Grace Church Medford Hosts Lenten Food for Thought Campaign

In the fall Grace Church Medford’s Priest-in-charge, Noah, and the Junior Warden, Linda, approached me and asked if I would use the tools I’ve learned through the Hope in Action community organizing training to organize a church-wide campaign on hunger issues. I immediately began the groundwork. I started having 1:1s with parishioners, looking for people to help me organize this campaign as well as for the resources that we have in our church and in the community. Working with a team of leaders, we started reaching out to local food pantries and soup kitchens, asking them about their ministries and what kind of help they would need from our church. We then reached out to local agencies who work with the hungry and food insecure to find ways to partner with them. By January, the “Food for Thought” campaign was just about organized.

The purpose of the Food For Thought Campaign is to unite the Grace Church community in a fight against the injustices of hunger. The goal is to help eradicate hunger in our local community by giving generously of our time and resources. We will continue to share the compassion of God through our service to others.

On Sunday February 21st we kicked off the campaign with a luncheon and panel discussion after our 10am service. The panel included volunteers from three local food pantries and soup kitchens, St. Luke’s, St Francis, and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Medford. After the discussion, we asked everyone to make a commitment to participate in this campaign through volunteer work, financial donations, or donations of food.

We began a food drive with the goal of raising 144 boxes/bags of food, enough to fill the stage in our parish hall full of food. Families were asked to fill a box or bag each and bring them in. Volunteers would later help bring the food to different food pantries. Other volunteers would help serve food in those food pantries and soup kitchens.

On Wednesday evenings we began a Hunger Justice series. Our first and third speakers were from Project Bread. They spoke to us about what food insecurity and hunger looks like in Massachusetts and the different programs available to help alleviate and eventually end hunger. Our second speaker was from Episcopal City Mission. He spoke to us about the difference between charity work and justice work in addressingpoverty. His presentationalso helped us to start to think of what we can do as a church to address hunger and food insecurity on a systemic level. And This week we will have speakers from The Food Project and Gaining Ground who will speak with us about community supported agriculture.

The youth have learned about hunger issues during Sunday school and gone on tours of local food pantries as well as had the opportunity to volunteer at a soup kitchen. A group went to Over Look Farm  and learned about hunger in other countries. And a group of our teenagers will be going on a mission trip to New York City to work at food pantries and soup kitchens with the Youth Service Opportunity Project.

The campaign (which ends on Easter Sunday) has been a great success so far. As a church we have learned so much about hunger and are finding more and more ways in which we can get involved to eventually end hunger in our community. For more information about what Grace Church is doing, please check out our blog.