DISPLACED PARISH PLEDGES TO FEED FIVE THOUSAND

All Saints Wichita Falls takes on project

All Saints Episcopal Church in Wichita Falls is a faithful congregation of about 40 to 50 people whose displacement from their building propelled them headlong into outreach and mission.

They vowed to look outside themselves to those in need instead of focusing on their own pain.

So much so that a mere year after being forced to leave their building they are pledging to feed a meal to 5000 people during the next four months.

Impossible you say? Well then you haven’t met Senior Warden Owanah Anderson or Dr. Millie Lancaster- both laywomen of formidable strength, faith, and vision.

Millie suggested the Feeding Five Thousand project to the All Saints vestry. Instead of saying, "Are you crazy," under Owanah’s leadership the vestry said, "Let’s see how we can make this happen."

Millie pointed out the truth of the old adage "what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger" certainly applies to All Saints.

"We’ve risen from the ashes and are a stronger faith community now than when life was easy and we had a building. We’ve learned that the Church is the people, not bricks and mortar. Our mission has come home to our hearts: To love and serve Christ; to love and serve one another in Christ; to love and serve the world for Christ. Bishop Katharine has called us to place feeding the poor as a prime directive, and we are answering that call," she said.

So in thanksgiving for their survival as a faith community and parish and "for the bounty God has given us in this nation of free people, All Saints Episcopal Church is responding to our Primate’s challenge to deepen our commitment to mission and ministry with 'the least of these' by pledging to feed a meal to 5000 fellow beings during the next four months."

The "how to" committee of Richard Johnson, Laurie Cruse, J.D. Todd and Val Hubbard along with Owanah worked to fine tune the focus and work on implementation. They recommended All Saints channel the mission through three local agencies and Episcopal Relief and Development.

• Interfaith Ministries [IMI] is a community program in Wichita Falls that dates back to the 1979 tornado. It is supported by 50 local churches and a synagogue. In one month, IMI assisted 77 families with 4,295 pounds of food.



• The Wichita Falls Area Food Bank is a nonprofit central clearing house that secures, stores, and distributes food in 13 North Texas counties. One of its several programs is PowerPak4Kids. The sum of $142 will feed a chronically hungry child on weekends for an entire school year.



• Circle of Hope has been serving since the autumn of 1993 as an ecumenical ministry of persons seeking to serve their neighbors suffering from HIV/AIDS. All Saints is one of the eight faith communities called by God to affirm a life of hope and healing in the midst of HIV/AIDS. The Circle of Hope Food Pantry provides supplemental food to assist HIV infected persons.



• Episcopal Relief and Development’s mission statement begins, "Episcopal Relief & Development is the compassionate response of the Episcopal Church to human suffering in the world. Hearing God's call to seek and serve Christ in all persons and to respect the dignity of every human being, Episcopal Relief & Development serves to bring together the generosity of Episcopalians and others with the needs of the world." Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, with 80 percent of its population living in poverty. Seventy-five percent of children under age 5 are underweight. ERD supports a food program that supplies eighteen primary schools with canteens to directly reach the young children who are acutely vulnerable to malnutrition.

The "how to" committee studied each agency’s cost per meal, which range from .265 to $1.26, and recommended an allowance of $1.00 per meal for a cost of $5000. They recommended the program run for four months, September through December 2009.

So where to get the money? The committee saw the Bruce Coggin Fund as the place to jump-start the program. Supply priest Bruce Coggin of Fort Worth donates his diocesan-designated $150 per service fee back to All Saints with the proviso that it be used for parish outreach. Projected through year’s end, the Coggin nest egg totals $1800. A committee member pledged $500. The balance of $4,700 will be taken from the church’s account, to be replenished by fund-raising and donations between now and the end of the year.

All Saints is confident that it will succeed, in no small part because the parish dowager Margaret Dvorken, with a wave of her gold-tipped cane, proclaimed, "It’s doable. The project is doable."

How can you help?

Make a COUNT ME IN CALL to 940-692-0824 or send a check or pledge to

All Saints EPISCOPAL (Feed 5,000)
P.O. Box 3335
Wichita Falls, TX 76301

It may be backpacks and bags instead of loaves and fishes, but the principle remains the same. The people are hungry. Jesus told us what to do.

"Feed them."