Pastor Blake Bentley, Pickering Community Baptist Church
In the last year, the number of calls to our small church from people looking for assistance with rent, or groceries has grown. In the past, we’d get the odd call, or someone dropping by asking for help. With the rise of inflation, the rise in gas prices, the rise in rent, the rise in the cost of groceries – many families are no longer able to make ends meet.
Pickering Community Baptist Church has been primarily a Chinese immigrant church. Most of the ministries of the church have been aimed at helping Chinese immigrants and sharing the gospel with them. But, we could no longer ignore the weekly calls to our church asking for help. We decided to do what we could.
We are a small church; we don’t have a budget for a food bank. We made a simple plan: we asked for donations. We set up a sign outside that simply said, “Free Groceries.” and decided to give away what we could and stop. Now when someone calls the church looking for help, we have an immediate way to help them. We’ve given out dozens of bags of groceries.
This has opened the door of opportunity for our church. Some we gave groceries to, now attend our church regularly. We’ve had meaningful conversations with our neighbours about the difficulties of life. We’ve offered to pray for them. The needs of our community have presented us an open door. We’ve decided to keep this ministry going. We haven’t done much, but what we have done has given us a place and voice in our community.
