October Edition

Madison congregation nourishes children through Weekend Backpack Snacks ministry

by Terri Byrd

MADISON, Ala. — There was a question that kept arising in the hearts and minds of a group of people at Trinity Baptist Church in Madison, Ala. “For kids who are receiving reduced or free lunches at school, what are they eating on the weekend?”

As they began to investigate the answer to their question, the group discovered that a United Methodist congregation in nearby Huntsville was addressing that same issue.

“There was a Methodist church in our county [that] was creating backpack snacks for kids to have on the weekends, and they invited us to come and shadow their program,” said Glenn Bowers, minister of education and missions at Trinity Baptist. “We spent a couple of weeks going to watch them collect food, put it into bags and deliver them to a local school in their community.”

What this group discovered was a ministry they knew could be recreated at Trinity Baptist Church — one that would make a difference in their community and a ministry their congregation would wrap their arms around and be excited about.

But they knew they would need some help as well. So they asked Cooperative Baptist Fellowship to partner with Trinity through an It’s Time grant to help fund the Weekend Backpack Snack program along with two other ministry projects.

“Our It’s Time grant went toward three ministries: a ministry to senior adults that helps provide needs for their homes, the Circle Project at a Title I school in our area and the Weekend Backpack Snack program,” said Bowers. “We are so thankful for the partnership of CBF in helping to facilitate these ministries in our community.”

Trinity formed an “It’s Time committee” that approached the Madison Board of Education to inquire about the schools with the greatest needs in their community. The board identified the schools with the largest number of children receiving free or reduced lunches.

The Trinity group then approached one of the school’s principal and counselor to see if they would be interested in working together to provide healthy free snacks the children could take home for the weekend.

“We immediately found a school that was excited to join us in this project, a school that had 50 children [who] could benefit from our ministry,” said Bowers. “For the school, it was very important that they were able to implement the program but maintain respect and privacy for the students.” The church and the school agreed that Trinity would deliver the snacks and that the counselor or teachers would put the snacks in the children’s backpacks on Fridays at a time of the day when other students wouldn’t notice.

“I knew there was no way we could take on providing 50 bags a week for 33 weeks a year unless the whole church embraced this ministry,” said Bowers. “So we invited our Sunday school classes to donate specific snacks and then sign up for a month when their class would pack the bags and deliver them to the school. We had so many donations for our first year that very little of the grant actually went toward

purchasing food!”

Trinity’s administrative team for the Weekend Backpack Snack program includes a volunteer inventory director and a volunteer purchaser. Children in the church decorate the bags and then classes fill the bags with healthy foods including soups, fruit snacks, cheese crackers and fruit. A trailer behind their church building houses all of the supplies and has space for a team of people to put the 50 bags together each week.

The church had to follow specific guidelines by the WIC program and health department for storing and handling of food supplies, but the organization of the program made it easy to comply with all the regulations.

“We really have a system that works smoothly and makes it enjoyable and rewarding for the volunteers,” said Bowers. “The people in our congregation have been inspired by this ministry in such a powerful way that they want to do more.”

Bowers said enthusiasm for the project led to a recent meeting with a second elementary school in their community where they hope to begin the ministry in January.

“We are currently enlisting other Madison churches to come alongside us and view the program so they may assume a similar ministry to one of the other Madison elementary schools,” said Bowers.

During the 2010-2011 school year, Trinity Baptist Church’s Weekend Backpack Snack ministry gave out a total of 1,543 snack bags at 33 weekly distributions to 53 different local school children.

“It is our hope that other churches are inspired to do the same until all the children in our town who receive free or reduced lunches have healthy food to eat on the weekends,” said Bowers. “We really believe we are impacting the lives of kids in poverty in our city.” BT