History
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ ” Matthew 25:40
Crossroad Health Center was born in 1992 from a conviction that God has a special concern for the poor. This conviction came from a number of years of Bible study with the Sycamore Street Fellowship, named after the street in Cincinnati’s inner-city neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine where Julie and Chuck Schubert, two of Crossroad’s founders, were living.
Out of this fellowship emerged the four founders of Crossroad (Chuck and Julie Schubert, Sally Stewart, and Janet Germann). There were, however, others in the fellowship who are still active in the working of Crossroad nearly three decades after its birth. With the passion and naivety of young people, our founders and others set out to follow the philosophy of Christ’s community development laid down by John Perkins, founder of Christian Community Health Fellowship, who espoused the three “R’s” as he liked to call them: relocation, reconciliation and redistribution. A number of the Sycamore group relocated and moved to Cincinnati’s inner city and attempted to reconcile with our neighbors across socioeconomic boundaries. They attended church in the community and tried to simply spend time with their neighbors, all aimed at developing relationships. They were able to understand the “felt need” of our community firsthand by getting to know their neighbors.
The insight gained in these relationships and the discussion of available health care resources to the community led to the establishment of Crossroad. The first location was in the Peaslee Neighborhood Center where we converted a 900-square-foot classroom into a small clinic. We started with mostly volunteers but steadily grew to where we needed mainly paid staff. In response to community input we focused on establishing a health center that addressed the needs of the whole family, from medical care to behavioral health care to spiritual care. Crossroad now has more than 33,000 patient visits per year and functions out of five locations. We are bigger, we are more complex, but we still want to touch one heart at a time with the healing power of Jesus Christ.
The insight gained in these relationships and the discussion of available health care resources to the community led to the establishment of Crossroad. The first location was in the Peaslee Neighborhood Center where we converted a 900-square-foot classroom into a small clinic. We started with mostly volunteers but steadily grew to where we needed mainly paid staff. In response to community input we focused on establishing a health center that addressed the needs of the whole family, from medical care to behavioral health care to spiritual care. Crossroad now has more than 33,000 patient visits per year and functions out of five locations. We are bigger, we are more complex, but we still want to touch one heart at a time with the healing power of Jesus Christ.
