How Southern Baptists are meeting increased world hunger needs
By / Aug 24

The last few years have witnessed world-changing events that have disrupted supply chains and limited access to food for many people. Southern Baptists will, on Aug. 28, recognize Global Hunger Sunday to raise support for those in need.

A 2021 report released by agencies associated with the United Nations stated that 2.3 billion people faced moderate to severe challenges to obtaining enough food to eat, with the total population facing severe insecurity climbing to an estimated 924 million.

“Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen world events impact food supplies. First, it was the COVID pandemic, then the war in Ukraine hindered access to their wheat harvest,” said Bryant Wright, president of Send Relief, the compassion ministry arm of Southern Baptists.

According to a report from NPR, Ukraine and Russia, together, account for a third of the world’s wheat and barley exports while Russia and Belarus are numbers two and three on the world’s list of producers of a key ingredient for fertilizer.

“A drought in the midwestern United States harmed the wheat harvest here. We expect the need to be so great that many will face starvation, especially in impoverished areas,” said Wright. “Let’s show the love of Jesus by meeting needs physically and spiritually with the Gospel.”

As of July 2022, an estimated 345 million people are near the point of starvation, a 25% increase from the beginning of the year before Russia invaded Ukraine. Conflict, displacement, and global destabilization have led the malnourished population to grow for the sixth consecutive year.

What is Global Hunger Relief? 

For 44 years, Southern Baptists have been raising funds to combat hunger around the globe. Originally started in 1978 as the World Hunger Fund, Global Hunger Relief is dedicated to the fight to minimize world hunger and to sharing the gospel of Christ.

Global Hunger Sunday is a great opportunity for churches to promote an offering to support Global Hunger Relief. Send Relief helps to promote and distribute the offering each year.

“Southern Baptist Christians have been concerned about global hunger needs for several decades now,” said Wright. “That concern has driven them to start soup kitchens and food pantries in their local communities. It has also driven them to give to funds like Global Hunger Relief, which Send Relief helps to administer to meet hunger needs around the world.”

Send Relief focuses on five key areas: strengthen communities, care for refugees, protect children and families, fight human trafficking, and respond to crisis. The ministry sets up specific funds for these focus areas, creates funds for specific projects, and receives general donations to support compassion ministry efforts around the world.

Generosity toward Global Hunger Relief helps respond to crisis by meeting hunger-related needs in various ways. When famine or natural disaster strikes, gifts to Global Hunger Relief provide resources for missionaries and other ministry partners to give food during those times of crisis.

Efforts also include projects that have a longer-term focus that offer sustainable solutions designed to strengthen communities by easing chronic hunger. Missionaries and ministry partners will provide job skills training, livestock and seed distribution, clean water, home reconstruction, as well as medical care.

In 2021, Southern Baptists gave $3.5 million through Global Hunger Relief, and 100% of those gifts go toward meeting hunger needs with 20% going to needs in North America and 80 going toward international hunger needs.

While Southern Baptists will officially recognize Global Hunger Sunday this coming weekend, Southern Baptist ministry partners are welcome to collect and submit the offering throughout the year.

To learn more about Global Hunger Relief, visit globalhungerrelief.org, and for resources designed to help churches recognize Global Hunger Sunday, visit here.

Why you should participate in Global Hunger Sunday
By / Sep 29

Almost half a billion people could be facing severe poverty due to the economic fallout of COVID-19.1All three intro stats taken from https://www.usglc.org/coronavirus/global-hunger/

Poverty is the leading cause of undernutrition, which is responsible for almost half of child deaths worldwide, and families around the world are now facing the harsh realities of chronic hunger—some for the very first time. One hundred-thirty million people are being pushed to the brink of starvation, with over three dozen countries predicted to experience devastating famines in the coming months.

Persistent hunger can drive people to desperation—especially mothers who are trying to care for and feed their children. Often, as a result of food shortages, vulnerable women are coerced into trafficking rings with the promise of consistent work. Once absorbed into this lifestyle, it is extremely difficult for them to find a safe way out.

Additionally, when an entire family’s funds are rerouted to focus on finding food for the day, other basic human necessities aren’t able to be prioritized. Families focused on survival rarely are able to pay for medical care for a chronic illness or sudden accident, often leaving the main breadwinner incapacitated and sinking the family further into poverty.

If the primary provider is unable to make money, the children are frequently then looked to for assistance if they are able-bodied. Sadly, many children in this situation are then exploited either for labor or pressured into child trafficking—sometimes without the parents’ knowledge and sometimes, as a final act of hopelessness, with their consent.

Obviously, the effects of chronic hunger are not isolated to empty bellies. Its impact is far-reaching and can be the first domino in a chain of devastation.

What are we doing about it?

Global Hunger Relief (GHR) is a reliable, sustainable initiative that Southern Baptists can use to make long-lasting differences in the lives of families at risk of starvation all over the world. With no administrative or overhead fees, Global Hunger Relief offers the unique guarantee that 100% of your gifts go directly to meeting hunger needs in North America and abroad.

