Church partners with school to sponsor program
for students, families

It’s been said that mission opportunities are found not only across oceans or continents, but right next door or across the street. That’s certainly true in Indiana, where First Baptist Church of Monticello is partnering with the school across the street―Woodlawn Elementary School―to offer the Family Education Action Support Team (FEAST), in which students and their families gather once monthly for a meal and activities.

The Rev. Ryan T. Bailey was looking into American Baptist Home Mission Societies’ Missional Church Learning Experience (MCLE) as a way to, as he puts it, get the congregation “plugged back in to the community.” The connection had been lost years earlier, he says, when the church closed the daycare it had run for decades.

Bailey says he told the congregation: “God is already at work at the school across the street. The question is: Do we want to go over there and see what’s going on?”

Church members were shocked, he says, when he shared the principal’s revelation that 25 percent to 30 percent of the school’s student body have or had at least one incarcerated parent. Students at all grade levels—kindergarten through fifth—were recommended by teachers, and invitation letters were mailed to families.

“We thought it important to invite the whole family―not just the kids―to show the whole family that they are valued and to give them the opportunity to do something together as family,” Bailey says. “These families come in all different shapes and sizes.”

The program is run by church volunteers, school staff members who volunteer, and a community volunteer. The church’s senior ladies do the cooking, and the food is transported to the school, where it is served in the combination gym-cafeteria. The school was chosen as the meeting place because it’s considered a safe and nonthreatening environment for participants.

The group met for the first time in November 2011 for a Thanksgiving-style meal, followed by a magician and time in the school’s computer lab. Following December’s meal, participants decorated Christmas cookies and created Christmas cards.

Participants and school administrators alike have expressed their thanks to the church, Bailey says.

While only one child in the congregation attends the school, says Bailey, the effort was spearheaded by an MCLE team member whose grandchildren attend the school.

“This project has functioned as a way to reintroduce the church to the community and vice versa,” Bailey says. “It really opened the eyes of a lot of people in the church.”

For more information about MCLE, contact the Rev. Glynis LaBarre, American Baptist Home Mission Societies transformation strategist, at glynis.labarre@abhms.org or 800-222-3872, x2412.

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