United Methodist churches have stepped up efforts to feed and advocate for the poor, while the U.S. struggles to emerge from the recession.
By Bill Fentum Staff Writer
United Methodists in Ardmore, Okla., handed out 45,000 pounds of free, donated potatoes to low-income families in a single day last November, giving them a little extra food for Thanksgiving dinner.
The “potato drop”—organized through one of the denomination’s hunger-relief partners, the Society of St. Andrew—sounds like a big job. But First United Methodist Church mission leader Terry Myer can’t wait to do it again.
“The words of thanks, the smiles on people’s faces made it easy work,” he said. “But we’ll try to have twice as many potatoes next time. The need is so great.”
Department of Agriculture statistics show the number of U.S. households lacking enough food “for an active, healthy life” is at its highest level in at least 15 years. Churches strive to fill the gap with food pantries and events like the one in Ardmore.
Members do even more at Wright’s Chapel UMC in central Virginia. Several times a year they harvest excess crops with the consent of local farmers, then deliver the truckloads of vegetables to housing projects and food banks.
“All ages get involved,” said the Rev. Charles Tillapaugh, pastor of the rural church. “When someone can’t be in the fields they’re sorting the bags we bring in, to keep track of the counts.”
“It’s shocking,” he added, “to see what would otherwise go to waste.” For instance, farms usually harvest only the large top ear on a stalk of corn; smaller bottom ears “probably wouldn’t meet grocery store specifications but are still perfectly fine,” Mr. Tillapaugh said.
When he came to Wright’s Chapel in 1992, it was a dying congregation of only two dozen people. Now more than 300 worship on Sundays, including a youth group that spends a week each summer gleaning crops. The church also makes applesauce for Hope House, a center for homeless women and children in Fredericksburg, Va.
“It mobilizes people, gives them a real sense of purpose,” said Mr. Tillapaugh. “That’s a huge part of why I think we’ve seen growth.”
Close to home
Utu Langi, a member of First UMC in Honolulu, Hawaii, responded to hunger in 1996, raising $1,300 from the congregation to send food to Sudan through the denomination’s Committee on Relief. Then he found others in need.
“Leaving work late on a cold December night,” he said, “I saw a man trying to sleep on a bench, with his knees up to his chin. He had no cover.”
At first Mr. Langi drove on. But he soon returned, pulling a blanket from his truck and draping it over the man. “He didn’t say anything, but the way he looked at me was all I needed to see,” Mr. Langi recalled. “That interaction changed my life.”
That Christmas he led an effort to distribute blankets and food in the downtown neighborhood around First UMC. Later he quit his job as a carpenter to manage a state shelter, and started H-5 (Hawaii Helping the Hungry Have Hope), a free meal program run out of the church kitchen.
Volunteers for H-5 cook and serve 5,000 meals a month at the church. They also deliver food in a donated van to homeless communities in Waikiki Beach and Ala Moana Park.
Hawaii’s tourism industry was hit hard in 2009, losing $1.3 billion in revenue. “That’s how a lot of our clients lost their jobs. The cost of living here was already high, and the downturn made everything worse,” said the Rev. Amy Wake, associate pastor at First UMC.
The Honolulu congregation also speaks up for the poor, as a partner in Bread for the World, a Washington-based advocacy group. Church members take part in Bread’s annual Offering of Letters campaign, writing to Congress in support of bills to fight poverty and world hunger.
“They believe it’s not quite enough to do Band-Aid solutions, to give out food and to help people in the short term,” Ms. Wake said. “Making a difference in legislation has a wider, longer-lasting effect.”
In 2009 the campaign focused on aid to developing nations. This year the letters will urge Congress to increase federal tax credits for low-income families in the U.S.
Reforms to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in the 1990s lifted many single mothers out of welfare by making low-wage jobs more profitable, according to Todd Post, editor of the 2010 Bread for the World Hunger Report.
“But there are still gaps,” he said, “like higher taxes for married couples or caps on benefits that mean families with five kids get no more help than families with two. That hurts a lot of people, especially in the recession.”
Across the U.S., 84 United Methodist congregations support Bread for the World with donations and serve as local anti-hunger advocates. Each summer hundreds of people travel to Washington to spend a day lobbying for the organization on Capitol Hill.
The Rev. Carol Windrum, director of justice ministries in the Nebraska Conference, has enlisted five Bread covenant churches in her state. Taking a stand is sometimes a challenge even for activists, she said.
She points to a Peace With Justice conference she attended in the late 1990s, when California strawberry pickers had threatened to strike for improved wages and working conditions. One woman at the conference, while “very in-tune with trying to make the world a better place, still said ‘I hope [the workers] don’t do that, because I love strawberries.’
“That just kind of said it all,” Ms. Windrum said. “She wanted justice, but she also wanted inexpensive strawberries. . . . There’s a host of reasons why we in the church shy away from changing the systems. One is because they usually benefit us.”
Ms. Windrum believes government services aimed at reducing hunger should be lifted up in congregations, including food stamps and Head Start with its free breakfasts and lunches for low-income schoolchildren. “And certainly we should feel good about the feeding ministries in our churches,” she said. “But don’t forget to ask why it’s necessary, and what can we do to get at the root causes.”
Hunger & Happiness
“God intends food to be for our delight, but also giving to others,” said Shannon Jung, a professor at Saint Paul School of Theology and author of Hunger & Happiness: Feeding the Hungry, Nourishing Our Souls (Augsburg, 2009).
That message is clear in the Gospel story of feeding the 5,000, and especially in Christ’s assurance that when his followers give food “to the least of these,” they are giving it to him. But in economic hard times, Dr. Jung notes, our sense of abundance and compassion can disappear. “The question is whether we should hoard or give,” he said. “We may feel that there is a scarcity and everybody should look after themselves. . . . But social-scientific literature tells us that being stingy tends to produce a cycle of suspicion, of unhappiness. Not devastating unhappiness, but a state of spiritual malaise.”
In the book he criticizes federal policies that mostly subsidize corporate farmers, while others must drop their prices to compete or go out of business entirely. The system keeps food more affordable for consumers, Dr. Jung concludes—but at great cost to small growers and farm workers.
“To feel guilt is wrong,” he said, “because it immobilizes us and doesn’t imply that we can do something about it immediately and directly. [However] I do think that we are weakly complicit . . . and spiritually impoverished when we benefit from someone else’s hurt.”
Like Ms. Windrum, his solution is to join advocacy efforts and buy fair-trade products whenever possible. He also supports small businesses around the world through Kiva.org, a Web site where he makes loans to entrepreneurs and then reinvests the money as soon as it is paid back.
And there is no better way to keep focused on the cause, he emphasized, than continuing to serve at local soup kitchens, glean crops and stock food pantries.
“How many times do you hear the phrase, ‘I received so much more than I gave?’” Dr. Jung said. “It’s really empowering. God wants us to enjoy our lives, and food is evidence of this. But true joy happens when we share.”
© 2010 DESIGN PICS PHOTO
Close to home 
Reforms to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in the 1990s lifted many single mothers out of welfare by making low-wage jobs more profitable, according to Todd Post, editor of the 2010 Bread for the World Hunger Report. 
