Minute for Mission: Hunger and Homelessness Sunday

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The Revs. Rebecca Barnes and Trisha Tull stand in front of the Black Mountain Presbyterian Church communion table, inscribed with the words “Has Everyone Been Fed?” in September at the congregation’s one-year anniversary observation of Hurricane Helene. (Rebecca Barnes)

“Had everyone been fed?” is inscribed on the communion table at Black Mountain Presbyterian Church in North Carolina. It is a powerful question for sharing the Lord’s Supper and making sure all have been offered communion! Also, it is a question that became even more powerful and poignant when the congregation became a hub for aid distribution, emergency food and community meals after Hurricane Helene ripped through western North Carolina a year ago. Many people lost homes as well as ways to store, keep, cook or access food.

Climate change-induced natural disasters are creating increased hunger and a lack of adequate housing all around the world, and Christians are called to serve both in areas of immediate need and in long-term solutions. Having a home and having enough food are core human needs. In all times and places, in our own communities and around the world, people need a safe space to rest. All people need nourishment and nutrition.

We believe that food and adequate housing are ethical and biblical mandates for society, and yet we are so far from these essential elements of existence being met. From violent wars and conflicts creating conditions of famine right now in Sudan and Gaza to our own communities where homelessness is a desperate problem, we have work to do.

We draw inspiration from the many Presbyterian congregations rehabbing their facilities and grounds to provide affordable housing and/or wrap-around services to those who are unhoused. We can be motivated to join the movement of Congregation-Based Community Organizing groups across the country that are working to protect tenant rights and to create Affordable Housing Trust Funds in their cities. We join hands with global partners working to address hunger and famine and the root causes of poverty. Together, may we answer Christ’s call and make sure that all people everywhere have a place to call home and that all have been fed.

Rev. Rebecca Barnes, Manager, Presbyterian Hunger Program, Interim Unified Agency, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff:

Emily Hord, Assistant General Counsel, Legal & Risk Management, Administrative Services Group
Demetria Hurnton , Administrator, Benefits, The Board of Pensions

Let us pray:

Dear God, we find our home in you and our hunger satiated in you. Help us never be satisfied while others are unhoused or hungry. Thank you for all the models of people and communities working for change and empower us O God to use our gifts and skills and networks and hearts to collectively build your kingdom come, here on earth. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.

Minute for Mission: Hunger and Homelessness Sunday

Some choices are easier than others

November 24, 2024

Grocery Receipt (iStock)

It’s almost time for seasonal gatherings with those we love. Many people will choose which recipes to prepare, who will host and who will travel, and how many pieces of pie to put on their plates. Some will have the privilege of deciding on guest lists, gift lists and which days to take off work.

Other people in our nation — some in our own communities and churches, and perhaps even some in our own families — are facing choices that are not so simple. Consider the following:

“I have enough for two of these. Which will I do without?”

1. Nourishing food.
2. Medical care.
3. A housing payment, so I can still have a place to call home next week.

Why, in a nation where we have so much, do people have to choose between necessities?

Earlier this year, hundreds of Presbyterians participated in a book study on Matthew Desmond’s “Poverty, by America” (Crown Publishing, 2023). Desmond underscores the reality that many people who experience poverty are in that situation not because of simple choices but because of systems that perpetuate poverty for many and —  at the same time — benefit many others. The author presents solutions that could help end poverty in America.

During Hunger and Homelessness Week, perhaps it’s a good time to think about more than only our holiday choices. How might we walk with our neighbors who are making hard life decisions? How might we work together in our communities for the well-being of all?

Because we have chosen to follow in the example of Christ, what can we lay aside to serve others, allowing them to experience the love of God and the abundant life that was intended for all?

Jenny Oldham, Mission Specialist for Hunger Program Concerns in the Presbyterian Hunger Program

Revised Common Lectionary Readings for Sunday, November 24, 2024, Christ the King (Reign of Christ) Sunday (Year B)

• First Reading 2 Samuel 23:1-7
• Psalm 132:1-12 (13-18)
• Second Reading Revelation 1:4b-8
• Gospel John 18:33-37

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Today’s Focus: Hunger and Homelessness Sunday

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Farsijana Adeney-Risakotta, Mission co-worker serving in Indonesia, World Mission, Presbyterian Mission Agency 
Deidre Allen, Associate, YAV Program, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

God of hope, thank you for understanding our joys and our hardships. Please, will you help us be willing to walk with others in their joys and hardships? As we work together for the well-being of all, may we together experience your kingdom coming and your will being done on earth as it is where you are. Amen.

