Nightmare at Hillcrest Baptist Church

2: The number of days I've missed work this week.

This is on account of I am ill with some mysterious new sickness that turns all my bones into rubber, my muscles into Jell-O, and places what feels like double-edged sandpaper down my throat, therefore making it incredibly painful to swallow. I've been exhausted all week, and spent most of the last two days buried under my comforter while entire seasons of "Friends" played on my computer.

But we're going to put all of that aside, because I did promise everyone an explanation of that little side note on my last blog post about my rage subsiding over an incident I had at the beginning of this month. I know it has been intriguing all ye invisible readers since I mentioned it, so here it goes. Nightmare at Hillcrest Baptist Church (In Carlisle, Ohio).

Kaitlyn and I have been doing site recruitment; that is, we've been going out to our seven counties and knocking on doors to places we feel might make good Benefit Bank sites. This includes foodbanks, churches, whathaveyou, any place that reaches out to promote available resources for struggling families.

Which brought us to Hillcrest Baptist Church. We went in and asked for the name on our contact sheet, who was the person who mostly worked with food distribution and whatnot. She wasn't in, but the man there (we assumed he was the pastor) and his secretary or assistant or whoever, offered to sit down and talk with us anyway.

So at first Kaitlyn and I thought that this was a nice guy, because we don't come across a lot of people who are willing to take time from their schedules to sit down with strangers (even though we send out letters ahead of time). The first thing he asked us was "Is this a government program, or is this faith-based?"

"Well, actually it's a little of both. See, the Ohio Benefit Bank was implemented through a public-private partnership of--"

"I don't want to be involved in any governmental program."

"...Okay, well with the Ohio Be--"

"Let me repeat myself, are you hearing what I'm saying? I don't want to be involved in any governmental program."

It turns out that Hillcrest used to be a partner of Shared Harvest. Used to be, because once they realized they couldn't distribute God-fearing pamphlets in addition to the bags of food, they cut all ties (it's USDA government food). Hm...Who Would Jesus Feed? Well, no one apparently, because they shut down the whole thing.

We tried to convince this guy that we were there that day to represent the Ohio Benefit Bank, which does not deal at all with food distribution, but it was hard to get two words in. It turned into this whiney little wannabe pity-party, in which he and the woman with him complained about a couple of people who had come in to ask for help and either hadn't said "Thank you" or had continued to come in for years. Okay, sir, well a bag of food isn't gonna get a family through a few years, it's going to get them through a few days. These government programs help with actual sustainability.

But again, he just would not hear us out. They had too many judgments about people living in poverty, which is just incredibly disappointing. Because he's probably feeding that stigma to everyone who comes through those doors. After about a half hour of this, Kaitlyn said something along the lines of, "This is what we do, we find new sites to use the Benefit Bank so people are aware of what help is available wherever they go to eat, work or pray--" and Mr. High and Mighty said, "Oh, your job today, that's pretty easy."

This guy has no clue. We were so incredibly offended. We finally grabbed our stuff, told them we could tell they weren't interested and not to expect a follow-up call, and left.

So that's the story about the Hillcrest Baptist Church that still has me fuming. I did realize that if this had happened to me several years ago, I don't think I'd be as fired up as I am now. I mean, I would still be incredibly annoyed and offended, but I don't know if I'd feel as passionate about it as I do now. That's what a year in Americorps will do to you. And I'm glad it did.