Feeding programs enable churches to meet needs of entire families

CLIFTON—More than 10 months each year, children from low-income homes know they can turn to their local school for at least one nutritious meal a day.

Grace Memorial Baptist Church in Clifton provided a place of solace and sustenance for some of those children this summer.

The congregation provided more than 600 sack lunches from July 1 to Aug. 16 for hungry children. The lunches also included cereal so the children would have something to eat for breakfast the next day.

The outreach grew out of the congregation’s desire to reach out to its community. The overwhelming majority of people being helped by Grace Memorial are within walking distance of the congregation’s facilities, Pastor Don McCollum said.

Through the feeding effort, church members got to know people in their neighborhood better and found additional ways to help people in need there.

“It’s just kind of fulfilling,” McCollum said. “We live around all these people. We know all these folks. We know their needs. We helped some of the families in other ways.”

Roughly 2.5 million Texas children participate in free and reduced school lunch programs, but only 9 percent of those students participate in summer feeding programs, leaving the rest on their own to find a daily nutritious meal. Texas ranks second in the nation in childhood hunger.

Some of the churches involved in feeding hungry children this summer were spurred into action by the Texas Hunger Initiative, a partnership between the Baylor University School of Social Work and Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission, and its goal of seeking to end hunger in Texas by 2015. The effort is funded in part by gifts through the Baptist General Convention of Texas Cooperative Program.

Churches in San Angelo, including Southland Baptist Church, fed 450 people a day and about 18,000 total for the summer. The communitywide effort involved churches serving at eight feeding sites.

By offering food to children, Southland Baptist discovered additional hunger needs in its community and ended up assisting entire hungry families.

“We’re about honoring families, whatever that family looks like,” said Carol Heibert, coordinator of the summer nutrition program at Southland.

“Grandparent, uncle or whoever is bringing that child in, we want them to be able to sit down together and sit down with us and eat.

“It’s just not right or Christian to say that your child can eat, but you can’t unless you pay. We offer a meal to the family. The focus is the children, and granted, some of the family members may choose not to eat, but we want them to know that they are invited.”

While Grace Memorial and Southland Baptist churches funded their own efforts through donations, congregations also took advantage of federal funding through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Where more than half of students are eligible for the free and reduced lunch program, the government will pay for food for organizations to distribute to people in need.

To receive the food funding, congregations must split evangelistic efforts from the feeding and offer the food to anyone who comes.

Churches easily can do that, said Ferrell Foster, associate director of Texas Baptists Advocacy/Care Team. Congregations can be eligible for the funding but still offer spiritual and even evangelistic efforts on either side of the food distribution time.

“The summer meals program provides a great opportunity for churches to meet the needs of undernourished children in our communities,” he said.

“The food is provided by a federal program, but it is not difficult for churches to keep the government-funded meals separate from church-related activities. Simply put, there is a genuine need, and churches can function effectively and with little expense in helping meet the need.”