Taking a Leap at Our Saviour, DuBois
“I remember Bishop Sean saying, ‘take that leap and build your wings on the way down.’ That’s what we’re trying to do.”
–Cheryl Mumford, Our Saviour, DuBois
Church of Our Saviour, DuBois, recently collected and distributed 20 bags full of personal care items such as soap, toothbrushes, pens, writing tablets, and hand and toe warmers, as well as socks, gloves, scarves, tarps, ponchos, and bottled water to people without housing, and other members of their small city in the diocese’s southeastern corner.
“We plan to collect and give care packages each month at least until spring,” says Cheryl Mumford, a member of the parish, for whom this ministry has particularly personal roots.
The idea of providing help to members of the DuBois community began in a conversation she had with her late sister, Teresa Whipple. “We wanted to do something without knowing where to begin,” she says. After Whipple’s death, when Mumford was going through her home making decisions about what to keep and what to discard, a neighbor of her father’s told her about Til Vintage, a shop in town that helped re-distribute items to people who needed them.
The experience was enlightening. “The conversation opened my eyes to things I didn’t know in my own town – some of the needs,” Mumford says. “I wondered if the church could do a drive, so I asked for a list of what sorts of things were needed. Folks who are homeless don’t have places to keep their things, so we needed an easy way to consolidate and carry the donations.”
She settled on clear plastic gallon bags and those items that could easily fit inside. She has been “overwhelmed” by the parish’s response. Her intention is to fill bags each month with a rotating list of needed items. “[I]t’s something to give back,” she says. “Because Teresa wanted to give back right up to the end.”
A special education teacher for many years, Whipple’s career in education began as a high school student teaching Sunday School at Our Saviour. After working in Erie and Baltimore, she returned home to live with family after suffering a traumatic brain injury in 2014.
The gallon bags the parish filled were donated to a local community closet and to Haven House, a local shelter. Savannah Bogacki, who owns Til Vintage, has also been “very receptive to helping Our Saviour distribute the care packages,” Mumford says.
In smaller cities and towns, it’s easy not to see the problem of homelessness, says the Rev. Timothy Kroh, vicar at Our Saviour, but the reality is that there are people in tremendous need. “Our Saviour is located on a main road and the number of people I see walking past has increased in the 18 months I’ve been here,” he says.
The ministry of the care packages — or whatever may come next — is a significant step for the parish. “Long-term, we do what we can consistently,” Mumford says. “People don’t open up to you if you only show up once or twice. They need to know they can count on you. Our plans for the coming year will include some traditions from the past as well as new programs, such as the care packages. We need to get to know folks, hear about their experiences, discover from them what more can we do or what different needs can be met. We’re going to ‘see where it grows.’”
Kroh says the new ministry has helped awaken the parish from the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Now we’ve had this great gift of people like Cheryl who want to engage in ministry, who are willing to donate above and beyond,” he says. “It’s incredibly gratifying and encouraging to witness. This willingness to be doing ministry in small communities, still serving Christ in others and building relationships: this is the hope for the future of the church.”
Mumford believes, “ministry with them and not just for them” will lead the parish to new places. “The church is growing and more aware that we are called to be part of the community, not just a closed circle,” she says. “Years ago, Our Saviour was full of activity. As that has changed, there was a feeling of ‘who is going to do these things now?’ We just needed someone to remind us that we are still capable of doing these things.
“We aren’t the big congregation in town anymore but how do we find who we are and live into that? That’s Christian growth: saying ‘I can do that; I can help with that.’ It doesn’t take a laser light show or a Christian band on Sunday mornings to find your gifts and put them to use. Start figuring out what we can still do, the gifts we have as a group, and then translate that to meet the needs around us.”