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Faithful Flock To Feed The Masses

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By LAURA FRAZIER

lfrazier@tampatrib.com

Published: November 5, 2008

BRANDON - More than a dozen local churches will mobilize Nov. 23 with a massive mission - to gather enough groceries to stock the shelves of Tampa Bay area charities for an entire year.

George Thomasson, senior assistant pastor at Bell Shoals Baptist Church, said as many as 20,000 volunteers from 14 churches will shop for food with their own money on the Sunday before Thanksgiving and donate it to local food pantries.

"There will be an army of volunteers from all the churches," Thomasson said.

The effort, dubbed Feed The Bay, was launched last year by Bay Life Church in Brandon, whose members in 2007 amassed 30,000 pounds of food in three hours.

The idea for the congregate effort came to light at a luncheon hosted in June by Bell Shoals Baptist. The church held the fete to thank other churches whose members came to their aid in May after their pastor, Forrest Pollack, and his 13-year-old son, Preston, died in a plane crash.

"We discussed partnering to do together what we could not do separately, and decided to expand on Bay Life's program," Thomasson said.

Participating churches will conclude Sunday services early that day, then arm their congregations with preprinted grocery lists and dispatch them to shop at select Publix and Sweetbay stores.

Volunteers will help shoppers unload their carts at trucks stationed in parking lots and later deliver the goods to about a dozen area food banks. Two weeks later, more volunteers will return to the food banks to help organize the food for distribution.

Church members also will serve a free meal to thousands of people the same day at Metropolitan Ministries in Tampa.

They hope to collect about 150,000 pounds of nonperishable food.
Sweetbay will provide trucks and drivers at no cost and has agreed to donate 5 percent of sales from purchases made that day from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. to local charities.

Thomasson said that when he met Pollack about 10 years ago, one of the first things they spoke about was whether or not other churches would be open to partnering to reach out to the people of Hillsborough County. They floated the idea for a while, but it never took off, until now.

"When Forrest died, all these churches responded so beautifully, and sure enough they wanted to do something together," Thomasson said. "In the midst of this tragedy, God is working it out for good in a lot of ways. It's going to be an awesome day."

For information, call Jennifer Clark at (813) 689-4229, ext. 318, or go to www.feedthe bay.org.

FEED THE BAY

Participating churches:

Bay Life Brandon

Bay Life Riverview
Bell Shoals Baptist Brandon
Bell Shoals Baptist East Bay

Celebration

Cornerstone Baptist

The Crossing

First Baptist Brandon

First Presbyterian Brandon

First United Methodist Brandon

First United Methodist Seffner

FishHawk Fellowship

Grace Community United Methodist

St. Andrew's United Methodist

Reporter Laura Frazier can be reached at (813) 657-4523.

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