Feeding Sheffield

Feeding Sheffield

The Rev. Erik Karas, Christ Trinity Church, Sheffield

When the pandemic hit, schools closed, businesses laid off employees, the economy crashed, and we knew there were neighbors in need as a result. We also knew that Christ Trinity had not budgeted for a pandemic. We quickly figured out that none of our usual ways, like church suppers,could help since we couldn’t even gather safely in a kitchen to make meals for delivery.

As we heard of the growing needs in our community voiced by people in the schools, healthcare, elder services, and other non-profit partners, we also heard the voices of people inside and outside of our church desperate to find a way to help their neighbors in this horrible time.

In what was a very short amount of time, those disconnected puzzle pieces miraculously came together to form a crazy plan: Let’s ask our neighbors in the community to join us in sponsoring meals for school families in need, and let's partner with a local restaurant called The Marketplace and with the school’s food service department for safe production and delivery of those meals.

The school told us they had 65 families that could use a Friday meal. We relayed that to the community and immediately all 65 were sponsored for the first full week of the program. We asked the community to do it again, and they did it again. And again and again and again! Berkshire United Way heard what we were doing and asked us to apply for a grant to ensure those meals would keep being delivered for 10 full weeks. We received $15,000 to keep the program going with the understanding that if we had enough community sponsors for school meals, we could use grant money to expand our reach and buy meals for seniors, prepared by John Andrews Restaurant. We always had enough community sponsors!

In the meantime, other individuals from both next door and from literally around the world heard what we were doing and sent in financial contributions. This money raised would be all we had to fund the project after the grant money ran out. When the grant ran out, we looked at the fund and to our amazement we had $17,000 in the bank. More than we had when we first received the grant! We were ready to fund another ten weeks.

Now we have ended that second ten weeks. In these twenty weeks, our community has called into The Marketplace to sponsor 1,195 school meals, (a gift of over $32,000) each of which contained four servings of delicious and nutritious food. In addition to those incredible sponsorships, we’ve used over $27,000 in grant money and contributions over the last twenty weeks.

Together we have delivered an incredible 8,350 servings of food to school families and seniors struggling with food insecurity and isolation caused by this pandemic.

We fully expected that at this point we would be completely out of money, but the Holy Spirit seems to have had something else in mind. Over Labor Day weekend, with the help of new musical friends, we produced a socially distanced fundraising concert. For our musicians, this was the first paying job they had since March. After we had paid all our expenses and counted the generous sponsorships, contributions, and box office receipts, our little concert had raised $8,919.55!

As we went to deposit that unbelievable amount into our Feeding Sheffield Fund (which should have been completely drained at that point), we found that there was still over $9,000 remaining in that fund! Even when we weren’t looking, our neighbors had continued to be generous, constantly sending in contributions all along.

After starting with no idea how to help and without a single dime, this amazing community has pulled together to deliver 8,350 meals to our neighbors, and because of their generosity we still have over $18,000 in the bank, ready to tackle whatever comes next.

We are all well-aware that this pandemic is far from over. We know the need in our community continues. But with your amazing generosity, faithfulness, trust, and a somewhat crazy willingness to go where the Holy Spirit blows, I know we will quickly find, and just as quickly meet, whatever challenge comes next. Together we will love our neighbors all the way to the other side of this pandemic and beyond. ♦

- written September 2020