Posted: March 10th, 2010 Meaghan Clark

On Wednesdays, Crossroads Charlotte Correspondent Meaghan Clark will give you a round-up of community-building news and events (click items for full stories):



1. Judy Williams, the co-founder of Mothers of Murdered Offspring, has been nominated for the highest civilian honor. Her work helping others grieve is done for love, not money.

2. The N.C. Justice for Victims of Sterilization Foundation will, among other things, offer support services for victims and families of this former program.


3. Uncontested races mean it is possible to win an election without a single vote. County commissioner Bill James has done that in the District 6.


4. Support for legalizing medical marijuana in North Carolina is growing. This particular piece of legislation would help people with debilitating conditions and former tobacco farmers looking for a new crop.

5. Census works to put faces and names to the city's homeless population.

Got a suggestion or a resource for us to check out? Please leave it in the comments or email us.

Posted: March 10th, 2010 Tonya Jameson

Last year, Dress for Success Charlotte served more than 500 women in an 853-square foot office. It was intimate. A little too intimate.

On March 9, the organization christened its new 5,000 square-foot facility on Clanton Road. It makes the old one look like a closet.

The new location is a crowning achievement for an organization that shuttered its doors four years ago because of a lack of money.

The public is invited to an open house 1-4 p.m. on March 20.

Today, Dress for Success has a new home and a renewed mission to help women in transition. The non-profit is most known for providing business suits for women preparing for job interviews, but the team of volunteers and staff provide more than clothing.

They offer hope.

Posted: March 8th, 2010 Greg Lacour

The Rev. Kate Murphy had a confession to make: There’s a section of Scripture, specifically Mark 7: 24-30, that’s bothered – even offended – her since her first year in Seminary.

It’s the story of a Gentile woman who approaches Jesus as he hides in a house. The woman’s daughter is possessed, and she begs Jesus to expel the demon. Jesus declines. It is not right, he tells her, to take the children’s bread and cast it before dogs.

She responds, Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.

Jesus tells her to go, that the demon has left her daughter. She goes home to find her daughter demon-free. So, Jesus performs an exorcism. But wait – what was that business about the dogs? Did we read that right? Jesus, confronted by a suffering mother, responds by calling her and her daughter … dogs? “If I could cut any piece out of the Bible …,” Murphy, the interim pastor at Hickory Grove Presbyterian Church, told the congregation at The Chapel of Christ the King on March 7. It was the latest in Crossroads Charlotte’s Xchange Sermons series.

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Posted: March 6th, 2010 Tonya Jameson

University Park minister Nicole Massie drives past First Christian Church everyday on her way home, but until Feb. 28, she’d never set foot in the church on East Boulevard.

Massie delivered the sermon at First Christian Church as part of the Xchange Sermons. “It was an amazing, amazing experience,” said Massie. “That sermon embodied what we should be about as Christians, as people of faith in general, that we can come together and that we really are part of the same community.” 

Massie said participating in the Xchange Sermons was one way for people of faith to come together because it provides an opportunities to find commonalities.

“This program allows you to look for it, to recognize it, to stand on it,” she said. “There’s an element of me preaching that sermon that brings accountability to me. If I call myself part of a larger community, I have to act like it.”