Fellowship Church, Sidney, recently made a donation to Sidney Public Schools to pay off student lunch account debts.
Giving back to the community is not a new concept for Fellowship Church, which has run Fellowship Food Pantry since 2008, serving over 600 individual clients each year. “Paying it forward is a needed slogan today. If God blesses us with something, we want to use it to bless others as much as possible. We have our food pantry, too. It’s just about trying to take care of people’s needs,” said Pastor Jordan Hall.
The church and all of its missions are fully funded by members of the congregation and generous supporters. “An individual in our church gave a designated gift to make it happen. Our members are always so generous. So we called the school to see how much it would be and just took care of it,” Hall explained.
Sidney Public Schools was chosen as the recipient in an effort to help many community members who may be struggling. In this case, we are aware that kids can get into a small amount of debt on their school lunch accounts before they’re unable to get more lunch. I think it is $10 or so per student,” Hall explained. According to a study by the School Nutrition Association, 75% of surveyed school districts reported unpaid meal debt at the end of the 2016-17 school year. “But imagine if you’re a mom with three or four or five kids and each are behind $10. Then, because you have to prepare a bag lunch for your kids, it puts you further into debt and you’re not able to pay off the lunches and get back on track. So we just thought it would be nice to take care of that for them,” Hall said.
Hall reports that the church will likely continue to donate to take care of school lunch debt. “Everybody in Sidney is our neighbor. And Jesus said to love your neighbor. We should’ve thought of doing it years ago,” he said.
Fellowship Church is located at 2181 W Holly, across from Miller’s Corner. Sunday School begins at 9:45 a.m. MST, and church begins at 10:45 a.m. MST.
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