Building community – one serve at a time

Bake 110 potatoes. Dice 10 onions and sauté. Add 10 kilos of beef mince.

When the meat is browned, add 22 cans of crushed tomatoes, 20 packets of chilli con carne mix and 14 cans of red kidney beans. Mix well and simmer until cooked. Repeat the process with two kilos of plant-based mince. Then pack it all into serving containers and load it into the car, along with six kilos of grated cheese, three litres of sour cream, and 120 assorted drinks, and drive carefully to Mahogany Avenue in the northern Sydney suburb of Macquarie Park. There, on a blocked-off street, marquees and tables have been set up to serve and feed 80 to 95 locals from the nearby housing towers who are sitting on the kerb or in deckchairs.

‘Baked potatoes with chilli con carne’ is just one of the menu offerings at Midtown Eats, a community-building ministry, so-named by the local residents. They recently moved into New South Wales’ biggest and newest mixed-tenure community, five minutes down the road from LifeWay Lutheran Church at Epping. Preparing hearty and nourishing food is one role that a group of eight LifeWay volunteers has been fulfilling on the first and third Friday evenings of the month. Equally important is gathering with the guests who come to build community over a meal in a multicultural setting where one in two households speaks a language other than English.

Midtown Eats is the next step in putting into practice the recommendations of the ‘Vertical Villages’ research project completed with Macquarie University, whose reference team was chaired by LifeWay’s Lead Pastor, Mark Schultz. He says the church, as part of the ‘Together for Ryde’ network of churches, was involved in the research ‘with the view of building healthy communities’ in the former housing commission residential area.

‘Community doesn’t just happen. It needs to be intentionally built’, Pastor Mark says.

Some of the key findings of research interviews with those living in high-rise apartments included that 37 per cent said they knew no-one in the building well enough to have a conversation with them, while 57 per cent had no-one they would ask for a favour or invite into their apartment.

Pastor Mark says LifeWay’s presence and service at Macquarie Park is in collaboration with national Christian charity Mission Australia, which has a team based onsite, and volunteers from local Baptist, Presbyterian, and Anglican churches.

‘Through our partnership with Mission Australia, we have the opportunity to change those statistics and help build a great community and facilitate life-giving relationships’, he says.

The early-evening meals are promoted through the Midtown MacPark Community Facebook page and, most effectively, by word of mouth. ‘The first week we asked for registrations’, Pastor Mark says. ‘There were 40 initially, but by lunchtime on Friday we got wind of there being 60 people who planned to come. So, we catered for 90 and there was not one bit of food left over. There are never any leftovers. Some residents are now taking a plate of food up to others who can’t come down.’

He says real needs are starting to be shared because those who attend know that the volunteers care. ‘One gentleman I talked to last time, had come for the first time. He was a bit nervous to come down because of social anxiety, so I sat with him, and we connected through our love of sport. That conversation then moved very quickly to the struggles of divorce and mental health. That’s the type of sharing we are seeing happen.

‘The Mission Australia Community chaplain, who is a real gift to that community and a delight to work with, told me that they cannot believe how our being there has helped to accelerate the sense of community.’

Midtown Eats is not the only place LifeWay members help to serve in such a way. The congregation has received a state government grant enabling it to provide monthly community meals in five other social housing complexes where social isolation is a key concern. While these meals for nearly 300 people a month are all funded by LifeWay, they are provided and served by teams of volunteers from six other churches, who have come together to adopt a housing complex and work to build and nurture supportive communities.

‘We share our resources’, Pastor Mark says of the ecumenical effort. ‘LifeWay applied for the grant knowing that we could not get all of the volunteers to reach our goal of providing more than 1500 meals to people by ourselves. But with each church adopting a site, those from other churches who can’t do a Friday with us for example, but can do a Tuesday night, get to mix with other Christians in the area.

‘It’s a beautiful illustration of the church working together to bring blessing.’

LifeWay chairperson and volunteer Shane Albances agrees. ‘Midtown Eats has been a wonderful example of how showing up and serving a new community for a few hours can create an opportunity for conversations, connections and relationships’, he says. ‘We’ve had genuine interest in why we are volunteering, and this has led to opportunities for sharing my faith which has always been received positively.’

Another volunteer, Andrew, also believes relationships are the key to this service and outreach. ‘From day one, the residents joined our team of volunteers to work side-by-side in serving their own community’, he says. ‘Over food, no-one cares whether you live in the social housing, are renting, or have bought your own place. The relationship is what matters.’

Midtown Eats may only have been going since May, but the gift of community is already being witnessed. ‘Before we even have the meals ready, people from the towers are assembling in the street and chatting’, volunteer Charles says. ‘I feel very blessed to be able to share God’s love with them in this simple way.’

Another volunteer, Karen adds: ‘Seeing the local kids playing together and the parents connecting with and supporting each other is a real highlight.’

When the marquees and tables are packed up after a Friday evening meal and the only light that remains is the glow of the street light overhead, there is a group seated in a circle, still deeply engaged talking with the volunteers. No-one seems to care that it is only 11 degrees outside. As a resident thanks the team again and bids them farewell, there is only one thing left to ask, ‘What’s on the menu next time?’