Photos: Christ’s Community Church members assemble KidPacks for a local elementary school.
bags of non-perishable food once a month for each child in the school. The Board of Elders felt strongly that God was calling Christ’s Community to be part of this ministry. It fit perfectly with our mission to “glorify God as we love and serve others.” It offered opportunities to live out each of five core values. It matched our gifts and met a real need in the community. We had many people in the congregation who were passionate about feeding kids in our community and were willing to volunteer their time to make sure KidPack ran well. Why wouldn’t we be part of this program? The simple answer: money. The food for the program costs approximately $6,000 per year and we would need to commit for three years. Where could we possibly come up with $18,000? As a congregation, we made a commitment to meeting our budget in full in 2014 and we knew we could not find any of that money in the operating budget. We also knew that even though our congregation was generous, $6,000 is a substantial amount of money for a congregation with 65 people in worship on a Sunday. We did have some plans to apply for grants and look for community partners, but we had to make the commitment to Park Brook and KidPack before those monies were secured. The Joint Boards went around and around with this for quite a while. Finally, God made clear for us what we needed to do. We were asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, “Can we afford this?” we needed to ask the (continued on next page) The Rev. Jenny Moran is pastor of Christ’s Community Church in Maple Grove, Minn. March 2015
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