By Mickey Noah
SBC North American Mission Board
Alpharetta, Ga. (BP)—With unemployment and consumer food prices rising, gasoline costs at near-record levels and the possibility of more job layoffs looming on the horizon, business is sadly booming for the 1,500 domestic hunger ministries that receive support from the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund.
While 80 percent of the World Hunger Fund is earmarked for the International Mission Board to fight world hunger, the remaining 20 percent is dedicated to feed the hungry of North America and is administered by the North American Mission Board.
Some 3.5 million meals were served to North America’s hungry in 2007 and as a result 35,000 professions of faith were recorded. Because of careful management and low overhead, the cost of a meal at an SBC hunger ministry averages about 40 cents, according to Sandy Wood, hunger ministry specialist with NAMB’s servant and ministry evangelism team.
More than 67,000 volunteers assisted at hunger ministry sites throughout the United States in 2007, Wood said. Some 7,200 new hunger ministry volunteers were trained in evangelism during the year as well. The gospel was shared with more than 580,000 visitors to SBC hunger ministries.
For missionaries like Angelia Bostick in Brownwood, Texas, and Steve Faith in New Albany, Ind.—both longtime veterans of feeding ministries—the workdays are long, hard and extremely tiring.
For 15 years, Bostick has headed up the Heart of Texas Good Samaritan Ministry in rural Brown County, located three hours south of Dallas. One-third of the county’s 40,000 residents live in poverty.
Bostick, 51, is a NAMB missionary. Most of her financial support for the food ministry comes from domestic World Hunger Funds via area Southern Baptist churches and the local Brown Baptist Association. But the Brownwood food pantry and warehouse also is an inter-denominational effort that involves about 200 Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Nazarene and Assembly of God volunteers.
“Southern Baptists started the ministry, but there are no theological differences about what Jesus said about helping the poor,” noted Bostick, a longtime resident of Brownwood. “We want to work together because the resources here are so limited.”
Brownwood’s economic situation is fragile, she explained. Her ministry added 50 new families at the end of July, on top of the 600 families it normally serves each month. In November and December, the number of families requesting food typically expands to 800 because of seasonal layoffs by local plants and factories.
Only Brown County residents can receive food from the ministry, Bostick said. Families can come to the pantry once each month. The amount of food distributed depends on family size, but each donation consists of several grocery bags, including frozen and canned meat, cereals, vegetables, rice and pasta.
“The majority of the people who come in are elderly or disabled on fixed incomes. Brown County has a higher percentage of elderly than the Texas average,” Bostick pointed out. “We also have a lot of the working poor, because there are not a lot of good paying jobs around Brownwood. Most make minimum wage.”
Fifteen years ago, Bostick agreed to take the ministry’s executive director job until someone else could be found. No one ever was.
“I had served on the original team creating the ministry,” she said. “But running the warehouse and pantry were not what I was trained to do. I wanted to teach. Now, 15 years later, I’m still in the job.
“This is what God called me to do and He prepared me to do it all my life,” added Bostick, a preacher’s kid and a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
“Sometimes I get tired and want to quit. But like Jeremiah, there’s a fire that burns in me and won’t go out,” she insisted. “Sure, you get tired sometimes. But I’ve never doubted that God called me to do this. How could I do less?”
A thousand miles away from central Texas, it takes a lot of “Faith”—Steve Faith, that is—to run the Southeast Indiana Baptist Food Warehouse in New Albany, Ind. Faith, 64, is administrative community evangelism director for the State Convention of Baptists in Indiana.
Unlike Bostick—whose feeding pantry distributes directly to families—Faith is more like a “wholesaler” of free food for the hungry. He gets large ministries such as Feed the Children or Operation Blessing to donate pallets of food, paper goods and other products. He also asks large firms like Tyson Foods to donate their products.
No associational funds are ever spent on the food or products, which always are donated and then distributed free of charge to churches or other hunger ministries with 501(c)3 charitable tax status.
“Our only expense is rental of trucks and the diesel fuel we need,” Faith noted. Of course, with diesel fuel up to as much as $4 a gallon, the association’s budget is stretched.
“I don’t get the world hunger funds directly,” said Faith, who is co-supported by the Indiana state convention and NAMB. “We have 63 churches in our association and nine of them get the hunger funds. But we couldn’t do without them.”