Minute for Mission: Hunger and Homelessness Sunday

November 12, 2023

Roughly 421,400 people were unhoused in the U.S. last year, and 127,750 of them were chronically unhoused, meaning they didn’t have a place to stay for a year or more, according to National Alliance to End Homelessness data. Unhoused rates have been climbing nationally by about 6% every year since 2017, the alliance said. The increase in the number of unhoused people comes when housing costs are soaring and prices for essentials like food and transportation continue to rise.

This is why Congregation-Based Community Organizing (CBCO) groups are so essential. CBCO groups utilize a grassroots organizing approach for addressing community needs, revitalizing congregations and developing individuals into effective leaders. CBCO ministries provide a vehicle for churches, schools, unions, and nonprofit organizations to carry their concerns and values into public life, as they create policy and access funds to improve their communities. These coalitions around the country have established a track record of highly successful campaigns and have leveraged billions of dollars. 

Richmonders Involved to Strengthen our Communities (RISC) in Richmond, Virginia, is one CBCO addressing the increase in unhoused people. Healthy Homes is a new campaign for RISC that specifically has to do with unsafe, unhealthy and environmentally unjust living conditions in mobile homes in Richmond’s south side. It surfaced because of newly engaged Latinx members who make up a large portion of residents of the mobile home parks, talking about the problem in house meetings. By addressing current living conditions, RISC is intervening before families become unhoused.

RISC conducted research and determined that with $300,000, a local nonprofit called Project Homes could begin a pilot mobile home repair/replacement program, capable of serving 20 households with either significant repairs or a replacement of their home (sometimes the homes are in such terrible shape that a replacement is needed).

RISC showed the video below at their Nehemiah Action as a “testimony” to the conditions in the mobile homes. A team leader who lives in one of the mobile homes stood on stage with others whose homes are featured and introduced the video in Spanish (interpreted). When the video finished, the team leader concluded by saying they would all be returning to those homes that night. RISC’s lead organizer said this was a powerful presentation and that following the Nehemiah Action, four council members later committed to ensure that an additional $500,000 was included in the next year’s budget.

Video Link: https://youtu.be/R4rGuzJJYF8

RISC also has a team working on affordable housing and evictions. After having won an ordinance that established a dedicated stream of funding in an Affordable Housing Trust Fund, RISC discovered that the city administration did not plan to follow the ordinance. They stepped up social media efforts, press campaign and told the administration about this failure of government to follow its own laws and how the mayor’s proposed budget provided zero funding for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. At the Nehemiah Action, one City Council member arrived having negotiated an agreement with the Mayor — and proposed putting $10 million in bond revenue, into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, for the next five years. RISC members agreed to this compromise, but they won’t stop there. The next step is to monitor the funds from the bond revenue program to ensure the money goes into the trust fund, and to identify more funding that they can propose go into the trust fund.

Presbyterians are highly involved in the work of RISC. With four Presbyterian churches and a Presbyterian seminary as members (Bon Air Presbyterian Church, First Presbyterian Church, Southminster Presbyterian Church, Three Chopt Presbyterian and Union Presbyterian Seminary) — they comprise about 20% of the organization’s membership. Presbyterian clergy and leaders have been foundational in RISC’s development and continue to serve in key positions within the organization. 

Jennifer Evans, Associate for Communications and National Partnerships for the Presbyterian Hunger Program

Today’s Focus: Hunger and Homelessness Sunday

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Kerry Rice, Deputy Stated Clerk, Office of the Stated Clerk, Office of the General Assembly
Meg Rift, Associate for Curriculum Development, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation

Let us pray

God of justice, we find our home in you. Help us never be satisfied while others are unhoused or hungry. Thank you for these community organizing models that work to shape a more just world. Help us build power by listening to each other’s stories, joining with intentionally marginalized people and other people of faith, determining common themes of interests and together, exercising power by showing up to hold leaders and policy makers accountable. Help us to collectively build a better future for generations to come. Amen.

