Question: What prompted this idea for the community center?

Reverend Joe Crout: I was led by the Lord to start New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church along with my wife. We started and now we’re at this juncture, after 44 years to continue ministry through outreach, and that’s how the community center project came into being. We wanted to answer a need within our community one for education, recreation, and to give children access and to give them a foundation to build upon.

Reverend David Crout: My father got the vision for this community center from the Lord. This divine idea and I believe all great things start with an idea. It’s an idea to impact people for the better. And when he landed in this community with the church, it was a natural fit that there are some needs that need to be addressed. There are some people that need to be helped. There are some situations that need to be resolved, and the community center is going to be the advancement of that grand idea. It’s going to allow so many services, so many programs, so many opportunities to be offered to people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to some of these things. It’s going to be a great a great thing.

Question: What does P.E.A.C.E. stand for?

Reverend Joe Crout: P.E.A.C.E. stands for Partnership and Economic Alliance for Community Empowerment. That acronym is very meaningful for me because we want to empower people rather than enable people.

Reverend David Crout: Peace, in general, is very powerful. The name itself signifies coming together in partnership, trying to enhance the community, enhance businesses and other organizations and lives of individuals and families. There’s an alliance. We’re all in this together. We’re all striving for this common goal. Not so that one is raised above another. But that everybody is coming up together, a rising a tidal raises all ships. And that’s what we want to bring about in the community here.

But it’s also the acronym P.E.A.C.E. It stands for a unity as a move as opposed to just a cooperation. It’s a unity of purpose. This being one accord, working in harmony, working in tandem, are being on the same page and going beyond just a basic cooperation or basic alignment of ideas. But it also speaks to the heart of the matter, the attitude linking spirit to spirit, so to speak. And that speaks to the type of atmosphere that is within the community.

Question: How have you initially gone about bringing this vision into reality?

Reverend Joe Crout: We started some years ago and formed an executive board, and now we have advisory committee and strategic committees to bring this project and put it on the ground. We have floor plans. We’re putting together this campaign for the funding. And so hopefully within a few years, we will have a community center to serve this community, West Willow, here in historic Willow Run, Michigan.

Reverend David Crout: Well, we started implementing the vision into reality simply by connecting with other people, trying to act on that partnership of peace, speaking with people, investigating, and seeing what the needs of the community are. And thankfully, the University of Michigan, they proposed a study, and they performed that study that highlighted the systemic needs of this neighborhood so in tandem with that, we were able to partner with other groups and say, okay, how can we address these needs? We wanted to go one-by-one and start knocking them off in the community. Creating the community center is a great step in achieving that.

Question: And how do you hope this building will serve the community?

Reverend Joe Crout: It will provide charitable services in terms of education, tutoring, mentoring. Bridging the gap between generations – the older generation and the younger generation – through personal interaction. It will give them an outlet and it will meet the needs. It will give children something to do. For latchkey children, we will fill in the gap so that they will be around positive people, passion people. It will be a safe place for children to spend time.

Question: Could you talk about the different age groups and how do you hope the building will serve all of the different age groups target?

Reverend Joe Crout: We hope to serve all age groups from seniors down to the smallest child. We hope that we will have the kind of programing that will enrich the lives of seniors in terms of education, or reeducation, in terms of recreation, in terms of learning computer skills and other programs, senior trips, and all those kinds of things that a person should enjoy in their golden years.

Now, for young people, we believe in prevention rather than rehabilitation so we would impart into their lives the necessary tools. We will equip them to build for the future and be successful in their lives – in terms of morality, in terms of their careers, in terms of their skill set. We will be skilling them for the future.

Reverend David Crout: Well, we hope that the building will serve that will serve the community in a number of different ways. We have the senior population who are in need of fellowship, they’re in need of friendship, comradery. They’re in need of a place that they can gather, particularly in the winter months and be among people their own age. They may not have an opportunity to go into an environment where they can be around like-minded people, around their peers and have a good time without kind of being exposed to the elements and having to drive miles and miles away. We’ll give them an opportunity to come together and have some friendly time for much of the South.

When you start talking about middle-aged families, this is an opportunity for them to kind of really spread out in terms of if they have children. This is the place for their children that they have needs. They want to expand their knowledge about finance and expand their career opportunities. This is the place where they can come and gain some knowledge. It’s a place where they can come and meet other people who are doing different things, maybe there’s opportunity for collaboration, maybe there’s opportunity for entrepreneurship, maybe there’s opportunity for just a number of different partnerships that will speak to them. For the children, of course, much has to do with the schooling, tutoring, you know, providing a social outlet, providing recreation, providing tutoring, providing college readiness, all of these types of things. We want to cover a breadth of needs that the community has.

