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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15, 2017
Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church provides nourishing food with an outreach flavor EDITOR
The lunch program offered every Wednesday at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in rural Elizabeth (actually Schapville) is anything but normal in its community outreach effort. “We are giving soup and sandwich to anyone who wants to come and share their time with us,” said Shepherd of the Hills Outreach Evangelism Committee Director Jim Cox. “It is free and we are offering friendship and fellowship and a time to get together.” Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church began the luncheon project in early February. “We usually have 30 to 35 people come and with the Sonshine Center Outreach just down the street, the workers there come and we are seeing a number of their customers and donors come in as well,” Cox said. “We get people from Galena and from its nursing home and we are excited about the ministry because we are reaching out to the community. We are here for those who are alone and want to talk to somebody or just want to come by for lunch and say hi.” He said volunteers are the lifeblood of the project. “Our Men’s’ Bible Study group hosts the lunch two times a month and other groups fill in for the other weeks,” said Cox. “We open the doors from 10 a.m. until around 2 p.m. and lunch is served from 11 till 1. We couldn’t do this without our volunteers.” Former Church Council member Ray Isreal said the project’s fellowship extends beyond lunch to playing cards and board games and more. “The whole idea is just to get people to meet each other and sit and visit and it’s working well,” Isreal said. “We’ve got one fellow who is well into his 90s, but still loves to make chocolate chip cookies and everybody loves him.”
“These lunches are kind of an offshoot of what we’ve been doing here at the church for the last seven or eight years,” said Shepherd of the Hills member Bob Stark. “Every year we had a Men’s’ Steak Fry that the men hosted to raise money for area food banks, that changed last year.” He said they changed things up a bit when they decided rather than having the men do the steak fry they opened it up to the whole congregation and added a silent auction, a bake sale, and live entertainment. “I think that event really highlighted what the Holy Spirit can do when you pull people together and once that event was over we began asking what we could do further in the community,” said Stark. “The Lutheran Church has a saying, “God’s work. Our hands” and we were led to go out into the community and see where God is already at work.” They quickly saw God’s hand in the work of the Sonshine Center Outreach. “When we went out and took a look around we saw God is really at work at the Sonshine Center and has been for a long time,” he said. “So we began wondering what we could do in conjunction with the Sonshine Center. They have between 70 and 75 people come through there on Wednesdays, the one day a week they are open, so we thought to open our church and do a free lunch for folks. We are finding we are not only drawing folks from the Sonshine Center, but we are also seeing others from the area who see us as a place to come in once a week, sit down and enjoy the company of other folks.” He said the project is fitting their vision of community outreach in the sense that many of the folks coming by lunch have nothing to do with Shepherd of the Hills Church except that they see the lunches as an opportunity for fellowship. “That’s exactly the reason we wanted to do it, so it’s been a good effort, people come in the doors all the time
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By Tony Carton
TONY CARTON PHOTO The Scoop Today
The Addie family joined with the folks from Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church Scales Mound to enjoy the free soup and sandwich community lunch served at the church every Wednesday.
and spreading the lunch out between 11 and 1 p.m. works well,” Stark said. “In addition, all the groups here at the church are working together to make the lunches better. The Men’s Group, the Women’s Bible Study and everybody is chipping in and we’re all taking a Wednesday to make soups and sandwiches and with all that help, nobody gets burnt out. Everybody gets
an opportunity to serve.” Emery Addie came by last Wednesday with her mom and five brothers and sisters. She said they home school, so they were out and about in the middle of the day. She said she enjoys community outreach programs and she looks forward to other similar projects. “It’s an opportunity to sit down
with my family and have lunch,” Emery said. “Sometimes we meet other people too and they talk to us and tell us stories. The food is good and this is fun.” The Addie family also visits a nearby older couple and takes them lunch once a week.
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