GOOD SAMARITAN: Jane Lippert

Dec. 24—TRAVERSE CITY — In her office right next to the fellowship hall where she oversees community outreach Jane Lippert says she never imagined her clerical career would go down this path.

And she couldn't be happier that it did.

After a yearlong sabbatical eight years ago, she remembers exactly how it all started.

Lippert was sitting next to her daughter in church when she noticed something out of the corner of her eye.

Her daughter held up the Sunday bulletin and gestured toward a new opening at Central United Methodist Church. It was for a community outreach coordinator.

"Mom this is so you," Lippert remembers her saying.

Now, at eight years, she's now done it longer than her predecessors ever had.

As a minister with the Methodist congregation, it's typical to receive placements for where the church needs staff members to go.

Prior to returning up north — Lippert is originally from Manistee — she served as a pastor in churches throughout the state. Her longest stint in ministry was 13 years co-planning a new church in Grand Rapids.

Lippert transformed Central United Methodist into a key stop on the trail of resources that homeless people use each weekday.

The church offers free breakfast in its fellowship hall Monday through Friday and serves as a place where people can have their mail sent and work with providers from different organizations.

It's become a morning spot where someone can take a shower, pray with Lippert and receive a hot and nutritious free meal. It's the only place in Traverse City that offers a free hot breakfast, Lippert said.

"The meals are obviously the big thing," Leo Oram, a homeless man living in Traverse City, said at breakfast one morning when asked about the services that Lippert and Central provide. "Also, in the winter time they will open a bit earlier so we can come inside and warm up. If it's really cold — they'll open up early."

According to Oram, most people who stay at Safe Harbor the night before will walk straight over to the church to have breakfast.

"Pastor Jane is one of my great friends, and I know all of the people that work back there by name," he said. "I try to tell people that, listen, these people are volunteers. They could be at home watching TV right now, but they're up here making you breakfast. I'm one of those people. You gotta show some respect."

Mary Forness, a longtime volunteer cook for the program, said preparing breakfast each day is a small way she can give back to the community.

"I've had the privilege of working with Jane, who's an amazing leader," she said. "She provides great leadership and supports volunteers and then I have a really nice crew who I work with."

Something Lippert has strived to expand during her tenure is community partnerships at the breakfasts.

That way, the homeless don't need to walk to another location to receive vital services, including medical care from Street Medicine; HIV and other sexually-transmitted-disease testing; resources and housing vouchers from the Northwest Michigan Community Action Agency; a peer recovery counselor from Catholic Human Services; free haircuts from a hairdresser; counselors from Northern Lakes Community Mental Health; social work services from the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians; and individualized meetings with Goodwill Street Outreach coordinators.

Some people ask Lippert to pray for them. The 65-year-old has a practice each night of lighting prayer candles. She lights them in honor of both those who ask and those who don't.

Lippert "is an incredibly inspiring and selfless individual," Goodwill Northern Michigan officials said in a statement. "The impactful work carried out by Central United Methodist for people experiencing homelessness has a transformative effect on both individuals and our community."

Lippert hasn't always served in this community-organizing role. The program was in place before she took the job.

"It started real small," she said. "It's a downtown church, and so a lot of folks would drop in and ask for help in some form, and so the pastor hired someone to meet with folks a morning a week."

It expanded into what it is today.

"It grew really organically from just doing what you could for a small circle of people in need — and it happened to be a need of a greater circle of folks," she said.

One area that Lippert said she's focused on in her new role is nutrition.

She said she put a moratorium on people delivering leftover cake and cookies to the church.

"If you don't want to throw it away, then I'll throw it away — but we're not having cake for breakfast," she said with a laugh. "We might have cinnamon rolls once a week with our oatmeal, but I've had a lot of fun with Food Rescue because when they come, you don't know what's coming."

One week, for example, they might have cauliflower and broccoli as a vegetable for lunch. She said that's when she gets creative and preps both, serving one and freezing the other for a later date.

"The nutrition has been really important and I've learned so much about how food is medicine," she said. "This population, like young children and elderly, have a lower immune factor so you have to be really careful as to how you prepare, and the cleanliness standards as well as having types of food available that will give them a chance to be healthy."

On Mondays, the church serves waffles and sausage. But in order to get extra protein in each serving, the cooks will put extra eggs in the waffle batter.

"Everyday, there's fruit," she said. "There's always fruit at breakfast, whether it's from Food Rescue or it's canned."

Some of the vegetable favorites they've served include squash, Brussels sprouts and asparagus.

"You just can't make assumptions, they just hadn't had it," she said. "Usually, food that's donated to food pantries and so on is not healthy. Macaroni and cheese is yummy — I like it — but it's not very healthy."

"A lot of foods that are devoid of nutritional value, they might fill you up, but they aren't doing your bodies any favors."

She said that's something many who donate food items might not realize because she never did.

"They don't think through, because they haven't had to," she said. "Or to think how important nutritious food could be, and how medical costs for a community could go down if we can help people with their mental health and their nutritional health, get dental care, be able to take medications. It's just so important."

Lippert said the range in age of people who are homeless has changed over the years. She said she sees more elderly people in addition to the young adults the church has been serving.

The primary reason, she said, is a lack of affordable housing, meaning that the average Social Security check can't afford to buy or rent a residence in Traverse City.

Zumper, a rental research firm, estimates that the median rent in Traverse City is $1,695 a month. Meanwhile, national data from the Social Security Administration shows that the average check for recipients is $1,781.63 a month.

Many of the resources that were available to help keep people in their homes in Michigan during the COVID-19 pandemic have ended, including eviction moratoriums, increased supplemental income and Bridge cards.

In Traverse City, Lippert said that means an increase in the number of people who are living in their cars.

"Because that's the first thing that happens, right? You lose your home, you have a vehicle, but then insurance, gas, repairs," she said. "So, we started focusing on the financial help that we had to be available for car repairs because it's easier — although it's not easy — to get help with utilities because it's not amorphous and it's set and easier to track."

The Father Fred Foundation, the Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul all offer grants for those repairs, too, she said.

"That's kind of a gap that we try to help with," Lippert said.

This year, the number of people the church serves has increased. "It used to be that we didn't see the types of numbers we are seeing again right now until January or February, when it was the coldest of months."

The church is now serving 80 to 90 people a day at breakfast; the church used to serve 30 to 50 breakfasts a day.

"Lunches have been high for a while — over 100 — but now they're up in the 130s," Lippert added. "For the first time since I've been here, we served 100 meals at a breakfast. The food costs have gone up. It takes a lot of creativity for me to figure it out."

Food pantries are also seeing an increase in customers.

"It's not just a blip for us either," she said.

In addition to receiving food from Food Rescue and the Northwest Food Coalition, Lippert said the funding for breakfasts also comes from the church, independent donors and fundraisers.

That money is used in part to help foot the weekly food bill at Gordon's Food Service for staples, the eggs, milk and cheese that, Lippert said, "we just have to have." They can almost fully cover lunches with Food Rescue donations.

About half of her daily volunteer staff come from the congregation at Central United Methodist. Others come from other area churches or no church at all, as Lippert put it.

"I really, until I got to Traverse City,... had not worked with folks who are everywhere but who are often hidden," she said. "I feel very fortunate because every day I feel like I've done something right. It might be something small, but every day we're feeding people and, as a Christian, the simplest thing Jesus ever said was, 'When you feed somebody else, you're feeding me.' "

Returning to northern Michigan also feels like a gift, Lippert said.

"For me, I feel like I'm able to fulfill that commandment every day. On top of which, I really love people and I think everybody deserves to be respected and treated like a worthwhile, precious human being. All of us deserve that."