Saint Michael is Teaming Up Against Hunger by the Rev. Robin Hinkle, Associate for Mission & Outreach
This season I want to share with you the work of some of our Saint Michael ministry partners as they help people in financial crisis. As we saw at the beginning of the pandemic, our food banks are front line workers as they respond to the economic crises of our neighbors. During the pandemic, I was serving at my former parish of St. Mary’s in Jasper, Alabama. It is situated in a small community in a county of approximately 64,000 people, and we ended up hosting one of the largest food banks in the state at the onset of the pandemic. When the world shut down without notice, including our schools and businesses, so many people, from the waitresses at Waffle House to the assistant teachers and nonessential hourly workers, suddenly found themselves at home with no paycheck. Their rent and mortgages and utilities continued to click along, not to mention the immediate need for food. Through that experience we learned so much about the fragility of the economic circumstances of too many of our neighbors. Hard-working double income families were holding multiple jobs to make ends meet and depending upon schools for lunch programs and childcare.
Food banks are an essential part of our system of aid. They have stepped into the void of emergency aid where our government has stepped out. They are the place for true emergency assistance—food for today/this week, as well as help with rent and utilities. Some people seem to believe that many people who are utilizing food banks are scamming the system and do not want to work. The data disprove this assumption. At our food bank in Alabama, we collected data on every family we served (over 14,000 per year during non-Covid times). We tracked every bag we sent out as well as all of the other aid we provided, including rent and utility assistance, and other emergency aid. We found consistently year over year:
These clients were usually experiencing a true emergency such as all the hourly workers in a family suffering illness; a re that demolished their home; loss of a job. Once the immediate crisis was resolved, we never saw them again.
These clients had longer economic crises including hospitalizations, extended time out of work, escape from a domestic abuse situation, or re-entry from prison.
These clients were typically on a fixed income receiving $1,200 to $1,400 per month who came to the food bank once a month to get groceries as part of their strategy to make their very limited ends meet their needs.
I share this data with you because I want you to know that food banks are so very important as we work in the area of poverty. We are working on systemic changes, helping people to get to lives of financial stability where they can thrive and grow. Food banks are a necessary part of this process, because food insecurity is merely a symptom of a larger issue. Good food banks know this. Good food banks therefore use the request by a family for food as an opportunity for intervention to determine the real issue (loss of job, health crisis, fire, etc.), and then help to resolve the core issue. It is so hard to be in financial crisis. The constant daily stress of not having enough to cover basic needs can be all-consuming. It lays a heavy weight on the families. That is why one-stop agencies such as the ones we support are so wonderful. We do not make our families with too little time, run around all over the city to get through a rough patch. The food banks we work with in Dallas are exceptional. They are good ones that understand and look for the true source of a family’s food insecurity. They then help with rent, utilities, healthcare and so much more. This impactful response is scriptural, elevating families to a place of wholeness.
Did you know that there is an even greater need for food bank assistance today than there was during the pandemic? Low-income families living on the edge of economic security feel the effects of inflation deeply. That is why we are supporting our food bank partners through a renewed effort to help their distributions. We are forming a Saint Michael Food Bank Super Team. This team will commit to serving each food bank partner with one distribution per month serving at one site per week.
We are calling for people to sign up to be a part of the Super Team and hope to have a core crew that can serve at least one time per month. We will be sending five to six people per week to each distribution. We will keep and publish the same schedule each month, with sign-up slots available for Super Team regulars and slots for those of you who can only help on an intermittent schedule. Come serve as often as you like! You do not have to commit to a particular site or day for the long-term. Sign up your family to serve during a break, or sign up with a group of friends on a particular day—then afterward head to share a lunch. With this flexibility, we hope to be able to consistently support these important ministries. Please contact me, [email protected], or Morgan Wood, [email protected], if you have any questions and let us know if you would like to be a part of our go-to Super Team!
If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
–Isaiah 58:9–11
**This article was written by the Rev. Robin Hinkle and was featured in the 2024 Spring Archangel.