Every so often someone leans in at coffee hour and asks, a little sheepishly, “What is the Neighbors Fund, actually?” It appears as a line in the bulletin and a checkbox on the giving page, and I realize we have never explained it in one place. So here it is, plainly, in the last week of Lent, the church’s quiet season of getting ready for Easter, while the ice lets go of the lake a little more each morning.
The fund does two things. The first is supper. On the first Sunday of every month, from 5:00 to 6:30 in the evening, we set the long tables in the parish hall and serve a free hot meal to anyone who walks in. There is no sign-up sheet, no suggested donation, no form asking how you heard about us. You do not have to belong to St. Dunstan’s, or to any church, or to any certainty about God at all. You only have to be hungry, or tired of eating alone, which I have come to believe is its own kind of hunger.
This spring the timing is sweet: the next meal lands on Easter Sunday itself. There will be ham, there will be far too many desserts, and the doors will open at five o’clock, same as always.
The second thing the fund does is quieter. Sometimes a month simply goes wrong. A water heater gives out, hours get cut, a funeral is three states away and the bus ticket costs more than there is. The Neighbors Fund covers small, specific needs: a utility bill, a week of groceries, a tank of gas, a prescription. It is handled by me, by Dr. Webb, and by the Parish Office, and it goes no further than us. No committee reads your story. Nothing about it appears in a newsletter. Churches have been keeping confidences for a very long time, and we intend to keep yours.
If you are the one who needs it
Maybe you found this page after running the math again and getting the same answer. Friend, hear me: asking is not a failure. In one of my favorite old stories, the prophet Elijah collapses under a broom tree, completely spent, and God’s first response is not a lecture. It is bread, water, and a nap. Food first, questions later, and remarkably few questions even then.
Here is the entire application process. Call or email the Parish Office, or find me or Dr. Webb after a service, and say, “I could use some help from the Neighbors Fund.” That is the whole thing. We may ask a practical question or two, like whose name is on the bill, so the payment lands in the right place. We will not ask how you got here, and we will not ask you to come to church. Though the red doors are open if you ever feel like trying them.
If you are in a position to give instead, thank you. Every dollar marked for the Neighbors Fund goes to the meal and to that quiet help; the building’s own light bill is paid from other funds. You can give through our Give page or note it on a check in the plate. You will probably never learn exactly what your gift did, and I hope you can make peace with that. Somewhere in town a stove came back on, and that was you.
We named it the Neighbors Fund on purpose. When Jesus was asked to sum up everything, he answered with two loves: love God, and love your neighbor. As I write, it is Holy Week, the church’s name for the days just before Easter, when we remember that on the last night of his life Jesus made sure everyone at the table was fed. We are only trying to keep the recipe.
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