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HIGH POINT -- Somebody else will have to do chores for the elderly in the West End section of High Point. The Rev. Jim Summey said he no longer will have time to fix commodes, paint, mow yards and do other chores.

He took a new job Friday, becoming the first executive director of the 11-year-old activist group High Point Community Against Crime.

Summey, pastor of English Road Baptist Church for nearly 17 years, resigned as pastor and as executive director of West End Ministries. He will preach at the church until early February and will remain a board member of West End Ministries, which he founded.

The Community Against Crime decided it needed someone on a daily basis to develop programs and help people, Summey said. "It got to the point that they wanted to do more than meet once a month. They wanted a daily presence," he said. "They seemed surprised when I told them I would take the job."

Businessman Bill Millis is providing funding for the organization's 2009 budget. It was Millis and his friend Ed Price who became so concerned about violent crime in the city that they contacted High Point police Chief Jim Fealy in late 2007 to see what could be done to curtail violent crime.

This came after a friend of Price's son was the victim of violent crime, Summey said. Fealy pointed to the volunteer citizens group and its efforts to help police fight crime. "They could do only so much as volunteers; they figured they needed someone full time to lead the organization," Summey said.

Summey had been a member of the organization for six years and the volunteer point man for the residents' effort to reduce crime in the West End.

Summey not only filled duties as a church pastor, but worked throughout the West End community helping people and fighting drug dealers and prostitutes. He was a vital cog in the police department's West End initiative, which became a national model for reducing crime in poverty-stricken neighborhoods.

"I have been working 80 to 90 hours a week; I can't continue doing that," said Summey, 53. A native of Thomasville, Summey has been a minister for 35 years.

"I'm not leaving the ministry. I'm just changing platforms and getting a different pulpit," Summey said.

Already, he has defined his new role:

• Keep the focus on the already established mission of confronting violence in High Point.
• Establish policies, job descriptions for employees and volunteer leaders.
• Make the relationship with the newly established advisory board a priority.
• Become the voice of nonviolence in High Point.
• Assist (along with police) in implementing deterrence methods and messages to decrease violence.
• Find jobs for past offenders to "add income and responsibility to the restructuring of their lives."
• Work with police, probation officials and other agencies to help "redeem criminals and turn them to a positive and productive life."

In September, Summey was among those who appeared before a U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary to testify about how police and residents joined hands to reduce crime in High Point, and "the 'new day' that still thrives in West End."

"The neighborhood sees itself more as a real community, taking on issues other than the violence that once so permeated the streets," Summey said at that hearing. "Quality-of-life issues are concerns now because they are also, now, possibilities.

"Maintenance of the West End and three other areas of High Point where this initiative has been successful is due to continual community and police involvement and an organization known as the High Point Community Against Violence."

Summey told the Senate Committee that HPCAV sends out positive messages to "stop the violence," and offers a new way of life to those who have chosen paths of violence.

"It was an incredible thing to go up there (before the Senate committee)," he said. "You hear a lot of criticisms but I could not find anything wrong with what I saw and heard. They said, 'We're looking for something that really works and helps peoples' lives.' I said, 'You've found it (in the West End Initiative Model),'" he said.

Little did Summey realize that his strong feelings about how the organization was impacting the lives of criminals would lead him to become totally immersed in that project a few months later.

"What we've lacked in the past is being able to get jobs not only for poor people in our neighborhoods but also for those coming out of prison," he said.

"I'm working to get jobs for convicted felons. With the economy like it is, that may not be easy, but we hope to work with a group at UNCG, America Works Inc. They have done a good job in the past and won a Harvard (University) Award the same year we did in West End," he said.

"Criminals are citizens, too; not the best citizens but still citizens. We want to help them become good citizens," Summey said.

Contact Bob Burchette at bburchette@triad.rr.com