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"I'M HERE TO BE A CULTIVATOR."
Pattie Harris, Washington, D.C.by Mark Winz
Washington, D.C., is a city where political legacies are molded and legends revered; where people take note of flashy fast-talkers and winning smiles; where money are power often say more than moderation and humility.
Is it possible that in this city God would use a quiet, unassuming woman to be a rudder for spiritual change?
The woman is Pattie Harris, and God is using her at the hub of this city that boasts a 70 percent black majority in its population of 640,000. As the associate women's coordinator for Campus Crusade for Christ's Here's Life, Washington, D.C. ministry (an outreach of evangelism and discipleship to lay people), Pattie is mobilizing Christian women in the Washington area's black community. Her goal is to send them around the world to speak for Christ.
Pattie is a former teacher who received a doctorate degree in urban education and was an associate professor at Rhode Island Junior College. She also was responsible for coordinating a training center for the Rhode Island Head Start (a federal pre-school program) before joining the staff of Campus Crusade six years ago. As a part of the requirements of joining Campus Crusade staff, she completed its comprehensive evangelism and discipleship training. Now her game plan is discipleship, an intensive one-on-one teaching and training ministry, a strategy taken straight from 2 Timothy 2:2. She's passing on her wealth of training to other D.C. women:
Donna, a law student, who received Christ with Pattie and attends her Bible study.
Joyce, who has led five Bible studies since January, goes witnessing every Wednesday afternoon and started a prayer net-work in her church.
Lillian, a secretary, who leads a Bible study in her office at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Patricia, a pastor's wife, who ac-companied Pattie to Korea to attend the International Prayer Assembly last summer.A total of 50 women out of Pattie's 200-member church have also gone through her Bible study training pro-cess, according to Yvonne Essau, women's coordinator for Here's Life, Washington, D.C. Four of the 50 have "graduated" to leading groups of their own.
Yvonne refers to Pattie as an "oppor-tunist""she makes the most of op-portunities." She recalls the day Pattie contacted three women she read about in Ebony magazine and invited them to a luncheon. One of the women came and brought two friends to the meeting which Pattie had arranged as an opportunity to meet the women and minister to them.
Pattie also was part of the team of people who recruited delegates for Campus Crusade's black conference in 1981 that drew 1,800 blacks to chilly Chicago for a post-Christmas session of learning and motivation. Pattie and her team took nearly 100 people. Many of these women later became a part of discipleship groups.
Pattie's boss, Dean Schultz, calls her a pioneer. Campus Crusade is known as a predominantly white, middle-class organization, he explains. Pattie, he says, is one individual in the ministry who is pioneering inroads into the black community. "She's helped to develop leadership," he says.
"She's helped to develop me."
Dean compares her to Moses: cultured, accomplished (she's an excellent pianist), educated and well traveled. But, he says, she considers herself slow of speech. The unassuming personality, again.
Barbara Blassingale, the office manager says she always felt she was too quiet to be used of the Lord in ministry until she met Pattie two years ago. It's Pattie's quiet excitement about the Lord, her quiet yet profound way of explaining things that draws women to her," says Barbara, who says she learned from Pattie that she "doesn't have to be noisy for the Lord."
No matter how long discipleship takes for this nonassuming staff woman, Pattie knows her efforts will pay off. "What I do works because it's the life-giving message of Christ. To be on the winning side, to be able to identify with a winner . . . that's wonderful."
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