If there is anything that churches know how to do well, it is to feed people. We do this well metaphorically, and we do this well literally. Today I want to talk about ways we can use our skill at feeding people to support the resistance.

There are so many opportunities to feed people! Start with some local gathering where your neighbors are talking about how best to support immigrants, or trans people, or democracy--show up at the meeting with food! I suggest that your church be represented by two or three people. Bring easy to eat finger food to meetings: cookies, grapes, a pitcher of water or lemonade. Don't bring too much, bring the simplest of paper goods, and adjust what you bring next time based on whether it gets eaten. Home made is a delight of course. Meetings are better with food; food helps to create connections.

First Congregational Church in Rindge, NH funds dinner for the local Bridging Differences group. A volunteer orders from a black owned business in town; students at the local university are more likely to join the conversation when dinner is provided.

If you are showing up at town meeting or an controversial discussion, your congregation should send a delegation rather than and individual. And bring brownies and/or tangerines. Connect with folk over the snacks before the meeting starts, making it easier to feel like you are talking to friends, not adversaries. My congregation brought granola bars and lemonade to people standing out at election time--we brought them to both sides, introduced ourselves and then went on our way. It was tense, but some of the people we think of as "against" us showed up at our active bystander training later in the year. We provided food for that, too!

A bag of jelly beans, or candy canes, or valentine hearts, and certainly almost always chocolate might be good for when your church delegation visits with an elected official.

If you already have a meal or pantry, add some posters, table cards, or other markers to make it clear it is open to people regardless of their immigration status, and that LGBTQIA+ people are welcome. I heard of a church that had one table reserved at their dinner for discussion about how to stay safe. If you have the capacity consider adding events specifically for a group that is being attacked.

In the early church, the evidence that the Kingdom of God is at hand was the existence of dinner every night, open to all regardless of their status as poor, female, or slave. The image of going from being a beggar to someone who was welcomed into the church family dinner still fills me with awe. It is the simplest of tasks to feed people, and it is the greatest as well.

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Ashburnham, Massachusetts is a rural town, full of lakes, summer camps, families. Main Street features two pizza shops, a hairdresser, sushi, town hall, a bank, a local grocer, a store selling crafts and art, a place for bagels, hardware, liquor. The tavern entrance and barbershop are on Central. The steeple of Ashburnham Community Church is lit at night, a beacon on the edge of our two-block downtown.

​This small congregation has struggled to keep its footing. Those coming to worship are aging but not old, a few children, a tiny choir, the attendance dropping slowly, the income not enough to pay the bills. I started here as pastor right after beloved Pastor Chuck died suddenly. We have much in common—a love of small town life, an informal style, a quick laugh at meetings. We have much work to do, figuring how, and if, we can make it as twenty-first century church.

This church’s ministry is food: a community meal six times a year, delivering dinner to a Fitchburg shelter monthly, and a food pantry where we share food and conversation with 24 local families. My ministry is food. I accepted a part-time call to finish writing Five Loaves, Two Fish, Twelve Volunteers: Growing a Relational Food Ministry (Upper Room Books) and to promote it. We’ve learned to work well together, this church and me, figuring out how to have hard conversations, imagining how to do church differently, getting out into our community, making connections with our town.

Then: pandemic.

Like churches everywhere, our first response to COVID-19 was to clean everything really well, wash our hands, elbow our greetings, and to laugh nervously about staying away. Once it was time to move online our first worship had 8 people, then 10, then most weeks 14; pretty good for 30 people with little or no technological expertise. But church is not meant to be about us; church is who we are in our community. To be a light in the darkness we need to ask “what about our neighbors?”

When the sheep and goats of Matthew 25:31-46 ask the question “when did we see you hungry?” both are surprised to discover that they did, or did not, feed Jesus. With no small amount of discussion, Ashburnham Community Church decided that now is the time we are called to see Jesus in those who are hungry, and to respond with food. This is how we will brighten our neighborhood. With everything else in the building shut down, we decided the food pantry would remain open.

Brenda, our pantry director, called all of the families on our list, making sure they knew that we are open, asking that they keep six-foot distances, come in one at a time, let others know that food is available. It was only a few days later that calls started coming in from people who had been laid off. Brenda packed an emergency bag of groceries for one family; the next day there were two more requests. Then the senior center closed, suspending their weekday lunch. A couple people called to ask if they could donate food, money, or time to the pantry.

In online meetings, in kitchens, over the phone, churches grapple with how to be safe with food ministries. Pastors of street churches report enough programs have closed that people without homes are hungry and afraid. I listen through the phone as a woman explains she was laid off; she starts to cry as she asks for food for her granddaughter. A neighbor calls asking for a way to get food to the man next door, alone. I hear of a meal switching to sandwiches to-go, and a pantry moving their distribution outdoors.

Volunteers are afraid of getting sick, and of infecting others. People in need are also cautious of illness, while more immediately anxious about hunger. The message “do not be afraid” appears 21 times in the New Testament. Brenda, our food pantry director, is not interested in theological analysis. “We just have to figure out how to do this as safely as possible,” she tells me. “That’s what we do at this church, we take care of our neighbors.”

So the pantry is now open three mornings a week. Ashburnham and Ashby residents are welcome without eligibility tests. We’ve moved the distribution table to the front door, right under the steeple. We wear gloves and masks, and set the food bags on the table so people can pick-up without touching another person. People wait their turn in cars, or stand on the front lawn, six feet apart. Many wear masks. Volunteers work alone, stacking cans and bags of rice on cupboard shelves. Another fills bags with non-perishable foods. Another accesses the church voicemail remotely so we don’t miss anyone.

It’s hard to say what will happen to the light from Ashburnham Community Church. We’ve lost income from renters, and we worship online. But we haven’t lost our faith that Jesus is there in the people of our town. For now, we live out the good news that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

You call your ministry “outdoor church” rather than a food service ministry. What is the difference? 

​The term “outdoor church” literally described the church I pastored for years in Worcester, Massachusetts. We didn’t have a building. But more generally it describes the coming together of people you usually find inside a church with people who live outdoors, the homeless and food insecure. In Worcester, on Sundays we “indoor church” people provided a meal, a Bible study, and a worship service outside. We also held other programs outside during the week. In that church, our program developed to where those who need food became the volunteers for the pantry and meals. In the model I describe in the book, people get to know those who need food by serving and eating with them and invite them into leadership of their programs.

​Click here for the rest of my interview on the Collegeville website.