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NOT BY BREAD ALONE BUT BY EVERY WORD: COLD OR HOT FOOD AND MUSIC MINISTRY By Ben Monroe A DEMONSTRATION PROJECT Submitted to New York Theological Seminary in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF MINISTRY NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, USA 2009 ABSTRACT NOT BY BREAD ALONE BUT BY EVERY WORD: COLD OR HOT FOOD AND MUSIC MINISTRY By Ben Monroe People are hungry in our local communities, surrounding neighborhoods, counties, states, nations and the world. This is no secret to the average person, who follows current events and world history. The average individual on the street knows this to be so by listening, reading, observing and experiencing extraordinary hunger in a personal way. Hunger has no categorized boundaries. Poor people who live in the Appalachians Mountains are hungry. Poor people who live in urban ghetto cities are hungry. People who live in poor and rich nations (wealth) are hungry. (Yes, people are hungry in rich nations, such as the USA because of unequal distribution of food commodities). Therefore, a rich nation/country does not equal fill stomachs. Well-fed people anywhere in the world equal full stomachs, no matter what the nature of the economic level/status. I became aware of the depth of this widespread epidemic, as I researched materials for this Demonstration Project. As I visited food pantries and read materials about the state of hunger in the United States and the world, I realized that relief from physical hunger alone could not answer the problem of spiritual and mental wholeness that people need in order to feel dignity and self-worth. Most food pantries that I visited and read about during my research, such as Long Island Council of Churches, just gave a pre-packaged assortment of food items to customers in a bag and sent them on their way. Through this experience and process, I realized that people could not live adequately by bread alone. Consequently, I begin to think that there is a better way to give out this physical food and meet the other needs of the customers in spiritual and inspirational ways. I think that this is a necessary ministerial area that should be explored to find ways to a holistic approach to ministry. In such a ministry, food becomes not only the means for physical and social survival, but also the basis of dignity in food choices, and a spiritually enhanced hospitality that is meant to comfort people where they need comforting. These things have been taken for granted in food pantry ministries, because Christians tend to take food pantry ministry, along with other one-dimensional ministries, as a ‘do good’ ministry. A questionnaire was given out to a number of food pantry volunteers and the customers who were being served at Holy Ghost Upper Room Filling Station Ministry, Inc. to raise their awareness about the need for an expanded food pantry ministry that included referrals to community services, nutrition education, food choice selection and enhanced hospitality. Workshops and awareness meetings were held, regularly, every Saturday (with few exceptions) from January 2008 through August 2008. One hundred and sixty-seven (167) volunteers attended eight (8) different proposed workshops, from May 3, 2008 through August 2, 2008. Certified VFP workers provided subsequent hands-on training for new volunteers. The response of a core group of volunteers was commendable and encouraging, given that my research informed me that the hardest obstacle to overcome in operating a food pantry ministry is keeping dependable volunteer workers on a regular basis. Hence, recruitment was a constant variable in this Demonstration Project. Copyright © 2009 Ben Monroe DEDICATION This project is dedicated to Mrs. Lillie King and Imhotep Gary Byrd of WBLS/WLIB/WBAI radio stations, New York City. Mrs. Lillie King drove me to and from New York Theological Seminary classes, while making my ministry and education her Christian Missionary work from supportive and argumentative criticism to the point of cooking, cleaning, laundering and moral support. Imhotep Gary Byrd, a friend of mine for decades, saw more room for creativity in my ministry and me and offered to assist me and cultivate broad and valuable principles such as framing multiple constructs of several ministerial dimensions. From his vantage point, with intentions to broaden his own ministry, he suggested that we become mutual mentors sharing different perspectives of ministry and media. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are so many people that helped me complete and implement this Demonstration Project that they could be called a congregation. However, since acknowledging a whole congregation, individually, would require many pages to complete, I will acknowledge several key people, while saluting all the others through our family team connections to produce this work: Pastor Doris Johnson, who provided the site of Holy Ghost Upper Room Filling Station Ministry food pantry for Cold or Hot Food and Music Ministry model to be developed and implemented; Dr. George M. McClain, who guided my proposal through academic and scholarly refinement; Dr. Robert Zuber, my advisor, for giving advice and encouragement to think locally and globally about my Demonstration Project concerns; my site team that fought for me and against me at times, when we struggled with issues that developed – Lillie King, Pearl Hale; Christine Williams, Shatiek Johnson, and Ronald Collier who gave pertinent character advice to me at a critical point in this process; my friends Alysse, Dion, Eli and Hilary at Columbia University’s Social Work Library, who helped me find book resources and were an embodiment of the Enhanced Hospitality that is a part of my work; my professors at New York Theological Seminary, especially Dr. Dale T. Irvin, president, who gave me the opportunity to complete my studies; Jerry Reisig, librarian and educator, who taught me how to battle on from Greek mentoring to English library resources and arrive at the doctorate degree level of education; a special acknowledgement to Dr. Keith Russell, NYTS, for his advisement as I wrote chapter after chapter; Ms. Gilbertha Louis, who volunteered to lend a hand to reading my pages