The Gathering Markit Update
As many of you know, since summer of 2023, we have worked at a partnership with a local non-profit grocery store called The Gathering Markit. The Markit exists to provide meal kits and low-cost groceries to families experiencing food insecurity. We have been one of three locations.
While the need is great, this has been a challenging ministry to operationalize at this season in the life of The Gathering Church and so we will not be re-opening the Markit at this location at this time.
In September, Gathering Markit took on 6 families, and moved the Markit to the Mill Lake site with the goal of training up our leaders, piloting the International Markit concept and then moving it back to our facility in January. This proved to be a significantly larger undertaking than both parties were expecting. The scope of the needs that families have is significant and we often struggled to have sufficient volunteer resources to tend well to the families. The Mill Lake location has 28 volunteers and we have struggled in that department.
The different requirements of adding the International Markit added strain to an already strained system requiring things like driving to Surrey weekly for corn flour to serve west African families, and requiring much larger meal kits with customized ingredients. We have not been able to accomplish this as well as we would have liked. Mary Whiteman, our team leader, has also unexpectedly needed to spend a significant amount of time in Alberta to provide support to family.
So, we need to back up and walk for a bit so that we can be in a position to run in the future. This means that we will have an active and stocked food pantry of non-perishables here on-site for our people who knock on our doors. We see more and more each week. That’s why we have chosen the food items that are listed on the Fill the Cart Sunday list. We want to be part of the solution and be able to say yes to our neighbours in real-time ways and not just when the Markit was open. We will still do Fill the Cart Sundays and stock our pantry and also share our excess back into The Gathering Markit system.
The Gathering Markit will also continue to partner with us on providing ingredients for school lunch kits. For almost a decade now, people from the church have been providing fresh fruit and vegetables for kids at Dormick Park Elementary school across the road. So that is why we are also asking you to fill the cart with things like juice boxes and granola bars. The Gathering Markit team will provide yogurt, cheese, fresh fruit and vegetables. There will be volunteer opportunities for you to come on-site here and make those lunch kits starting in January.
So to summarize - Our heart's intention is still the same. Our goal is still the same: combating food insecurity. We are open to where this might evolve in the future but it can’t be the Markit at our location in January. We’re not ready for that.
This opportunity for the Markit came to us at a time in the life of the church that was timely. It has been a marker of the kind of church we want to be - a hub of practical and spiritual influence in our community. Having the Markit helped us open up to the real needs in our community and how we can serve and partner as a church with other agencies to meet needs in our city.
I want to thank all those who have served and volunteered to pick up bread, to drive families to medical appointments, to figure out how to work a point of sale machine, who have set up and taken down the Markit, who wrote grants, who prayed, who gave … Your labour was not in vain. Lives were touched. People were fed and cared for in meaningful ways. I also want to publicly thank Heike Morton for her tireless leadership, her vision and her ongoing partnership. We remain strong friends and partners and co-labourers in ministry in our city.
I welcome any feedback or questions you have. You can email or call me and we’ll set up a time to get together.
Pastor Brad
