Frederick church takes to the aisles to collect for charities

Aug. 13—The congregation of the Collective Church had an unusual service Sunday morning.

Instead of their usual worship in their space on Pegasus Court outside Frederick, members of the nondenominational Christian congregation met in the parking lot of the Weis Markets on Prospect Boulevard for their annual Supermarket Buyout event.

From 8 a.m. to noon, a steady stream of shoppers pushed shopping carts loaded with food to tables where volunteers sorted it and loaded it into trucks to be distributed to various charities.

"It's chaos, in the best way," said Michael Bartlett, the church's pastor.

The event was the culmination of a week of service projects for members of the Frederick church, said Danielle Sexton, the director of the church's Next Step program.

Participants were given a shopping list of food and hygiene items to benefit the Frederick Rescue Mission, the city of Frederick's Department of Housing and Human Services, Blessings in a Backpack, Care Net Pregnancy Center of Frederick and The Freedom Center.

Shoppers could buy whatever they wanted from the list, and as much or as little of any item as they wanted, Sexton said.

It's the fourth year the church has held the event, which is scheduled to coincide with the beginning of the school year, Bartlett said. It's a chance to help local charities refill their food pantries, which often dwindle during the summer months, as well as draw attention to the problem of food insecurity in a community as relatively prosperous as Frederick, he said.

Donations spike during the winter holidays, but donations usually drop during the summer when kids are out of school, families are on vacation and people generally have other things on their minds, said Sarah McAleavy, the supervisor of food nutrition for Frederick's Department of Housing and Human Services.

Her office usually receives more than 40,000 pounds of food during the winter holidays but just a fraction of that in the summer, she said. And, she added, the demand is actually greater in the summer, since children don't have access to the meals they get in school.

"There isn't anything in the summer to help those families," McAleavy said.

Angela Abrishami, director of Blessings in a Backpack, said donations have dropped even more than usual this summer. Rising food prices can cause people to have trouble just feeding their own families, she said.

Her organization sends weekend packages home with students during the school year, with two entrees, two breakfast meals, two servings of fruit, and two healthy snacks, Abrishami said. Events like Sunday's help them off-set their food costs.

"The need is just so great right now, Abrishami said.

This is the first year they've added hygiene items to the shopping list, Bartlett said.

He hopes that his congregation continues for more than just a Sunday in August.

"Our dream is that throughout the year, people from our church find that donating to these organizations is a regular part of their lives," he said.

Inside the store, congregation member Bethany Byron wore an orange "For Frederick" t-shirt as she made her way through the aisles, as did others who participated in the event. She put eight bottles of shampoo into her cart, then moved on to look for toothpaste.

As the clock ticked toward 11 a.m., with another hour of shopping to go, the event's volunteers had put stars next to items they still needed.

While the final totals will be announced to the congregation next Sunday, Sexton wrote in an email that, by 11 a.m. on the day of the event, they were more than halfway toward their goal of collecting 15,000 pounds of food.

Byron said she attends the church regularly, but this was the first year she had participated in the shopping event.

"I've never been part of a church that did that," she said.

Nearby, Jessica Gillis pushed a cart filled with Gatorade and boxes of cereal as her son Brysan, 4, clung to the front. It was her first year participating in the event, but her mother had volunteered in the past, Gillis said.

Brysan had helped pick out the cereal choices, his own favorite meal, she said with a laugh. She liked the fact that the church is active in helping the community, she said, and that the event helped teach her son about learning to give.

That's one of the goals of the event, as a chance to talk to children about giving and the problem of food insecurity, said Bartlett, whose children are 8 and 4 years old.

It's part of reimagining what the spirit of worship can be, Bartlett said.

"This is church. Church can look like this, and that's okay."

Follow Ryan Marshall on Twitter: @RMarshallFNP