Drawing from her experience as co-founder of Worcester Fellowship, an outdoor church reaching adults without homes and people who are at risk of homelessness, Liz advocates for a particular way of organizing church-based food pantries and meal programs. She encourages congregations to move away from the transactional, direct-service model and adopt instead a relational approach that nurtures genuine connection with people who live with food insecurity — a shared ministry.
She writes, "Volunteering is not sufficient for ending poverty. Or homelessness. Or addiction. It certainly does not end oppression, even on a small scale. My Doctor of Ministry project suggested that shared ministry would change the world (and perhaps every doctoral student dreams of that), but it does not. Yet shared ministry did do something that I didn't expect: It created church."
What is church, then? More broadly, what is a community of faith? Join us for this wide-ranging conversation about shared ministry, food, community, and service. Drawing upon her extensive study of church-based food ministries, Liz will offer some insights about how eating and working together, listening deeply to one another, and focusing on authentic relationships can lead to a radically reoriented way of being a community of faith.
