Deus Ex Machina: The Sure Foundation Car Care project
“The new building’s just across the street,” says Pastor Phil Beck, pointing to a building, painted a bizarre grayish-pink, across the four lanes of Route 18 from Beck’s Central Community Church in Transfer, PA. It’s about 200 yards away from where we stand in the Church’s parking lot, but Phil Beck is walking towards his car, not the street.
“We’ll have to drive.”
To get to the Sure Foundation - as Beck’s Church calls the strip-mall-like structure it has assumed ownership of - might be a few hundred yards away, but to get there takes a solid 5-7 minutes in the car, covering not much less than a mile of ground. It’s a common story in Mercer County, where transportation is far and away the number one issue faced by community and social service organizations. Without a working car, you can barely cross the street in parts of Mercer - nonetheless get to work or school.
That’s why, as part of the Sure Foundation, ‘Pastor Phil’ and company have established the new Car Care Ministry, opening for business on Sat., November 29. Around the back of the Sure Foundation building - behind the teen activity center, The Epicenter - a sliding garage door opens to reveal the small, single-car-sized car-care center, supported by a Community Connections Grassroots grant. It’s in here that Pastor Phil plans the next step in what he considers his ministerial work - social service: Not just “talking about the playbook … running the plays.”
The Car Care Ministry will provide cheap oil changes, small repairs, and consultation to those Mercer County residents who have car troubles, but little money to spare on such necessary work.
It’s just one part of the Foundation, of course. Inside the building, previously owned and donated to the Church by Jim Winner, the Sharon, PA, native responsible for inventing The Club anti-car theft device, Pastor Phil shows me the cubicle-riddled room that will soon serve as the Church’s offices. A multi-purpose room currently bears straw-filled targets used for practice by the “Grateful Archers” - a local chapter of the Christian Bowhunters of America.
Inside the Car Care garage, one of Beck’s parishioners - “Mr. Conley,” a retiree and father to several other parishioners - stands on a ladder, slapping drywall onto the ceiling, one of the people who’ve put hundreds of volunteer hours into the garage’s refurbishment. With only a few weeks until opening day, Pastor Phil points out that - despite the garage’s emptiness - they’re almost ready to go. “We’ve got [commitments for] donations from Rowes Auto Supply [in Transfer], and Greenville and Hittle Auto in [nearby] Greenville,” says Beck. “So we don’t have to stock anything - there’s no room here to store oil, parts, anything really. But when someone calls in, we’ll call the suppliers, and within three days they’re going to have [the equipment] for us.”
The commitment is there from Transfer’s community - besides suppliers, Pastor Phil has secured professional-level mechanics and hobbyists ready to staff the garage weekly. And three people have donated cars so far, for the Ministry to repair and sell cheaply, as a way of providing transport to the needy while also funding the garage.
Likewise, the need is becoming starkly apparent.
“It takes time for the word to get around about something like this,” says Pastor Phil. “But we’ve already had nine applications for people to get work done on their cars. And we’ve still got two weeks to go.”
