Project shows every home can be house of God

Habitat for Humanity's ‘All Clergy' effort draws labor from many religions to create family's dwelling.

By Greg Lacour
Special Correspondent

Clergy and well-wishers flock to the home of Tri Buon Krong and family prior to a dedication ceremony for their new house. DAVID T. FOSTER III – This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

On a sweltering afternoon in Charlotte's Grier Heights neighborhood, a beaming father, mother and children – and dozens of volunteers – gathered around a freshly built house to celebrate another needy family's plunge into home-ownership.

It was the standard Habitat for Humanity success story, you might think. But this was different. Nearly all the volunteers, who built the house from slab up in 13 days, are clergy. And not just Protestant and Catholic clergy – also Muslim, Hindu, Mormon, Jewish, Buddhist, even Baha'i.

The Grier Heights house is Habitat of Charlotte's second All Clergy house, the product of a partnership between Habitat and the interfaith community organization Mecklenburg Ministries.

A nun suggested the “clergy build” a few years ago at a Mecklenburg Ministries committee meeting, and the two nonprofits joined in 2007 to build a house on Rayon Street in northwest Charlotte. It worked so well, both organizations decided to do it again.

“We hope we can make this a yearly project,” Maria Hanlin, Mecklenburg Ministries' executive director, said during the dedication last Sunday. “It's a lot of work recruiting 60 to 70 congregations, but everyone involved is just overjoyed.”

The members of those congregations represent nine different faiths. Hanlin said the project has helped spur interfaith cooperation on other projects, such as concerts and service projects. As far as Habitat officials know, it's the only program of its kind in the nation.

“Working hammer by hammer and shoulder to shoulder, we've learned about other religious traditions, different views of Scripture,” said Bob Warf, a Habitat volunteer and lay member of Myers Park Presbyterian Church who supervised construction. “It not only promotes diversity, but you get a cooperation among faiths that you might not otherwise get.”

The house now belongs to Tri Buon Krong, his wife, Hraih Nie, and their children, 1-year-old son Jemly and 6-month-old daughter Jenny. They're Christian Montagnard Vietnamese who said they grew tired of mistreatment at the hands of the communist Vietnamese government.

Tri fled to the United States in 2001; his wife joined him five years later, and they started a family while Tri works as a forklift operator at a T.J. Maxx in Charlotte. Through a translator, Tri thanked the volunteers for their work and said he was so happy to find such helpful people in the United States.

Then again, as is common on such projects, the volunteers gained something, too.

“Gosh, just the feeling of working together. I'm glad we could get the job done,” said Chris Kite, a Mecklenburg Ministries board member and lay minister for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. (And, incidentally, the brother of former Charlotte Hornet Greg Kite.)

“We're encouraged to be involved in the community, help build up the community and serve our neighbors,” Kite said. “And building a house is a good metaphor, too. Every house can be a house of God.”

In building the house, volunteers built something else.

“It gives all of us an opportunity to touch faiths we may not otherwise have contact with,” said the Rev. Mr. James Hamrlik, a deacon at St. Matthew Catholic Church in Ballantyne. “Working side by side, you say, ‘Let me get to know this person and the point of view of this person's faith.' ”