Food for the Community

Since its founding in 2010 Destination Church has found it easy to share the gospel around food.  This approach to gospel witness has informed how we approach our diaconal work as a community.  Seeing the increase in food insecurity in St. Thomas has prompted us to take several actions.  

School Lunch program - we took over this lunch program from another organization in 2019 and were making 75 school lunches per day.  In 2024, we’ve been preparing 110 lunches per day, distributed to six different schools in St Thomas.  The entire program is donation based and served by volunteer time.  

Stone Soup is a community meal offered on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of the month.  It is free to anyone who wants to attend and we serve about 40 people each time it is offered.  The original concept was based on the children's story book called Stone Soup, where villagers provided an ingredient to make a big pot of soup for everyone in the village.  Our Stone Soup has transitioned away from the original story, but it is still a community meal.  This event addresses not only food needs but the pandemic of loneliness within our community. 

Good Food Boxes is our monthly grocery program and is distributed on the 3rd Monday of the month.  Participants register and pay $20 for a food box.  Through a pooled and bulk grocery shop, each person receives a box of $55-$60 worth of groceries.  Good Food Boxes focuses on vegetables and dairy products to offer variety to some meal options. 

Moore Street Garden is a community garden which grows and shares vegetables and herbs with others.  The City of St Thomas wanted to create a garden in some vacant land near the parking lot behind our building and asked if the church would be its caretakers and operators.  Through raised garden beds, we grow lettuce, peppers, onions, tomatoes, beans, carrots and various herbs.  We view the garden as a great outreach opportunity as 90% of the volunteers in the garden are from outside of the church. There are also educational and therapeutic components to the garden.  Many people don't know how easy it is to grow vegetables or the benefits of working/playing in the dirt.  There is more potential for the garden to expand.  

These projects are a community effort and it’s by coming together that we’re able to provide these important services in our community.  We pour so much energy into these programs because we believe our Christian faith needs to be relational. Our primary relationship being with God and our relationships with each other being our second highest priority. Through those relationships we can share the gospel of Jesus and add value to people's lives.  

The church is more than what happens on a Sunday morning. 

I’m motivated by many biblical passages that focus on relationships sharing and building each other up.  Our sharing of food brings me close to the experiences of the early church in Acts 2:42-47.  “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. … They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.”

The church is more than what happens on a Sunday morning.  It is so much more than listening to a 30 min sermon. The church family is about being transfixed by the story of Jesus and doing whatever it takes to share it with others.  It's about empowering the poor, strengthening the weak, embracing the outcast and seeking the lost.  As the Destination church family, we serve together, play together, worship together and live life together.  And our prayer is that God will change the city of St Thomas because He sent us out.  

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash