Ministry Spotlight - Meals Ministry
This week we connected with Lois Miles who coordinates our Meals Ministry at Hope Church. Read below to learn more about this ministry and get more info about how you can be involved!
1. Can you tell us a little bit about this ministry -- what do you do?
Our team of volunteers provide meals for those in our church body who have a special need. We use the program ‘Take Them A Meal’ (www.takethemameal.com) to organize a list of dates for the meals and important information like allergies, etc.
The church office administrator creates the meal request once they have the needed information from the recipient (food allergies, likes/dislikes, how long they need the meals, etc.) The program will provide a link which is emailed to the meals team. The team can access the form on the website to enter the date they want to provide a meal. Team members can see what others plan to provide so the family is not getting spaghetti 3 nights in a row. We typically provide 3 meals a week for a couple of weeks, but it can be longer if the need arises.
2. How long have you been involved and why are you passionate about it?
I have been the coordinator of the meals ministry since March of 2018 when I began my admin job at the church office. I love this ministry because it is such a simple, yet important tool to show the love of Christ to our Hope church family when they need it most. I recently was in the hospital with Covid-19 and had church family members volunteer to bring us meals. At first, I really did not want to be on the receiving end, but it really did mean a lot to have someone personally come to our home and express their love via this ministry.
3. Who is helped by your ministry?
The meals are provided for our church family when they have an illness, surgery, birth of a baby, death/funeral or another situation deemed necessary by the pastoral staff. We probably need to raise awareness about this ministry because we have new people in the church who may have a need but are not aware that this ministry exists.
4. How could the ladies at our church partner with this ministry?
To be involved with this ministry, you need to let the church office know and we will add you to the distribution list to receive the email when we have a new request. A person might hesitate to participate because they do not enjoy cooking, but many times, I have placed a pickup order at a restaurant (like Bob Evans) and delivered that to the family.
We really need more people to be a part of the team as it is often hard to get the lists filled and we need to send a second email request. Due to Covid-19, we have had to be creative over the past year with ‘contactless’ deliveries to protect recipients from exposure. But hopefully, we are turning a corner with this and will be able to deliver the meals and have personal contact with the recipient.
This is a perfect opportunity to be the hands of Jesus to our church family. Please pray about joining our team.
If you have any questions or want to get involved, please feel free to call the church office at 330-273-5651 or email Lois at lois.miles@hopebrunswick.org.
