ELCA World Hunger

ELCA Domestic Hunger Grants

Congratulations to Yakima Union Gospel Mission for receiving a Domestic Hunger Grant for the 2022-2024 three-year period! Many thanks to Christ Lutheran Church, Yakima for working closely with Yakima UGM to accompany those benefiting from this ministry.

Yakima Union Gospel Mission joins Shalom Ministries of Spokane, who received a three-year Domestic Hunger Grant in 2021 with support to accompany those in need in Spokane. Shalom Ministries works closely with St. Mark Lutheran, Spokane.

We are church together, working toward a just world where all are fed.

ELCA World Hunger Domestic Hunger Grants accompany congregations and their partners throughout the United States and Caribbean as they draw on the strengths of communities to address local issues such as food security, clean water, housing, job readiness, human rights, policy change, leadership development and more. Together, these ministries are part of a comprehensive approach to breaking the cycle of poverty and hunger — for good.

Including Yakima Union Gospel Mission ELCA World Hunger gives thanks that 57 ministries across the ELCA have been recommended for 2022 ELCA  World Hunger Domestic Hunger grants for a total 3-year (2022-2024) investment of over $1,000,000.

Join us in celebrating these transformative, holistic, and integrated ministries that are casting a vision of God’s just world where all are fed in each of their communities through their work and relationships.

The 57 ministries awarded 2022 Domestic Hunger Grants (majority 3-year awards) will join 85 current Domestic Hunger Grants awarded in 2020 and 2021 that are already at work including Shalom Ministries, Spokane, WA.

The total award list is posted here.

This year’s timetable for DHG applications starts with registration from March 18- May 6, 2022. Applications are then accepted from April 11 until May 20, 2022; Application review occurs from June through October. DHG Award announcements will occur in November, 2022.

Big Dream Grants

Twelve ministries have been awarded Big Dream grants of up to $75,000 each, representing more than $1.4 million in investment from ELCA World Hunger. Responding to this moment of opportunity for significant and immediate action with our partners across the ELCA, these grants will support projects promoting access to affordable housing, racial equity, intersections of agriculture with faith, and more. Together, these “Big Dreams” will demonstrate the powerful collective possibilities for this church to impact domestic hunger and poverty. 

Daily Bread Matching Grants

In addition to Domestic Hunger Grants, ELCA World Hunger also offers the opportunity to apply for Daily Bread Matching Grants. These matching grants support congregations and their partners as they work toward a just world where all are fed. ELCA congregations with feeding ministries are eligible to participate.

As part of the ELCA’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ELCA World Hunger Daily Bread Matching Grants will be made available to congregations on a first-come, first-served basis as they provide daily bread for neighbors in need. Registrations and applications for 2023 Daily Bread Matching Grants wil open April 25, 2022. Visit ELCA.org/dailybread to learn more!

ELCA World Hunger is Transformative

Transformative ministries work to break down barriers, reduce inequality and build strong relationships that can move us toward a just world where all are fed. Transformative ministries build relationships across the lines that divide our communities with an eye toward justice for all. This might look like projects focused on reducing disparities based on race, gender, economic status, sexuality or citizenship.

Hear About Kenneth’s Story

ELCA World Hunger is Holistic

The ELCA is called to be both a serving and a liberating presence in the world, meeting the immediate needs of neighbors through mercy and working for long-term, systemic change through advocacy. For example, many holistic ministries start with food — and then address the broader challenges that lie at the root of hunger and poverty. Holistic ministries may address these root causes by creating opportunities for people facing hunger to advocate for meaningful policy change, or they may organize the people most affected for collective community action. 

Hear about Holistic Feeding Ministries

ELCA World Hunger is Integrated

Integrated ministries draw on the many strengths of communities to respond to need in multiple, related ways. Maybe this means providing food for families while advocating for affordable housing, building case management into a financial literacy program, or providing safe space for people who are vulnerable while offering job readiness assistance. Addressing multiple causes of hunger and poverty through integrated services can make ministries and projects more sustainable and effective.

Read the story of Table Grace Café, an integrated ministry in Omaha, Nebraska

ELCA World Hunger promotes the presence of God in all of creation because we are church together, working toward a just world where all are fed.

A Time For a Reset

By Elizabeth A. Eaton

In the first seven chapters of Genesis, we move quickly from the glory of creation to disobedience, expulsion from the garden and fratricide to the wickedness of humankind. We read, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). God’s beautiful creation, in harmony with itself and its creator, had gone completely off the rails. God had given the creation as a gift—and the gift was rejected. Time for a reset.

“And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry I have made them’” (Genesis 6:6-7). Then, in chapter 7, we get the flood.

This is a story of God’s deep and terrible pain. We were created by love for love. And now this terrible betrayal moves God to destroy God’s own precious creation. Another part of this tragedy is that human disobedience and arrogance resulted in the destruction of creation. It is too deep for me to understand the depth of God’s horror when beholding how twisted humankind had become and God’s agony in sending the flood. 

Some days—or if I am honest, many days—I want to press the reset button. We are still stuck in this pandemic. The whole world is anxious and angry and grieving. And though the world is living through this together, not all people are affected equally. Some (I among them) have access to vaccines, medical care, a safe home in which to shelter and the privilege of working from home. And this is just one pandemic.

There is the continuing pandemic of racial inequity. When I say the Pledge of Allegiance, I want to believe that we are a people “with liberty and justice for all.” Whether we see the racial inequities laid bare, feel freedom threatened by mask and vaccine mandates, or see voting rights threatened—all positions voiced by members of this church—it is painfully clear that we aren’t living up to that pledge. There are societal forces that seek to tear us apart and set us against each other. And as I write this, Russia appears to be on the brink of invading Ukraine and plunging Europe into war.

 Over and over again humankind has betrayed the hope God has for us. God declared the creation very good. We have fallen short. This must certainly be a time for a reset. I can think about how I would reset. Many others in our church who have been wounded by society, and even the ELCA, would have legitimate cases for what needs to be reset. And I wonder, if all of us simultaneously pressed the reset button, would that cancel all of us out?

And God said to Noah, “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth (Genesis 9:11). The rainbow, interestingly, is the sign of this covenant with all of creation, a rainbow that only comes after a storm. This is God’s reset. 

We are in a storm. In no way would I minimize nor silence the real pain experienced by our people. But I want to hold out the truth and the promise of God’s ultimate reset—the death and resurrection of Jesus. In this act of redemption, God has brought about the reconciliation of all people and of all creation. This reset, though not completely realized, gives us a way to speak and hear truth from one another.

Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:32).

A monthly message from the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Her email address is bishop@elca.org. This column originally appeared in Living Lutheran’s March 2022 issue. Reprinted with permission. © ELCA

Learn Healthy Ways to Process Grief

Dear Faith Leaders,

 On Wednesday, March 23, we welcome ICF-certified Grief Coach and End of Life Coach Jason O'Neill to share skills to deal with the personal and collective losses we experience on a daily basis, yes still. Learn ways to support the healthy processing of loss and grief for yourself and for those you care about. You are invited to bring authenticity and vulnerability into this gathering as we learn together and are reminded we do not have to journey alone.

 Jason is part of the support team for ELCA Coaching, as well as the Synod Communicator and Assembly Planner for the Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana Synod. Jason has been coaching for nearly a decade, has earned their ACC accreditation with the ICF, and has nearly completed all requirements for their PCC. Jason believes in the power of community and does their best to work, live, and coach through a lens of interrelatedness, as referenced by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from Birmingham Jail: "In a real sense all life is inter-related. All [people] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be."

Read more and join zoom link