Church program does much more than feed the hungry

GRANDVIEW -- Outside the door of Immanuel Lutheran Church every Tuesday hangs a white sign colored with red and blue markers that simply reads: "Soup Kitchen."

But step inside. There's much more than soup on those folding tables.

Laughter harmonizes with the clinking of silverware. The aroma of chili and clam chowder drifts over stories of divorce and illness. Children bounce back and forth between the dessert table and the air hockey table.

What started as a simple attempt to feed the hungry has turned into a reconstruction of community, where people belly up to satisfy social appetites even more than physical ones.

"It's not just a matter of being hungry, it's a matter of being lonely," said Janet Jones, a longtime member who lets no one in the fellowship hall eat alone.

Inspired by a Bible study, the members of Immanuel Lutheran, a church with a regular attendance of about 50, launched the soup kitchen in October last year as an attempt to reach out to the homeless.

Almost nobody came.

Just as the Rev. Gary Rohde considered closing it down, church members invited their friends, thinking the down-and-out would more likely come to a place that looked busy.

"People are hungry, we've got soup. It seems like an easy connection," Rohde said. "You find out it's not so easy."

Jones reeled in a few of her buddies from the Grandview senior center. Children from a nearby apartment building started visiting. Some eat soup, others just play pingpong. They, in turn, told some of their friends.

Organizers say a few men who told them they were living in their car came for soup one week, but mostly the Tuesday night meals have attracted people from the Lower Valley who just like the company.

No one talks about closing the kitchen now. In fact, the church rescheduled its Wednesday night Lenten services to Tuesday to match the soup schedule.

Church outreach experts say Immanuel Lutheran should not be surprised. It's common for congregations to aim at one social need but end up accomplishing something completely different. Think of it as trying to visit a prisoner only to end up helping the jailer instead.

"Churches go out to address one need and they touch a complex web of a world of hurt," said Reggie McNeal, a Dallas religious outreach consultant and author of "Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church."

McNeal advises churches throughout the United States and Canada to develop outward-focused -- or "missional" -- attitudes. He usually recommends that congregations start by volunteering in schools because that's where a city's needs will show up.

For example, members of an inner city church in Princeton, N.J., three years ago took McNeal's advice and began tutoring. They wound up distributing more than 1,000 pairs of sneakers to children they noticed had holes in their shoes. Members of a Titus County, Texas, church did the same and created a program that sends home three tons of food per week in backpacks to ensure children get fed on weekends.

The unexpected is bound to happen when a church truly adopts a community, McNeal said.

"For years, churches have been trying to get the community to adopt them," he said.

Many of the Yakima Valley's most visible charities have serendipitous infancies.

Sunrise Outreach, a Vineyard Church ministry that operates four winter homeless shelters in Yakima, started largely by accident, said Dave Hanson, executive director.

In 2005, the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard church was operating a clothing and food bank. An occasional attendee of the church who had previously been homeless walked into Hanson's office to ask about opening up the church as a homeless shelter.

"I dismissed the idea for all the obvious constraints" of insurance, lack of volunteers and safety, Hanson said.

Two days later, Hanson's conscience bothered him so he called the man back. Hanson started attending meetings of the Homeless Network of Yakima County, a group he didn't know existed.

Within six weeks, the Vineyard and First Baptist Church both opened overnight shelters, and Hanson spent the next four years researching similar facilities across the U.S. and in Ontario, Canada.

Today, Sunrise, other churches, business and state agencies within the Homeless Network oversee four shelters, place women in transitional apartments, distribute sack lunches to the homeless and give away appliances and furniture.

La Casa Hogar is another example.

In 1988, 30 churches teamed up to form the Yakima Interfaith Coalition, pooling resources to give out emergency assistance vouchers to help people pay for utility bills and medicine. It wasn't until 1995 that the group began offering support services to immigrant women under the banner of La Casa Hogar at the request of a community activist.

Today, La Casa Hogar teaches English, computer and driving classes out of a two-story house, helping 602 women in 2009. Meanwhile, the Interfaith Coalition distributed $108,000 in vouchers last year to nearly 2,700 people from an office across Sixth Street from La Casa.

"Our (Interfaith Coalition's) mission has really not changed over the years, it has just expanded," said Carole Folsom-Hill, executive director of the coalition, which La Casa is part of.

The St. Juan Diego Parish in Cowiche has evolved over the decades, too, said the Rev. Robert Siler, chancellor for the Catholic Diocese of Yakima.

The diocese turned an old school building into a seminary in 1962 while a congregation met in a tiny chapel on campus. Since then, the grounds have served as a retreat center and a youth ministry.

Five years ago, diocese leaders remodeled the old gymnasium to make room for the 300 or more weekly churchgoers, renaming the parish St. Juan Diego. But while the congregation has grown, church finances have been depleted by the recession, forcing the diocese to scale back on programs. The retreat center closed last year, and the youth group, now independent, rents space at the Cowiche facility.

"That wasn't our intent 40 years ago, but we just had to be open to the reality of what our missions are and how that changes over time," Siler said.

He described the phenomenon by quoting a well-worn quip in church circles: "If you want God to laugh, just tell him your plans."

In Grandview, volunteers at Immanuel Lutheran rotate soup-making duties each week, while everybody pitches in to wipe down tables and gather silverware. Some ladle from behind the kitchen counter, while others help neighborhood girls make cards out of foam and fabric paint for their teachers.

Jones, the church member who invited many of the regulars, sits with them to hear their stories of divorce or illness. She comes to these gatherings every Tuesday night, keeping conversation flowing at the tables she visits.

"Most of these people that are here, they don't get out," said the retiree.

Many try to offer cash donations, but organizers always refuse.

Jones visits with Mike Downs, a 47-year-old Prosser resident who lives alone, subsisting on Social Security payments because a back injury has left him unemployed. He doesn't have much money, but he certainly doesn't need the free Tuesday dinners either, he said.

"I like the fellowship," he said.

He moved to Prosser in 2006 after several years in Madras, Ore., where he first visited a soup kitchen when money was tight. It took him awhile to work up the nerve to step inside, but after several months, he began using his food stamps to contribute to the meals and volunteered to help in the kitchen.

Downs started attending the Grandview dinners last fall after seeing fliers posted around the Lower Valley.

Jones bumped into him in town while he was taking a few weeks off, and told him the other regulars had been asking about him. That convinced him to come back.

"It's nice that people would think about me," Downs said.

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 509-930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.

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