LSU ‘Faith Tour’ seeking to build neighborhood tie

• By JORDAN BLUM
• Capitol news bureau
• Published: Nov 9, 2009

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Pastor James Drumgole of Living Word Church on Nicholson Drive happily embraced LSU Chancellor Michael Martin on Sunday after a nearly two-hour church service.

The LSU trek represented the fourth stop on Martin’s “Old South Baton Rouge Faith Tour” designed to reach out to the lower-income areas near LSU, while also helping the second-year chancellor become more visible in the community.

The church tour is scheduled to continue through February.

“This is another opportunity to partner with the university,” Drumgole said just before Martin’s arrival Sunday morning.

“Now the people are not seeing LSU as some big institution trying to take over our property,” Drumgole said. “Of course, we still have a long way to go.”

Martin already has attended services at local Catholic and Baptist churches to meet with ministers and the congregation, but he also is doing so at smaller, non-denominational churches like Living Word that have more charismatic worship portions, such as speaking in tongues and the laying of hands.

“They’re all very inspiring,” Martin said afterward. “These are places people come because they have a great passion. … I’m getting a sense for how people live here and what matters to them.”

Martin, who describes himself as a “free agent” Christian with a Lutheran wife, said, “I don’t think there’s any question” that an inherent distrust exists in the lower-income neighborhoods about LSU’s function and intentions.

Universities nationwide have histories of being “islands” in their communities, Martin said. People should not feel “only the anointed are let in” LSU’s imagined but sometimes real gates, he said.

The ultimate goal, Martin said, is to help revitalize the area while making everyone at LSU a neighborhood ambassador, not just those in LSU’s small community outreach team. LSU constituents and neighbors should all feel safe on campus and in the surrounding area, he said.

“We still have a ways to go,” Martin said.

Old South Baton Rouge primarily includes the areas between downtown and LSU that became poorer as many middle-class black families moved into better housing during and after the modern civil rights era.

LSU participates in the Old South Baton Rouge Partnership that is headed by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation and the Center for Planning Excellence to create better housing and pedestrian communities. LSU also has some community education programs and partners with Campus Federal Credit Union to offer financial literacy education.