Church sets sights on feeding families
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on September 12, 2014 1:46 PM
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Want to help and enjoy a Friday night concert at the same time? This evening, the church is hosting a musical concert/worship service at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free with the donation of a canned food item.
Amazing things can happen with just a quarter.
The economy didn't prove to be a barrier when Duane Banks, outreach pastor at The Lord's Table church, embarked on an effort to feed Wayne County's hungry.
The Wayne County United Hunger Project began earlier in the year, after church member Elizabeth Murphy made Banks aware of Feeding Children Everywhere, a national social charity whose mission is to mobilize people to assemble healthy meals for hungry children.
"We did a little research and she went to Raleigh and participated in a Feeding Children Everywhere event. They call it a boxing event," he said. "We decided to just embark on this to see what would happen."
The premise is to get volunteers to hand-pack healthy meals to be distributed across the country. But Banks had a more localized focus in mind.
"All the food that we package will stay in Wayne County," he said. "It won't go anywhere else. That's the whole deal behind doing it. My biggest thing was, when we do this, can we keep it here?"
For just 25 cents to produce each casserole-style meal, recipients can enjoy a combination of lentils, white rice, vegetables and pink Himalayan salt, said to be the most nutritious salt to use, Banks said.
The initial goal, and the reason for the project name, was to unite businesses, churches and organizations to join the effort to fight hunger in Wayne County, he said.
When that didn't come to fruition, the Lord's Table congregation was challenged to save quarters, with goal of generating enough to produce 50,000 meals. That would have meant raising $13,050.
Donations are still coming in, but at this point they have enough to package 18,000 meals.
"We raised about $4,500, with just people saving their quarters," he said. "All of that goes toward the meals.
"The church is picking up administrative costs. We supply the manpower and the venue."
The assembly-line effort will take place over a two-hour period on Saturday morning at the church. Banks said he has about 100 volunteers signed up to staff the event, with a truck from Florida-based Feeding Children Everywhere set to arrive early that morning with provisions.
"They leave Friday with everything that we'll need to package and all we do is show up," he said.
The packaged meals will go to "anybody that needs them," Banks said, but a large number will likely support programs like the Soup Kitchen and Fordham House.
"Anything we can do to help with the community in feeding, we're on board with doing," Banks said. "The Soup Kitchen, we support in various ways. They do about 4,000 meals a month. We could give them 4,000 meals."
Ultimately, it's all about serving others, the outreach pastor said.
"Everything we do in outreach comes from Matthew 25. We run everything we do through Matthew 25:34 -- 'I was hungry and you gave me something to eat,'" he said.
Additional donations are also being collected at the church for other distributions. Suggested items include bottled water, canned chicken or tuna, canned fruit and vegetables, granola bars, baby food and formula, powdered milk and dry cereals and peanut butter.