At South Roebuck Baptist Church, Birmingham, a group of nine people are making a significant impact on the surrounding community.
Rather than Sunday School classes, South Roebuck offers community groups that meet in members’ homes. The groups meet for Bible study, fellowship and prayer, and the church encourages each group to determine a community outreach project their group can tackle.
One community group — led by Katherine Woods and Jon Freeman — decided it was time to “get off the couch and serve.” They first decided to feed the homeless. One of their members, Katie Wagner, then came up with a way to supplement the meals with hygiene products that the homeless need.
“Katie saw this idea — on Pinterest of all places — that talked about filling bags with things like toothpaste and shampoo, and so we began making what we called Bags of Love and giving them to people along with meals,” Woods said.
So far, 75 Bags of Love as well as 75 lunches have gone to homeless people in Birmingham, 40 bags were passed along to female prisoners and 70 boxes of hygiene products and other items were mailed overseas to Afghanistan, Egypt and Iraq, where they were given to U.S. military stationed there.
“The Bags of Love project went well, but then we began thinking, ‘What can we do next?’” Woods said.
Turning back to the Internet once again for inspiration, the community group read a blog post about a woman who had performed 42 random acts of kindness in celebration of her birthday. The group liked the idea of that kind of outreach and decided to take it on as its next project.
The group members have left bags of microwave popcorn on the top of Redbox machines around town, brought gifts to residents at local nursing homes who do not receive many visitors and helped their children leave $1 bills in the toy section of Dollar Tree stores so that other kids would stumble upon them and be able to buy a toy.
“We went out to St. Vincent’s Hospital with a basket of goodies and left it in the ER waiting room with a note that said, ‘Save your money. Have a snack on us,’” Wagner said. “We also left quarters on the tops of vending machines with a note letting people know to ‘have a Coke on us.’”
These acts have made a difference to community members, certainly, but other churches have also caught wind of the effort.
“We’ve had several other churches contact us and ask to participate and help us,” Wagner said. “We’ve had people from Tuscaloosa call and ask for advice for how to start a similar program in their community.”
The South Roebuck community group is sparking inspiration among others within the church as well, according to Russ Donaho, minister of worship and community.
“Something like this is contagious among the body of believers,” Donaho said. “It’s one thing to talk about it in principle, but it’s another to actually do it. Christians need to be out living what they already know they should be doing, and this group is doing just that.”
Share with others: