It’s payday, and you’ve written down your wages and itemized what has to come out. Water and electricity, rent or mortgage payment, car payment, gas, prescriptions, and groceries crowd out other needs. Already, more money is going out than coming in. Something has to go to the bottom of the list. For many families, it’s food. To maintain a roof over their heads, they eat less. And many will never mention their need or seek assistance.
But in Tullahoma and surrounding areas, fewer families are hungry thanks to the Family Food Ministry (FFM). With a desire to meet a basic need, FFM became a non-denominational ministry of Westside Nazarene Church, a 501(c)(3) Nazarene Compassionate Ministry.
“We started doing this because there were people we love in our lives that were hungry. When you have a garden and grow too many ears of corn, you have a lot of corn. What do you do? You share it with your neighbors. That’s like wheat we do, said FFM Director David Statum.
“We are privately funded through donations from people throughout the community. We receive no government funds and don’t distribute any government food. I like to say we’re God-funded. We’ve been able to do this with a very, very limited budget. It’s absolutely amazing to see God multiply things. His math is way better than ours,” he said.
Fridays are the primary distribution day each week. Cars line up at the Highland Baptist Church parking lot on West Hickory Street. At noon, FFM directs groups of 15 vehicles at a time to Westside Nazarene’s parking lot, where volunteers place the groceries in the cars. Statum said, “It’s like going to a parade, but instead of throwing candy, we get to put food in their cars and make awesome, wonderful friends [while] doing it.”
The distribution has gotten bigger and bigger since it began three years ago. On a recent Friday, the group served an estimated 1500 families, an average of 2500 people. It takes 54 people to do the Friday distributions, and preparation begins early in the week. The Westside Nazarene congregation is not large,soitisaministrythatrunsonhope, faith,volunteers,anddonations.
“It’s a huge community endeavor. Folks from lots of different religious backgrounds, different churches, people who don’t go to church, and people of different ethnicities work side-by-side. Everybody’s got the same mission, to feed people. We’ve established some really great relationships because we ask how we’re alike, not how we’re different; what brings us together, not what separates us. We focus diligently on what we can do together to utilize our strengths to help the majority of the people,” Statum said.
And it’s a ministry that benefits the volunteers as much as those receiving the groceries.
“It changes things. If you come one time to work and serve, you’ll be hooked and want to come back. So giving or receiving, God gives good gifts, and He doesn’t do anything half-heartedly,” said Statum. For more information, follow Westside Nazarene Church on Facebook or visit westsidenazarene.org. –GN
