low-income families.
It installed air conditioning in the drop-in center, which serves free continental breakfasts and hot lunches to anyone in need. It has installed a new sprinkler system and a fire escape ($125,000) in its transitional housing building.
Clients have noticed the changes. A 32-year-old mother who lives at the shelter said she can’t get her four-year-old daughter off the playground trapeze since it was installed a few months ago with a grant from the Talbot Hall Fund of the Diocese of Bethlehem. “All the children go there... it helps create a community.”
The cool air is a godsend to a 55-year-old diabetic and heart-transplant candidate who in January moved into the single-occupancy rooms.
Tony has had three heart attacks and two strokes since he was 35. He broke his back and had his hips replaced. Unable to work, he faced dire financial straits. A referral by St. Luke’s Hospital sent him to New Bethany.
“Part of our mission is to help people live with independence and dignity,” Kuntze said.
This means taking pride in the facilities, he said ó the reason the Wyandotte Apartments got a new paint job on its four-story Victorian building.
New Bethany hopes to make drab, institutional-like rooms more homey. Ten volunteers, all women, have taken on this “Angel Project.”
Ceilings are being painted light blue and walls light yellow ó an effect that will make the high ceilings seem less daunting to a child.
The “angels” are also buying new linens, small refrigerators, oak bunk beds, under-bed storage compartments and lamps.
Recent projects have been made possible through $75,000 in grants from the Talbot Hall Fund.
“If someone is living in pretty surroundings, it’s easier to be upbeat about one’s life,” said volunteer and Talbot Hall Fund chair Cid Spillman who created the Angel Project.
The recent Souper Day lunch raised a record $52,761 ó a 25 percent increase over last year and up $35,500 in just two years. More than 360 people showed up.
Keynote speaker Walter Dealtrey, former board president of Lehigh Valley Industrial Parks, said, “the Episcopal Diocese saw homelessness, poverty and people with no hope 18 years ago and founded New Bethany.”
He called New Bethany Ministries “a bargain for the Lehigh Valley. It does it better than any government program I know of.”
Dealtrey said the people who give to and volunteer for New Bethany are putting into action words they hear in church sermons on Sunday. “They practice what is preached.”
Those served by New Bethany include more than 100 needy people who are served lunch each weekday, up to nine homeless families that reside in transitional housing for an average of 74 days, ten homeless families that stay in Restoration House for up to two years, seven low-income families that live in Wyandotte apartments, 15 low-income/mentally ill adults who are housed by the single-room occupancy program and 20 low-income/mentally ill adults who live in Columbia House, Coplay.
Kuntze said 1,225 children in the Lehigh Valley are homeless and “we have 10 percent of those kids.”
New Bethany also provides clothing, an emergency pantry, job training, pastoral care and counseling services.
The sprawling ministry, founded by the Incorporated Trustees of the Diocese of Bethlehem at Fourth and Wyandotte streets near Diocesan House and the Cathedral Church of the Nativity in South Bethlehem, was named by former Bethlehem Bishop Mark Dyer after the biblical village where Jesus was cared for. The first homeless family moved into New Bethany in 1985.
The Rev. Canon Bill Lewellis, communication minister/editor for the Diocese of Bethlehem, has served also as priest at Grace Church, Allentown, for the past year. This story draws heavily from stories that appeared in The Morning Call: “Two-Year Recovery of New Bethany ëboggles the mind’” (Nicole Radzievich, 7-2-01), “New Bethany charity installing sprinklers” (Kevin Penton, 9-8-01), and “Souper Day benefits from its super turnout” (Sonia Csencsits, 10-24-01).