EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2021 I began a new venture writing a newspaper column titled "Finding Faith" for the Forum Communications Co. network of newspapers and websites. I was asked to contribute to the company's ongoing conversation about faith, lending a Lutheran and fairly ecumenical approach to the discussion. The column was published in several of the company's papers and websites, including The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. This column originally appeared as a "Finding Faith" column on Sept. 29, 2023.
By The Rev. Devlyn Brooks
What might it look like if a rural church made a commitment to focus its mission work on the community outside the church walls?
If you ask Pastor Melissa Pickering of First Lutheran Church of Audubon, it might look like organizing “Fueling our Farmers,” a community-wide effort to provide a free meal to busy farm families during the hectic harvest season.
So come Saturday, Oct. 7, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m, Pastor Pickering, her church and a host of community volunteers will gather at First Lutheran in Audubon to feed any and all comers, as well as pack up meals on the go to send with those who have farmers who can’t spare the time to get out of the fields for lunch.
“Our farmers are in the fields now, and their families are busy bringing food out to the fields. We thought maybe we could take one thing off their plate for a day,” Pickering said. “We just assume that the food is going to show up on our table, and it seems we really don’t appreciate the farmers. This is a way to say, ‘Thank you.’”
How does such an event come together under the guise of church? … A number of circumstances.
Pickering, who also oversees the Northwestern Minnesota ELCA Synod’s Rural Revival program, said one of the initiative’s goals called for creating a large-scale, community event that can be replicated in other rural areas. And she said, another goal was to focus outward toward the community, versus inward to the church.
“We really wanted to focus on what it was to be community,” she said, “not what it means to be church.”
By any standards, it seems the project already is a success. Pickering said businesses from the Hawley, Audubon and Detroit Lakes, Minn., area donated all of the food, other businesses will be doing the serving so that the church staff can participate in the fellowship, and still other businesses donated prepaid gas cards for drawing prizes.
Pickering said the aim is to make this community-focused event an annual opportunity for everyone to come together, but the look of it may change from year to year. For instance, maybe next year the church will decide to feed everyone at a tailgate event at a local football game.
More importantly, Pickering said, is creating an outwardly focused mission project that could be recreated by other churches with a few local tweaks.
“I don’t know if this is going to work, but we’re going to give it a try,” Pickering joked this week. “Churches do food so well, and food connects us all so well. We think that’s something the community can buy into.”
Amen to that.
Devlyn Brooks is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and serves Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He also works for Forum Communications Co. He can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com for comments and story ideas.
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