Shelter Director Urges: Remember the Needy This Holiday Season
by Jenni Parker and Allie Martin
December 1, 2003
(AgapePress) - The director of a Christian-based homeless shelter in New Mexico says a sluggish economy is having a big impact on the ministry.It is the busiest time of the year at Joy Junction, a Christian mission that has reached out to homeless families in Albuquerque for the past 17 years. Joy Junction serves an average of 150 meals a day, seven days a week. But executive director Jeremy Reynalds says times are tough for his ministry and for others nationwide.
"We have to remind people delicately that ... even though awful things are happening around the world, even though we have a war going on, despite that, there are still homeless women, families, boys and girls, and we just continue to need ongoing help on a month-by-month basis," Reynalds says.
A recent report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service indicates that hunger and food insecurity in America has risen for the past three years in a row (a food-insecure household is defined as one that faces limited or uncertain availability of food). Last year 34.9 million people (12.5%) lived in food-insecure households -- that is 1.26 million more people than the year before -- and that number includes 13.1 million children. And last year, 9.3 million people lived in households in which someone was hungry some of the time; and in about 567,000 households children went hungry -- that is about 100,000 more than the year before.
Reynalds began Joy Junction in 1986 as a way to minister to entire families facing hardship. But now the ministry is enduring hardship of its own as its faces a financial crisis. The director is hoping that people who can give will be generous, even in the midst of war and the uncertain economy, and will not forget those who are struggling to serve and take care of the neediest people.
"Otherwise, not only are we going to have a war in Iraq, and not only are we going to be having still to cope with the aftermath of 9-11, but we're going to end up minus one ministry for the homeless and also [minus] many others around the country," Reynalds says.
The head of Joy Junction blames the drop in donations on a sluggish economy and the decline in the stock market. Still, he believes God will provide whatever his ministry needs to carry it through the remainder of the year.
Reynalds says he is hoping along with others in similar areas of service that, as people see various rescue mission agencies and faith-based ministries working in communities around the nation and perhaps making more strident appeals than normal, "they won't just dismiss those appeals, but will start to pray for these ministries and will start to ask the Lord to pour out his blessings on them on Thanksgiving and during the upcoming coming holiday season."
According to Bread for the World, an international Christian ministry seeking to address hunger, more than 840 million people around the world are undernourished, and every day 31,000 children die from hunger-related causes. And even in the U.S., approximately one child in five lives in a household where someone is hungry or at risk of hunger.