Minute for Mission: Hunger and Homelessness Sunday

November 13, 2022

Pulses AKB Food Week (Andrew Kang Barlett)

Hunger isn’t just hunger. Food isn’t just calories. The experience of hunger is intimately linked with multiple physical, emotional and spiritual needs as well as with our sense of belonging and value.

Hunger is excruciating, we make no mistake. Extreme hunger has risen around the globe in this pandemic, as wars and violent conflicts rage, and as climate change makes farming harder. People need access to land, water, seeds. They need homes and peaceful communities, a stable environment, equitable markets, and the freedom to pursue education, employment and right livelihoods.

Also, in addition to all of that, hunger is a deeper human need, connected to all parts of life, a yearning to feel seen, cared for, basic needs met because I matter to God and to the world. Food isn’t just calories. Food is camaraderie, community, connection. To people, to earth, to God. The Lord’s supper is earth elements (wheat and grape), combined with people’s labor (making it bread and drink), and God blessing it all to be a sacrament. This communion showed up when Jesus shared food with Mary and Martha, broke bread at the last supper, ate fish on the beach after resurrection.

Cash Bail March (Randy Hobson)

Hunger is hunger but it’s also disconnection, isolation, fear, longing. Because hunger isn’t just hunger, and the answer isn’t only food, we know the path is more complicated than we’d like. Yes, we can provide food. Yes, we can write letters and advocate for policy change. Yes, we can organize around solutions and provide training and access.

And, also, let us not forget that we are called also to see Christ in those around us. Matthew 25 asks “when did we see you, Lord?” and the response is: Christ is here, visible, in those who are hungry, those who are without homes, those who are alone. Do we treat people with the dignity and respect, the way we would if we were seeing Christ?

Solving the real brokenness of hunger in our world includes truly seeing people, valuing them. Then trying to do whatever is in our power, however small, to challenge and change the systems that create and maintain inequity. Your gift may be listening to and working alongside people who experience the brokenness in our food systems or in the lack of affordable, safe housing for all. Together, we work to make the world a place without any kind of hunger — physical, emotional, spiritual — and where all can have a home and a sense of belonging.

Rev. Rebecca Barnes, Coordinator, Presbyterian Hunger Program

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
So Jung Kim, Associate, Theology, Theology & Worship, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Shawn Kang, Associate, Central & West Regions, 1001 New Worshiping Communities, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Dear God, we find our home in you and our hunger satiated in you. Help us never be satisfied while others are unhoused or hungry. Thank you for all the models of people and communities working for change and empower us, O God, to use our gifts and skills and networks and hearts to collectively build your kingdom come, here on earth. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Minute for Mission: Hunger and Homelessness Sunday

November 14, 2021

Washington Interfaith Network celebrate 2018 success/Washington Interfaith Network

Scripture is full of human desire for a sense of home, belonging, security: a mother lovingly placing a basket in the reeds to protect her infant son, a faith community’s journey through wilderness to find a promised homeland, a place to lay a baby’s head when there’s no room at the inn.

In the United States, 1 in 5 children live in poverty. Nearly half a million Americans do not have a safe home. More than 65 million people worldwide have become refugees. Meanwhile, the land that many of us live on is traditional unceded homeland of Native and Indigenous Americans who had these homelands taken.

May we offer ourselves in the face of such tragedies. We can take inspiration from many, including the Rev. Dr. Jean Kim, a tireless advocate for the unhoused who recently died. She was well known in Presbyterian circles for her amazing ministry and for her purple shirt that said, “End homelessness!” Born in North Korea in 1935, having to flee to South Korea a decade later, and then coming to the U.S. in 1970, Rev. Dr. Kim knew homelessness and displacement. She turned her life experiences into a powerful movement for the unhoused in Washington state. She founded the Church of Mary Magdalene, and it continues today as Mary’s Place, which last year provided more than 141,000 overnight stays, and more than 424,000 meals. She also worked on root causes of homelessness, by doing public policy advocacy and pursuing racial justice.

