Thomas leading church to feed hungry children

By Todd Deaton - Apr 15, 2009 -

“I’m hungry!” Those words evoke a compassionate heart, especially when spoken by a child.

Nelle Thomas and a host of volunteers at Elizabethtown’s New Hope Community Church have such hearts. On Wednesday nights, members are going out into some of the lower-income housing neighborhoods to pick up 130 to 150 children and bring them to a “Kids Café.”

Kids Café, a nationwide feeding program sponsored by America’s Second Harvest, provides food for nutritious meals for the school-aged kids. As a host church in Elizabethtown, New Hope Community, a Southern Baptist congregation, serves a four-course meal in a restaurant-type setting, after which the children participate in an educational, recreational or fun activity and a Bible study, said Thomas, program director. The children also receive a sack lunch on Sundays.

After a woman from New Hope circulated a flyer in the neighborhood and 15 children attended a Vacation Bible school in 2007, the church began sending a van regularly into the community to pick children up on Wednesday evenings. When one of the children wanted to puck up an old snack off the bus floor because he was hungry, Thomas felt compelled to ask church members to help buy some pizza for the kids.

Arrangements quickly were made to begin feeding about 30 children on Wednesdays. As word quickly spread through the neighborhood, however, more and more kids began coming to eat at the church and the rising food costs led to initiating a partnership to begin a Kid’s Café, which is connected with a local America’s Second Harvest food bank. Since January, nearly 50 volunteers from New Hope Community Church have been filling up a 25-passenger van and two school buses every Wednesday, preparing the meals, leading the activities, and then sharing about God’s love, Thomas said.

Pastor Herb Williams commented that Kid’s Café is working out well for both the children and the church. “The kids get fed and we get to be Jesus to them,” he explained.

Scripture is very clear about the need for Christians to reach out to the brokenhearted and downtrodden, he said. “It’s time for those attending the Bible study in our churches to become the Bible study,” he urged, emphasizing that through Christ, “every child has the potential to become somebody” …along the way.

This article is reprinted from the March 31, 2009, issue of the Western Recorder, the newspaper of the Kentucky Baptist Convention.

Further Learning

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