and suggesting places that she thought should be edited; to Roshee Maitland (an embodiment of enhanced hospitality) who helped me with filing and scanning materials for the vi appendices to my work; to Tom Fuller who used his knowledge of standardized formatting of dissertations and computer tools to help me format my Demonstration Project; to my volunteer food pantry workers, who participated in my workshops; all the people who received food and expanded services from Cold or Hot food and Music Ministry, while supporting my work by participating in surveys and filling out questionnaires; and, most importantly, I thank God who gave me life, gifts and a ministry to labor together with God (1 Corinthians 3:9b). vii PREFACE Not by Bread Alone, But by Every Word I began my journey on this work not knowing just what direction I should take in order to complete a doctorate degree in ministry. At the beginning, I thought that an attempt to answer a question of diminishing membership in my local church would be possible and appreciated. However, I was wrong to think that a close friendship with the pastor and his written recommendation to New York Theological Seminary would guarantee a successful Demonstration Project (DP). What I learned from my colleagues and fellow candidates for doctorate degrees is that one must have key leadership people at the helm of a demonstration project in order to have potential success. Though I knew that some people in leadership did not support my seminary endeavors, I kept telling my associates that I would be able to research and find out the answer to the decline of membership at my church. In the end, a meeting was held to determine the status of the leadership in reference to my DP. The results from that meeting were a disaster for me. There were two people out of about six or seven people who opposed me with personal issues that had nothing to do with my ability to do my project. I refused to engage them after a certain line was crossed. Therefore, I was left with the task of finding a new site to complete my DP for my degree. The answer, interestingly enough, emerged from one of the most recent members who had joined the church. This member invited me to share my music ministry with him and others, in August 2006. During the concert, I met other performers who liked my music ministry and I was invited to participate in another concert in September 2006. It was at this concert that I met Pastor Pearl Hale who was so impressed by my talent that viii she introduced my music ministry to Tiffany Gospel Awards for the December, 2006 competition. During the ensuing months I recorded a single song on a CD taken from a church hymnal called “Love Lifted Me.” It was interwoven with a new R&B flavor and an eclectic arrangement. With this approach to music and ministry, I won the Sixth Annual Tiffany Gospel Award for Favorite Duo/Group (Vocal/Band). Early in 2007, Pastor Pearl Hale invited my group, Rev. Ben Monroe & Company, to sing as her guest on several occasions at Holy Ghost Upper Room Filling Station Ministry, Inc., my present DP site. I also had a preaching engagement there during this “getting-acquainted” period. Pastor Hale held a separate religious service at 10 am on Sunday mornings before Holy Ghost Upper Room Filling Station held its services at 12 noon. It was during one sermon (“The Devil Makes Himself Look like the Lord”) that I preached for Pastor Hale’s congregation that Pastor Doris Johnson, the pastor of Holy Ghost Upper Room Filling Station Ministry, heard me speak. Upon the completion of that service, Pastor Doris Johnson asked me to come to her place of worship in the future and preach that same sermon to her congregation. I did so and it is recorded on DVD for my archives, demonstrations and television productions. As I got acquainted with Pastor Johnson, I learned that she operated a food pantry ministry. At first it did not interest me because I was certain that I would do my DP out of my local church. However, when the meeting at All Saints Temple, Church of God is Christ (COGIC) became a disaster in April, 2007, I began to think about how I could expand the food pantry services with a hospitality core. So after exchanges of DP ideas with my doctorate class and professors, I decided to introduce an expansion of the food pantry to the volunteer staff, including referrals to community services, nutrition ix education, food choice selection and enhanced hospitality. The expected result was an increase in vital social and spiritual services to empower and transform the lives of people. I would like to thank West Side Campaign Against Hunger, Long Island Food Pantry and Riverside Church food pantries for allowing me to visit their pantries over various and regular periods of times to learn what I should know and expect in operating a food pantry in general. They prepared me for the expansion of services at Holy Ghost Upper Room Filling Station Food Pantry where my challenge included ceremonial spiritual services for volunteer staff, and welcoming hospitality to others without compulsion. I did not see this degree of hospitality of the spirit operating in other food pantries that I visited and researched. With principles adopted from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, I am calling on a new spirited group of volunteers to get involved and help transform this community with global implication. Like his organizing principles, my intentions are not just designed to transform a local food pantry ministry, but to make this model available and user-friendly (hospitality) by training dedicated volunteers in this community to exemplify a model doable anywhere in the world. Help me help others. Volunteers will participate in an intensive and rewarding training program focused on basic organizing principles. Then, after training and workshops, they will be assigned to a Team of volunteers where they will continue hands-on training of real- world organizing experience that will have a concrete impact on this model, leading to the implementation of Cold or Hot Food and Music Ministry (COHFAMM). Organizing is about more than putting together goals, strategies, evaluations and desired outcomes in order to achieve a complete project. Organizing is an opportunity to x