Episcopal churches, food pantries prepare to aid 42 million Americans on food assistance

[Episcopal News Service] Food ministries across The Episcopal Church have been offering aid to federal workers furloughed or working without pay since the Oct. 1 start of the government shutdown, and they are also gearing up to help even more people if food assistance benefits for an estimated 42 million Americans run out on Nov. 1.

Nourishing Bethesda, a nonprofit that began five years ago as an outreach ministry of St. John’s Norwood in Chevy Chase, Maryland, already has seen an increase in the number of people seeking food help, executive director John Ross told Episcopal News Service. That largely is because many furloughed and unpaid federal workers are in metro-Washington, D.C.

“We had been seeing eight-to-10 new people every week,” he said. “Last week (Oct. 23-24), we had 50 new people.” They aren’t all federal workers, he said, but include people who are feeling the effects of those people not getting paid. “It’s the people who mow their lawns or take care of their kids, the wait staff when they’d go out to eat, who clean their houses and deliver items,” Ross said.

Nourishing Bethesda now regularly serves 7,000 people every month, and should the loss of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits happen, that number will grow, he said. SNAP assistance helps people with low incomes, as well as some older or disabled people, buy food at grocery stores, neighborhood markets and farmers markets.

St. John’s Norwood will continue to support Nourishing Bethesda’s work by earmarking all undesignated offerings at this weekend’s All Saints Evensong to the agency, Sharon Lopilato, the church’s communications specialist, told ENS.

When Congress voted not to fund the U.S. government for fiscal year 2026, which started on Oct. 1, it meant that SNAP would run out of money on Nov. 1, and its debit-like EBT cards would not be refilled.

Since the shutdown began, at least 670,000 federal workers have been furloughed, and another 730,000 have continued to work without pay. Most of them missed their first paycheck on Oct. 24.

More than two dozen states have sued the Trump administration for failing to use SNAP reserve funds to keep benefits from being disrupted. The administration claims these funds can’t be used in this way, although the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that these funds have been tapped to prevent a lapse in benefits during previous shutdowns.

For 2025, the maximum SNAP benefit per person is $298 a month, and for a family of four, it is $994. To receive these benefits, a family’s gross income can’t be more than 130% of the federal poverty level, adjusted for family size. For a family of three, that would be $34,656.

Almost 60% of the people who receive SNAP benefits are children under 18 and adults over 60, according to 2023 U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

At Trinity on the Hill Episcopal Church in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the Rev. Mary Ann Hill announced that the church will begin offering a Friday soup meal on Oct. 31, according to an email shared with ENS.

Hill said the need comes from the number of affected workers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a federally funded research and development center under the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Los Alamos also is home to the National Park Service site – and its workers – that recognizes the Manhattan Project’s work during World War II.

At least two Episcopal bishops have called on their dioceses to help people who will face increasing food insecurity in coming days.

Oklahoma Bishop Poulson Reed on Oct. 28 sent a message to his diocese urging congregations to take up a special collection of money and food for local food banks during the first or second weekend in November, as “a concrete expression of our commitment to our brothers and sisters struggling with food insecurity.”

He added that he would be using discretionary funds to do the same, noting that while the current government shutdown is affecting many, it disproportionately harms the poor, and “as the church, we are always to stand with the poor.”

Western Massachusetts Bishop Douglas Fisher sent a message to his congregations on Oct. 28 offering a variety of ways individuals and churches can help feed food-insecure individuals and families. He noted that some of these people “are in our pews – hard-working families just making it from month to month, elders, single parents and their children. Others are in our local communities – strangers to us but not to God.”

He suggests offering to shop with friends in need and paying for their groceries, giving money to a church toward grocery cards that clergy can distribute, or donating items or money to local food pantries.

The Diocese of Missouri on Oct. 29 released a toolkit to help churches respond to the loss of SNAP benefits. “Feeding Our Neighbors” provides congregations with ready-to-use flyers, referral directories and action steps for working with local food banks and ministries.

In Fort Worth, Texas, 4Saints & Friends Episcopal Food Pantry partners with five local Episcopal churches, as well as other organizations, as a nonprofit whose mission is “providing nutritious food and supportive services to make our community healthy and whole.”

Executive director Ashley Blain told ENS that with support from the Episcopal Health Foundation, staff members were able to meet with elected officials in Washington, D.C., this summer, to share what they were seeing at the grassroots level. From those visits, they knew to expect funding cuts to the 200 regional food banks in the Feeding America network, which prompted them to diversify their food sources.

One solution was to identify needed food items and ask individual supporting churches to donate one of them. “We have the peanut butter church, the canned tomato church and so on,” she said. It not only makes it easier for people to know what canned goods are needed, it also ensures healthier contributions. “We’re very intentional about not wanting to perpetuate a problem, which is the chronic disease epidemic in our area,” Blain said.

“We’re not just focused on feeding people, we’re focused on nourishing people,” she added.

They serve 4,500 people a month, and about 30% of them are receiving SNAP benefits, she said. “I’m expecting now that SNAP will [likely] be on pause, we’ll see an additional uptick in people who need support.”

