Say what you like about ministry, it’s not dull! There’s always something to celebrate in church life and it usually involves cake…
Last evening we held our usual Cafe and Community event, (where we meet for tea/coffee and aforementioned cake; listen to a speaker and then open the talk up to comments and questions). Our guest this time was Will Mansell, from our local Food Bank. I think I can be forward enough to say that our church and Will are old friends. Quite a few of our folk volunteer at the Foodbank and many more of us contribute to it. So, rather than give us an introductory talk, Will challenged us to consider the wider reasons that Food Banks exist. He spoke about the ‘myths’ that are regularly aired in the media, as well as in pubs and other meeting places. He based his talk on the myths about poverty from last year’s report by the Joint Public Issues team, which in turn took its statistics from Government reports. If you want to read it for yourself, click here. Actually, there’s heaps of good stuff on there to get your teeth into so do go over and have a look.
As well as giving his report, Will was with us to announce that the work is expanding as our church will, from next Monday, be hosting a mobile Foodbank for our town. It seems that each week 2 or 3 families from our Town receive vouchers for the Food Bank. The most efficient way to address this is to have a ‘mini’ bank from which volunteers can collect food and deliver directly to the family. So, we have just installed the lovely big cupboard which will house the food. It was my privilege to be the one who got to ‘dedicate’ it! I know, right? Seriously, it is a privilege and I was delighted to be able to say a prayer to commend the work and to bless the volunteers and the people that they, in turn will bless by providing the service.
Thanks to Margaret, as ever – our photographer…
The photo, from left to right, shows: Siân Collins; Will Mansell, (Food Bank), and volunteers, Paul Dricoll and Stuart Radford, who will be doing the work.
