Our food ministry and our jail ministry expand

Food ministry finds additional ways to serve the community

The food ministry at St. Stephen’s Church continues to implement new ways to support those who suffer from financial hardship and food insecurity.

Parishioner Geri Hall and her coworkers at United Healthcare are attending the Monday afternoon food pantry once a month to help patrons get connected to free healthcare and to supplement Medicare or Medicaid benefits they may already receive. United Healthcare may also be able to host COVID and flu vaccine clinics during pantry hours in the future. This budding partnership is a wonderful step to more fully serve the basic needs of those who shop at the pantry.

The Farmers Market @ St. Stephen’s is applying to accept SNAP benefits at the market. SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (what many used to call “food stamps”). Within a year, we hope that customers with SNAP benefits will be able to use their SNAP funds to purchase nourishing foods. A further partnership with Virginia Fresh Match, administered by Shalom Farms, will mean that those customers will be able to receive fresh produce at 50 percent off, while the market’s produce vendors still receive full price for their products.

Food ministry volunteers will soon be delivering groceries to a third senior housing community in Richmond. We already deliver groceries to two locations run by Virginia Supportive Housing, and are excited to add a third with a different organization, Dominion Place.

By Anna Jones

Ministry to those in jails and prisons enters a new phase

During the pandemic, the regular visits parishioners made to offer Bible study and Holy Communion to those incarcerated in the Richmond City Jail were not permitted by the jail, in order to limit the spread of COVID-19. We have missed these weekly visits and look forward to resuming them.

While we have not been able to visit during the past year, however, we have begun planning for the future.

We hope and expect to be able to return to making visits this fall. In addition to resuming visits to the Richmond City Jail, we are seeking to expand these visits to one other area jail, and a Virginia Department of Corrections facility.

In addition, staff members have spent the summer asking what we—as a community of faith—can do to expand our ministry to those incarcerated to reach beyond jail and prison walls. Often, the programs and services offered in these facilities for release and reentry are inadequate. For too many newly released men and women, a lack of basic job and education skills, as well as the absence of a community of care and support to assist them in reordering their lives, leads to a cycle of repeat offending. St. Stephen’s Church can be a leader in programs and services for those seeking to move beyond their time behind bars.

With these things in mind, and as a reflection of the role our community of faith plays in restoring all of us to wholeness, we’ve begun to refer to our jail ministry as a restorative justice ministry.

If you would like to join other parishioners and staff in serving in this area of our outreach ministries, please be in touch with Ron Brown, rbrown@ststephensRVA.org. Participants go through a discernment and training process before being placed on a team to go to the jail and take Holy Communion and Bible study.

By Larry Bidwell

Sarah Bartenstein