The Clarke County Baptist Center officially has a new building in place to help make serving the community easier.
Now that they have the third building, they are making some changes to make everything go smoother for the community.
“The building is finally here, and we now have three different buildings which handle different areas of what we do,” explained Matthew Johnson, Director at the Baptist Center. “The new building is going to have a big ‘C’ on top of it, which will stand for collection. That is going to be the drop off building. Rather than all the drop offs coming in the main building and us having to move them out there, that building is going to be specifically to drop off food and clothes. The other building will be labeled ‘B’ for benevolence, and that is where people can collect a bag of food and clothes they may need. The main building will be labeled ‘A’ for administrative and will hold all the administrative offices and the area for different events and bible studies.”
Another change that will take place is the time frame to collect items from the benevolence building. They will need volunteers each week to sit possibly from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Monday thru Thursday.
“We’re going to be more structured with hours and times for when people can come collect things from ‘B’ building and will have signs out indicating the times,” informed Johnson. “We’re going to depend on volunteers to sit out there, and we’ll have a set time during the day. It could be from 8:00 – 12:00 or something like that. We are looking for volunteers. If someone could do just one day a week, all they would have to do is sit and watch during those set hours. There’s no paperwork or anything for them to fill out. They can drink coffee, read a book, or even look at their phone. We just need someone there Monday – Thursday to monitor when people come to collect food or clothes. We’ll have a chair and desk for you.”
Along with making the change to the buildings and times, they are also making some changes to what food is collected and how it will be distributed.
“We want to make some changes to the food that is dropped off,” expressed Johnson. “People are very generous, and we’re thankful for that, but what we end up with are shelves full of different things and an overabundance of some items. Ideally, we would love to have cash donations specifically for food. Instead of someone going shopping and buying $20 worth of canned goods, just send $20 with a note specifying it’s for food for benevolence. Then, we’re going to purchase the specific items we want in there. We will make up the bags so they all contain the same thing so that things aren’t going to waste. A bag may have beef stew, macaroni and cheese, a couple of oatmeal packets, and other shelf stable meal in a box type deals. It’s just emergency food to get someone through Friday, Saturday, Monday, or whatever. It’s not your monthly or weekly groceries to go through. C.A.N. does that. This is going to be a much smaller scale. Bethany and I will sit down and decide exactly what we want to put in a bag and then figure out what it costs to put together one bag. Then, if people want to make a monetary donation, we can tell them exactly how many bags they would be donating and exactly what is in the bags. Anyone can donate that way, and any money given to the benevolence food ministry goes in a separate account from the Baptist Association at a different bank so that it is completely separate and only used for benevolence. That benefits anyone in Clarke County, no matter what denomination they are.”
They are extremely thankful to all the donations from the churches that have made it possible to purchase the building so that everything is already completely paid for.
“The building is completely paid for. It could not have been done without the help of all the churches and all the folks,” proclaimed Johnson. “We did this by asking for $1 donations. We had what we called dollar boxes and asked people to just drop a dollar in it when they came to church. We didn’t ask churches to change their budget or send in stuff like that. We only asked people to drop in $1, and from October to March Clarke County churches raised $15,000 doing that. The rest of the money came from a grant from the Mississippi Food Network. We got $13,000 from them, and that allowed us to pay for everything.”
The changes with the new building and how everything is stored and accepted will be a huge benefit for anyone who comes to the Baptist Center to use any of its services. Those who are dropping off donations will just need to go in the administrative building to notify them that they have donations so that the new building can be unlocked. All clothing or food donations will be dropped off at the new building to be sorted through and moved to the benevolence building later.
