By Abbey Rodriguez | FaVS News Reporter
St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in North Spokane is providing 40 families with complete holiday meals for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
This opportunity is a part of the church’s Love Thy Neighbor Ministry, which their website defines as “a group of individuals who are committed to community outreach and especially as it pertains to service beyond the walls of our church.”
Stefanie Reinke serves as the Love Thy Neighbor Coordinator at St. Luke’s and oversees community partnerships and volunteer involvement within the church, which includes programs including Thanksgiving and Christmas Baskets, partnerships with the Second Harvest’s Bite2go program and the Mead Food Bank.
The Love Thy Neighbor Ministry, formerly called the “social ministry,” has been packing Thanksgiving meals for families for at least 15 years, which “truly brings our faith to life,” Reinke explained.
The church partners with social workers at neighboring elementary schools to identify families who could use extra help around the holiday season. These same families will receive both Thanksgiving and Christmas meals along with Christmas gifts for the kids.
The packing process
The first step of putting these baskets together is collecting donations. Church members sign-up to donate ingredients or contribute financially. Due to the large quantity needed, turkeys are specially ordered from a supplier.
Volunteers then come to the church to help sort and pack ingredients into boxes that were delivered by another set of volunteers earlier this week.
However, providing for this many families requires a lot of volunteers, Reinke said.
Reinke emphasized that by providing ingredients as opposed to a ready-made Thanksgiving meal preserves “the tradition of cooking the meal together as a family.”
Congregational strengths
Each church member has different gifts, strengths and abilities, so one part of Reinke’s job is matching volunteers with aligning opportunities.
Diane Blodnick, long-time member of St. Luke’s, has volunteered with the Love Thy Neighbor program and its predecessors for 30 years.
Her job is to call the families to find out if they would like to participate in the program and what their needs might be. Blodnick furthered that she and her husband live in Arizona part of the year and this job allows her to volunteer remotely.
Blodnick also serves as the contact person for drivers on delivery days.
She says people call her if there is a problem like, “I can’t find the address, or, you know, I’m lost, or they’re not home, or whatever, if they can call, and then I can be that troubleshooter so I can do that from far away.”
Continual relationships
Reinke furthered that St. Luke’s also provides for students who need extra support for the summer and other times of the year.
“It’s not just at Thanksgiving and Christmas that we’re reaching out to them so they know they can rely on us and trust,” Reinke said, adding the students also know St. Luke’s has been dependable and followed through and cared for kids in need.
Blodnick said when she first started volunteering, St. Luke’s provided for 15-20 families each year. Now, as the church has grown and community needs have expanded, St. Luke’s has been able to take on more families.
The Love Thy Neighbor Program is focused on building and maintaining relationships with those in need around them.
“Nothing goes into the Thanksgiving or Christmas baskets in any way that have our name on it,” Reinke furthered. “That’s not why we’re doing this.”
“We’re doing it to truly meet the need that’s out there, and not to, in any way, invite people or try to get you know families to come to our church through this program. This is simply meeting the need that we’re called to.”
Reinke concluded by saying that, “We’re called to serve like Jesus, and through this program, we aren’t just meeting material needs. We’re building relationships in the community, showing compassion and creating a tangible expression of how God’s grace is in our community every day.”
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