4Saints, along with Nourishing Bethesda and other pantries, offers a shopping-like experience for those who come to them. Shelves and baskets of food are available from which to pick, which respects people’s dignity and gives them autonomy over what their family eats, Blain said.

She also noted that the Episcopal Health Foundation has tracked the number of Texans who are eligible for food benefits compared to those who receive them, and the gap is large. “There are so many people who would qualify but are not actually receiving [benefits], and that’s just because of the challenges with accessing those programs,” she said.

At food pantries and meal sites across the church, the demand for food assistance already is rising.

The pantry at Calvary Episcopal Church in Louisville, Kentucky, ran out of food on Oct. 21 for the first time in its 50 years. Their plight was featured on the MSNBC network, where Linette Lowe, director of Central Louisville Community Ministries, explained that the pantry serves an average of 130 people each week.

Lowe attributed the increasing demand not only to higher food prices but to increases in rent, insurance, utilities and transportation. “Folks who are particularly vulnerable, folks who are elderly, who are disabled, who have young children at home, folks who are on fixed incomes – they simply cannot make it,” she told host Katy Tur.

St. David’s Episcopal Church in Wayne, Pennsylvania, provides financial support to a variety of organizations in the area including some that serve hot meals. The church’s associate rector, the Rev. Tanya Regli, told ENS that at one of those sites, they had been seeing 30 to 40 people, but that number now is closer to 150. “And it’s just going to get worse,” she said.

The same is true at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Encinitas, California, where its food pantry this year routinely served about 220 families a week, Simeon Bruce, the church’s director of communications, told ENS. That changed on Oct. 23, when the number jumped to 266 families, a 21% increase.

Pantry director Cynthia Heigold is applying for additional funding through a special state grant, since the church expects the need to grow. “The cost of living is already a struggle for so many families,” Bruce said, noting the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the area is $3,000.

Calvary Episcopal Church in Fletcher, North Carolina, has seen a similar rise in demand, Abby Suarez, the church’s parish and churchyard administrator, told ENS. Its food pantry had been serving 115 people each Saturday it was open, but on Oct. 18 that number jumped to 144 – a 25% increase.

Suarez said she recently took a call from a woman who was about to lose SNAP benefits and was asking about assistance. “She said that it is especially hard to go into the holiday season low on resources, since our area [Western North Carolina] went through the holidays last year struggling to recover from Hurricane Helene,” Suarez said. “I could hear the dread in her voice.”

Here are ways other churches are working to provide food to those who need it, based on replies to ENS queries across various platforms:

• St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, is asking members to contribute more items to its food pantry, which is open weekly. It also provides bags of groceries to people who can’t get to the pantry and to people served by Virginia Supportive Housing, a local nonprofit. It also offers a weekly farmer’s market.
• St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Jamestown, New York, is partnering with the Jamestown Farmers Market to provide $15 in market vouchers, up to $60 per family, for SNAP recipients and unpaid and furloughed federal workers. The effort has provided more than $7,000 in assistance so far. The church also is providing space in its building this winter for the market, beginning Nov. 1.
• St. Columba’s Episcopal Church in Kent, Washington, is gearing up to double the amount of food in its food bank, while awaiting word on whether the state will extend benefits beginning Nov. 1. If needed, Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Federal Way, Washington, will provide additional volunteers for St. Columba’s food minstry.
• St. Francis Episcopal Church, Stamford, Connecticut, is setting up a financial “virtual food drive” to support Connecticut Foodshare, the local affiliate of Feeding America.
• St. John’s Cathedral in Jacksonville, Florida, already asks parishioners to bring a bag of groceries to church each week but is encouraging them to increase the amount of food they bring.
• St. John’s Episcopal Church in New Braunfels, Texas, is providing parishioners with an Amazon Wish List of items needed by the local food bank. Items will be shipped to the church for delivery in bulk, taking a load off food bank workers.
• Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Hastings, Michigan, is planning to buy gift cards for the Thanksgiving meal the supermarket chain Aldi is offering. They also are hoping to provide a sack of groceries to guests at their Saturday community breakfast.
• Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge, New Jersey, is providing special donation boxes made by parish children to help people who are food insecure. It also has added “SNAP Aid” to its online giving options.
• St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Arlington, Virginia, is asking everyone attending the parish annual meeting Nov. 2 to bring food for the local food pantry. In addition, undesignated offerings that day will benefit the pantry. The church also will be launching a “food and fund” drive to run through January, which the pantry reports is its hardest month.
• Church of the Holy Communion in Memphis, Tennessee, is hoping to expand its annual Advent canned-ham drive to a ham-plus effort to collect hearty soups, canned meals and more.
• St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Durham, North Carolina, is asking members to bring more food than usual for donation to Urban Ministries of Durham, the local shelter and food pantry the church helped found years ago.
• St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Barnstable, Massachusetts, is continuing its food efforts – preparing and serving meals at local sites and helping to provide 300 Thanksgiving meals – as the rector, the Rev. Michael Horvath, encouraged all parishioners to explore how they could do more in light of the expected loss of SNAP benefits, asking “What can we offer that makes love tangible?”

— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.