A major way that the church addresses homelessness across the country is through organizing and advocating together locally for affordable housing policies and financial commitments. In D.C., Washington Interfaith Network is one of the Presbyterian Hunger Program’s Congregation-Based Community Organizing (CBCO) groups. They have rehabbed and protected over 500 affordable apartments from being torn down or converted to condos, worked for the construction of over 2,000 other affordable rentals, and are holding policy makers to account in order to fund an Affordable Housing Trust Fund. There are many other CBCOs across the country similarly struggling for a better world, a safe home, for all.

Rebecca Barnes, Coordinator, Presbyterian Hunger Program, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
TP Coleman, Customer Service Representative, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation
Heather Colletto, Program Administrator, Presbyterian CREDO, Board of Pensions

Let us pray

O Christ, you call us to welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, tend the sick and give water to the thirsty — and more than all of this, to see you in each person standing before us. May we recognize the dignity and worth of each person and understand that we are all connected and have the same longings and needs and rights. Thank you for all those working and witnessing how to make change for a better future. Guide us that we may follow you as we seek to provide well-being for all.

Minute for Mission: Hunger and Homelessness Sunday

November 15, 2020

An educator at Housing Coalition partner Restoring Dignity, this Karen refugee shares about her experience as a tenant and what she sees as a caseworker now. Photo thanks to PHP grant partner the Institute for Public Leadership, Omaha, Neb. (Photo provided by CBCO)

Thus says the Lord: Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is my resting place? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine … (Isaiah 66:1–2a).

God has created an abundant and beautiful planet to be home for people and all living creatures. Many of us have a place in this world we call our own, a place where family gathers and meals are shared, and where we rest at the end of each day. But not everyone.

Some have no place to cook a meal, no place to sit back and rest their feet, no place to call home. We see their faces, if we dare look as we pass them on the street. We feel compassion. But what can we do?

Some congregations wanting to make a difference are, together with their neighbors and communities, listening to needs, discovering where inequities and injustices lie, and working together to find solutions. Often this becomes ecumenical work that engages churches, businesses, local agencies, government representatives and policy makers. Coming together as Congregation Based Community Organizations (CBCOs), the members join with people whose voices are often ignored to seek solutions and advocate for change.

In San Rafael, California, tenants worked with the Marin Organizing Committee (MOC) to fight against a sudden increase in rent. The 40% increase within 60 days would have put many families at risk of displacement or homelessness. The MOC is advocating for stronger protections for tenants in Marin County.

In Story County, Iowa, the AMOS Institute of Public Life is working on permanent supportive housing for people with mental illness and support for immigrant families.

In Washington, D.C., the Washington Interfaith Network (WIN) is comprised of Protestant and Catholic congregations, synagogues, a mosque and community organizations. The WIN advocated for the Housing Production Trust Fund and has celebrated how this fund has been used to produce more than 9,000 units of affordable housing.

In North Carolina, after years of negotiation with Durham CAN, county commissioners have agreed that of 437 apartments they plan to build on county lots, more than half of the units will be designated as affordable housing.

Congregations who serve in their communities, advocating together to lift a voice for justice, often find the vibrancy of their own congregations built up. Considering the call in Matthew 25 to see Christ in those who are hurting, bound, hungry or homeless, perhaps those congregations have found a way to help build a house — a place of rest — as if for the Lord.

As we recognize Hunger and Homelessness Sunday, may we learn what we can do to help others in need of a place of rest – a place to call home.

Each year a portion of One Great Hour of Sharing gifts, through the Presbyterian Hunger Program, supports the work of CBCOs as they strive to make homes available for those who may have no other attainable option. You can learn more at presbyterianmission.org/cbco.

Jenny Oldham, Presbyterian Hunger Program

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Tim Stepp, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)

Let us pray:

God of all compassion, during this season when we share food, celebrate family and are thankful for a place of rest, please help us to remember that not everyone is sharing in these basic blessings. Help us to see Christ in the faces of those who are hungry or homeless and to respond faithfully. As we consider what we will give, or how we will help, may your love be our inspiration and your Spirit be our guide.