Though some funding is used for immediate needs such as supplying food during a famine or natural disaster, most of the GHR projects are intentionally focused on establishing durable solutions to end global hunger one community at a time. These efforts include job skills training, clean water development, medical care, and human trafficking aftercare for survivors.

Vocational training classes help ensure that families don’t relapse into the cycle of generational poverty by equipping them with practical skills such as tailoring, soap-making, and livestock husbandry to help them either start businesses or enter the workforce.

Many diseases in agricultural or low-income regions are water-borne and can infect entire communities, so clean water projects are essential—if a family finally has access to nutritious meals but cooks their food with contaminated water, the food distribution becomes pointless.

As previously mentioned, medical care is often unattainable for families struggling with basic food provision, but in order to avoid child exploitation and other desperate “solutions,” medical care is essential to keeping parents healthy and able to work.

Finally, providing aftercare for human trafficking survivors helps ensure that those who have been subjected to trauma in order to support their families have the support necessary to recover and find other means of becoming self-sufficient.

As world food prices continue to rise due to the pandemic, you have the opportunity to help families struggling to keep food on the table discover new hope. On Sunday, Oct. 11—Global Hunger Sunday—your church, small group and family can change lives with your gifts. Download free posters, bulletin inserts, digital slides, devotionals, and more here, and commit to making a difference this October.

Feeding the hungry, nourishing the soul in Charlotte
By / Oct 10

Amid the afternoon bustle of downtown Charlotte, N.C, an unlikely group gathers each day at 3 p.m. around a table in a corner restaurant.

On this particular day, it is a homeless man, a homeless woman, a construction worker, a bus boy and a chef. At the last minute a man in a business suit and a woman in a wheel chair join the others.

Also at the table is Jim Noble, who is leading these people in a daily open-to-the-public Bible study in his restaurant. He is giving them food for both the soul and the body—he makes food available for anyone who shows up at the table.

Noble, who has lived in Charlotte for 10 years, opened The King’s Kitchen, a nonprofit restaurant, in 2010 simply out of a biblical mandate to care for the poor and feed the hungry.

“Feeding the hungry is not an option,” said Noble. “For us to walk by hungry people on the street and not help them is to ignore Jesus, because He said that whatever we do for them, we do for Him.”

As a seasoned, European-trained chef/restaurateur and as an ordained minister, he combined his two passions—food and the gospel— to serve Charlotte’s downtrodden.

One hundred percent of the profits from The King’s Kitchen go to local ministries that feed the hungry.

But, it does more than that. It gives the hopeless a second chance through a restoration program that offers on-the-job training to the unemployable. Some of his employees are overcoming an addiction or have a criminal history.

Part of Noble’s restoration program requires these employees to attend discipleship classes, which can include his afternoon Bible study.

“We (Noble and his wife, Karen) just want to do what Jesus would do if He were to show up in downtown Charlotte,” he said. “We want to go to the broken. We don’t wait for them to come to us. ”

The Nobles’ ministry goes beyond donating their profits from upscale southern dishes like shrimp and grits and “Aunt Beaut’s Fried Chicken.” Each Friday night they gather a group who walks throughout downtown Charlotte to talk to people on the street and pray for them.

Each Thanksgiving they feed people all over Charlotte, whether it is in their restaurant or at area churches. Last year, they fed around 2,500 and Noble expects close to 3,000 this year.

“We can’t do what we do without the buy-in of the local Church. When Jesus gave the Great Commission, he didn’t leave the president of the United States in charge. He didn’t leave Congress in charge. He didn’t leave corporate America in charge. He left us—the Church—in charge,” Noble explained.

“If we believe the gospel, we can’t continue to sit in our pews and do nothing.”

He also urges believers to give if they can’t do—find a person or a local organization who feeds the hungry and fund them.

One simple way to give, Noble says, is to faithfully tithe: “If every believer would tithe faithfully, we would be looking at an altogether different picture when it comes to feeding the poor. There would be no need for a government-based welfare system. We would also be opening more churches instead of closing so many church doors, because people would see the church as a place that offers hope—a place that can meet their needs.”

He pastors a church—Restoration Place—that meets at The King’s Kitchen on Sunday mornings. Many of the people who wander in through the doors are homeless and hungry, looking for nourishment.

“It’s almost like we are a magnet for hungry people, both in the physical sense and in the spiritual sense. Almost every day, someone walks in here and says some version of, ‘I am in need, and someone said you’d help.’

“And that’s what we try to do,” said Noble.

With Isaiah 61—“to proclaim good news to the poor”—as one of his motivations for ministry, he hopes that churches across the United States will become passionate about participating in the restoration work of the gospel through serving the poor, the hungry and the otherwise marginalized.

“One day, Jesus is going to present us without spot or wrinkle. Holy. And blameless. We have our marching orders all throughout Scripture to minister to those who are lacking,” explained Noble. 

“Jesus did the work on the cross, but we are called to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. And one of the best ways we can do that is to care for those who need a hand.”