Question: Could you tell us about the significant connection between the land that this building is on and the area of Willow Run?

Reverend Joe Crout: It is a marvelous story of how New Covenant Baptist Church acquired the 33 acres of property adjacent to the Willow Run Airport and to the Ford factory that built the B-24 bomber that we ended up with this property. And I think God intends for us to do something very positive with it, to impact the community for which many people in this community have resided here for years – some 50 or 60 years we’ve had some residents who have been here. And so, it would be a great blessing to have them live out their lives in a place that they’re very familiar and have invested so much of their life in.

Question: Wonderful. And why is it urgent now? What is the urgency with getting this building developed right now?

Reverend Joe Crout: Well, when you ask me why is it urgent? It’s like, let me give you some examples. It’s like if a fire breaks out, then you need the fire department and you need them to be there as quick as possible. Or if there’s a crime, you need the police there as quick as possible. Our community is lacking so many of the amenities that other communities enjoy, and our children are in need. We can supply that need. So, it’s urgent, each day that goes by the prison pipeline is open and it’s running, and people are using it. We want to destroy that pipeline, and the only way we know to do it is to offer them a different lifestyle and give them a future worth living. And we only do that through projects like this. And I really believe that some people can be turned around and have a good life, once they have the opportunity.

Reverend David Crout: Why not now? Why not now, especially when you think about all the things that can happen in one single day. To think about the impact of one day, the urgency of the community center is that every day that passes is a day that some of those needs are not being met. So, we need to seize the day, right? The day needs to be seized by taking full advantage of this opportunity while it is here. And every day that we do not have that we do not have the community center is an opportunity that really is passed. We encourage everybody to really buy in and to take hold, because this opportunity can be powerful, if we act now.

Question: And what is the legacy that you hope this building has?

Reverend Joe Crout: I’m hoping that this building will forever stand to usher children from mediocrity to excellence. I’m hoping that they this building will be a service center. It’ll be a safe place. And there would be an attachment that would bring about unity and harmony within this community, that they will look upon it as a fond memory once they’ve grown or moved away. This is my foundation. This is what gave me my launching pad. This is where people cared about me.

Reverend David Crout: The legacy that the building will have and should have five years, ten years, 20 years from now is number one: impact. When we think about legacy, it has to do with impact and impact means there is an effect of the item. The community center should have a ripple effect throughout the community so that in ten years, everyone in the community knows that place over there on the corner. I’ve got to help there. My friends have been helped there. My family’s gotten healthier; my children have been served there. And there is this legacy of that place. We know who they who they are, what they stand for and what services that they have to provide.

The second thing that legacy has to do with is longevity. The longevity has to do with impact over time. Therefore, not only are we here to serve, but we’re also here to serve people who are going somewhere. Therefore, overtime, they’re moving to higher echelons in life, and we want to be able to partner with them as they’re transcending in life.

Question: And what does it tell you also about faith?

Reverend Joe Crout: Well, the Bible says that faith is the substance of things, hope for and the evidence of things not seen. And this has been a journey of faith, not only the New Covenant Church, but now the community center is a journey of faith. And we put all of our faith in God that it’s going to happen because it’s needed. It would be a tremendous blessing. It’s taught me that faith is real. Faith has substance. Faith has something you can grab on to and hold on to. Even when you can’t see in the dark, you know that God is there to apply everything that is needed.

Question: What would you tell a donor about supporting this initiative? What would you say to them?

Reverend Joe Crout: I would say to a donor that if they’re considering and looking for a place to be, a kind of a positive asset, and they want to help people, they want to attack the problem of crime, the problem of miseducation or gentrification, or all of those negatives that we see played out in society, I would say to the donor, this is a grand opportunity to make a difference with people who are trying to make a difference.

Reverend David Crout: If you’re thinking about investing in this project, it is absolutely worth everything that you could put into it. The beautiful part about this community center is that it is people-driven. We are seeking to help people. If you’re interested in changing people’s lives, your dollars can do that. If you’re interested in touching children, your dollars can do that. If you’re interested in making a difference, your dollars can do that. Your dollars have the opportunity, literally, to change a child’s life for the rest of their lives.

There may be some children who would be able to go to college because of the college readiness programs that are going to be offered here at the community center – that your dollars contribute to. There may be some children who will offend out of poverty because of the dollars that you invested. There may be some senior citizens that get to be around people and get to fellowship and have friendship because of your dollars. So, if I were to talk to you and say, what difference could your dollars make? It would make all of the difference for many, many people.