A church whose members have literally gone door-to-door distributing food to the needy of Union will distribute food at the community center on Horseshoe Circle Monday evening.
Trinity Baptist and Channel of Blessings Ministry, 309 Barnado Road, Union, has been distributing food to the needy of Union for the past 18 months. Pastor Neil Keisler said the church’s food ministry was inspired by an inner city ministry in Spartanburg.
“It was primarily through our relationship with Church Builders that we began our ministry,” Keisler said Thursday morning. “It is an inner city ministry to the homeless and needy of Spartanburg. It’s a lot like The Potters Storehouse in Jonesville. We also have a real, real close relationship with The Potters Storehouse.
“Jim Rutledge, the pastor of Church Builders, told me that ‘You do not minister from the pulpit down, you minister from the streets up,’” he said. “That’s what really changed our outlook on ministry.”
Trinity members also volunteer at The Potters Storehouse food distributions, including this past Saturday. Keisler said the example set by Pastor Don Moore and the congregation of The Potters Storehouse also helped inspire Trinity Baptist to initiate its Channel of Blessings Ministry and begin distributing food to the needy of Union.
Keisler said the church began its ministry by taking food to the neighborhoods and homes of the needy in the inner city areas of Union. While it continues to go to the homes of the needy, the church also distributes food from the community center at 113 Horseshoe Circle which is where its next food distribution will be held on Monday at 7 p.m.
“We go into the neighborhoods, we load up trucks and trailers and go into the neighborhoods,” Keisler said. “We go street to street and house to house. We do distributions at the apartments on Hunt Drive and in the Langleytown area behind the DMV. We’ve also hosted three block parties in Chambertown.
“For the past six months, the Union Housing Authority has allowed us to use the community center on Horseshoe Circle for food distribution,” Keisler said. “We’ll be holding another food distribution there Monday starting around 7 p.m. We’ll have canned goods, non-perishable items, desserts, breads, and meats.”
The church gets the food for its distributions from a variety of sources including Church Builders, The Potters Storehouse, Seeds of Hope in Woodruff, Hunters for the Hungry, Restoration Church in Spartanburg, and donations from individuals. The food, which the church stores in an 1,800 square-foot building in Pacolet, is distributed by Trinity members and other volunteers.
Keisler said the church works closely with the Union Housing Authority to get the word out to people in Chambertown, Hunt Drive, Horseshoe Circle and other areas about the Channel of Blessings ministry. He said word of mouth often does the rest and those in need contact the church to receive food during its distributions.
“In the last seven months we’ve reached out to 1,300 people,” Keisler said. “These were people who contacted us as a result of our work with the Housing Authority and who heard about us through the community.”
For more information and/or to make a donation to Trinity Baptist Church and Channel of Blessing’s food ministry call Rev. Neil Keisler at 864-706-0481.
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