The least of these….

My wife and I recently began rescuing food at the Panera location in Muncie, IN.  We found out about FoodRescue.net and thought it was a simple idea birthed from the heart of a loving God to his children that know his voice.  My family had reached out to needy neighbors in the past when I was young but years later I had grown accustomed to letting others handle the dirty work.  After my wife changed careers and started working for a  non-profit organization, things began to change in my heart especially.  It is not always easy or pleasant to go out of your comfort zone and extend grace and mercy to those you do not know personally.  My wife does this very naturally but it is a challenge to me.  I just felt though that I could do this.  How hard could it be on me to give 90 minutes of my time to pick up food and drop it off to “the least of these”?  I am just getting fatter sitting on my sofa at home watching “American Idol” and criticizing contestants!  Maybe God has something better for me and my wife.  Maybe together we could make just a little difference….Matthew 25:40 (NIV)… The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”….Can you deny Him?  Put your feet to the Gospel.  It is not an option. 

Why is there poverty in the world?

Since it was not Gods’ original design, why does He allow it to continue?

What is our “role” as His children in the midst of the poverty?

Do we respond out of conviction, guilt, or a desire to know and experience God?

Are all 3 OK as long as we do respond, or is one better than the other?

Should be a good thread!  

The Reason We Sing?

 I was listening to a song on a CD on the way to pick up food last night with my daughter, and a song played with this title.  The lyrics were as follows:

“The reason we sing, the reason we lift our voice, is more than just making harmony.”

With the world drawn toward the retail amount of food we have rescued in a short time, the temptation is to rack up large numbers here and in other markets and hang our hats on the statistics, however, my motivation to start this project does not lie in racking up impressive statistics in giving, rather in raising the awareness that God can actually be found in the places that are obvious to Him, and yet so surprising to us.  For example, when His parents were looking for Him when He was “lost” as a young boy, when they found Him, His response when He was found in the Temple was like, “Duh, where did you think I would be?”

 Since He clearly reveals His fondness for the poor and those in need in His Word, how surprising is it that people today are encountering Him in the midst of a relationship and serving those who Christ has special fondness for.  If we miss this aspect of the task at hand, we fail to recognize, “The reason we Sing.”

“The Internet is Way Ahead of The Church”

Seems like an “ouch”, but not really.  These are the words of a friend of mine who has used the Internet to promote his values in the public square, enough to see an incredible influence in America.  He tapped into the idea that in general, everybody wants to make a difference in the world they live in.  He simply made around a million people believe they could, and he did it through the Internet.  His statement regarding ‘The Church” was in regards to their ignorance of the Internet as tool, not in regards to the motivation of “The Church”.  What happened with FoodRescue.net is simply a few drops of what my friend bottled a few years ago, sprinkled in the arena of food delivery to those in need, and it’s only the beginning.  The food is there, we just have to mobilize to go get it.  Can we do it?  Of course.  Do we have the vehicle to get the message out?  Certainly?  Will we go get it?  Time will tell.

The Generosity of One Company

While some food companies lock their “shrink” (excess food from the day) in the trash so nobody can eat it, others feel compelled to try to get their food to those in need.  Panera Bread is one of those companies.  They have ”shrink”, because they only serve fresh baked products to their patrons as a company policy.  I started picking up once a week in November of 2007 at one location, and in 4 months I have a team of 60 drivers and over 70 time slots in Indianapolis Indiana , a Muncie Indiana chapter, as well as a few others in infancy stages around the country that deliver to local food banks.  It’s normally around $500 retail value in food each night, and often times more, resulting in nearly $40,000 per month at this time being delivered to those in need.   We only service time slots where food was being thrown away, so it is truly a rescue, rather than a transfer.  It is all done through a 501c3 not for profit organization my friends and I started a number of years ago called the Heritage Classic Foundation.  HeritageClassic.org

Because these time slots represent families, we easily have over 100 volunteers.  Without the bully pulpit or a large audience to appeal to in person, how did this happen?   Acquiring 100 committed volunteers in a short time is apparently uncommon.

What did I find?

One of the largest companies in the world not only throws their food away, but they lock it so nobody can have it.  Let’s face it.  Some of the food they throw out would probably make people sick, but not all of it, and certainly not most of it.  We can send a man to the moon, but we cannot solve this problem?  I kind of put my mind to trying to solve this dilemma, and what I came up with was the simple conclusion that those that love God are compelled through their relationship with Him to serve in this manner, meaning to find a way to get food that can be eaten that God has provided into the hands of those in need.    Perhaps others would serve for other reasons, but I felt most certainly one of the products of a loving relationship with Jesus is a strong desire to touch others in need in similar ways that our Saviour meets us at the very point of our need.  I thought if we worked together, a lot of us, that we could chisel away at this silly little problem.  Did I have the right strategy?  Would people respond?  How long would it take?  Good questions.

What’s a Freegan?

I asked the same thing when my wife read an article about them.  I was essentially unemployed at the time, so I was busy doing other things, but pretended to listen.  Later I was to find out Oprah Winfrey had done a show about Freegans.  They are simply people who “dumpster dive” for food or products.  They are not homelesss, rather citizens who have discovered how much perfectly good food goes to waste each day in our country, and they simply go get it out of the trash. 

While my intent was to ignore the story, over a period of a few weeks it was driving me nuts.  Surely it could not be that easy to feed people in need.  One day I set out to find out, and from that day on a story has unfolded that is still to this day rather difficult to comprehend.

Food Rescue: What’s That All About?

If you were sitting anywhere in the world, and God told you that He had given you $500 to go give to somebody else in need, would you do it?  If you said yes, would you still do it if He asked you to look for it for 90 minutes, and then go give it away once you found it?  Still yes?  What if He promised to make it happen every month for the rest of your life, would you still do it?  What if it would cost you a gallon or two of gasoline to do it, would you still be “in”? 

If you said yes to all of these questions, there is a real opportunity once a month that God in fact has provided that is exactly what I just described.  I look forward to sharing this opportunity with all who answered yes.

 John