From January until the end of July 2008, the warehouse received and distributed 1.5 million pounds of “product,” according to Faith. He estimated that he contributes some 90,000 meals a month in the Southern Indiana region.
“We can unload a tractor trailer of any product in 12 minutes. Many loads come in at night. Sometimes I don’t know exactly what I have until I get it here,” he said. But whether the load comes in at night or early the next morning, it will be unloaded and turned around in less than a day—sometimes in 90 minutes. Perishable items get top priority.
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LIFE’S WORK Angelia Bostick (left), executive director of Heart of Texas Good Samaritan Ministry for the past 15 years, helps prepare a shopping cart of free groceries for a local Brownwood, Texas, family in need. The ministry distributes food to some 650 area families each month. (NAMB photo by Mark Dumas)
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Pastor: Helping the hungry also helps the congregation
By Mark Kelly
Baptist Press
Hendersonville, Tenn. (BP)—If a church’s giving is down, conflict is up and baptisms are nonexistent—and the pastor has tried everything he can think of to remedy the problem—Steve Nelson has a suggestion.
Minister to the poor.
“We have been praying for revival for years and yet not seen it. A lot of churches are in conflict. I believe one of the stumbling blocks is that we have become more callous toward people in need,” said Nelson, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tenn., and former director of hunger concerns for the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
Too often, ministry to the poor is nothing more than a footnote in a church’s ministry plan. But other than salvation itself, no issue is addressed more often in Scripture than ministry to the poor, Nelson pointed out.
“The Bible is very clear that ‘whoever shuts his ears to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be heard,’” he noted. “What I have seen is that churches are happier and stronger when they get more involved in ministry to the poor, whether it be direct physical aid, ministry to the homeless or financial gifts.
“I believe ministry to the poor is dear to God’s heart.”
Nelson recalled a conversation several years ago with Philip Lane, who then was pastor of West Main Baptist Church in Alexandria, Tenn. A child in the congregation had become burdened for hungry children because of a television commercial she had seen. Her passion spread to other children and then to the adults. Over the next year, the congregation raised more than $20,000 for world hunger, Nelson said.
“I asked (Lane), ‘How are your other offerings?’ and he said, ‘They are all up and budget giving over the next five months was up over 50 percent,’” Nelson recalled. “And he said, ‘The strangest thing is that there’s no conflict anymore. When something comes up, it’s like smoke. It just blows away.’
“He asked if I could explain that and I said, ‘Yes, Proverbs 14:21 says, ‘He who has mercy on the poor, happy is he.’ You got some happy Christians on your hands.’”
Starting a ministry to the poor does not have to be a major undertaking, Nelson insisted.
“Churches need to start where they are. If they haven’t been very involved, they need to start in a non-threatening way,” he explained. “I wouldn’t try to take a church that has been doing nothing and immediately launch a homeless shelter or some major thrust.”
Nelson said a congregation could start with the simple biblical practice of gleaning.
“Leviticus 19:9-10 tells us not to go over the fields a second time but to leave something for the poor and the alien among us. We certainly can relate to that in our day in America,” Nelson noted. “Most of us, however, aren’t farmers. So how can we practice gleaning?” He explained that gleaning, as opposed to tithes and offerings, “is a systematic practice of making a portion of our excess available to people in need.”
“This can be done by collecting spare change on a regular basis or writing small checks ... to the World Hunger Fund or the church benevolence fund,” he pointed out. “Small gifts, systematically given—just our gleanings—can make a huge difference. If every Southern Baptist gave $1 a month, hunger funds would multiply many times. We’re averaging well under 50 cents a year per Southern Baptist right now. That certainly hinders the progress of programs and I think it grieves God’s heart.”
Ministering to people’s physical needs—whether done directly by the congregation or indirectly through monetary gifts—creates openness to the message of salvation in Jesus Christ, Nelson added.
“Gleaning is a demonstration of God’s caring for all people,” he said. “It piques curiosity about who would do this for us and why, and therefore opens hearts to the Bread of Life, and not just bread for their bodies.”
Ministry to the poor gives hope where there is no hope, Nelson said.
“When someone is desperate, when they are hungry and don’t have the resources to provide their next meal, they are without hope,” he emphasized. “Ministering to them gives them hope.
“A ministry of presence is powerful,” he added. “No matter how meager what you are doing for them is, the fact that you are there and that you care opens doors.”
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