How one church in Wichita saved itself by feeding the poor

Greg Allen is a part-time handyman with a past that includes a prison record.

He lives with his mother, Gin, whose income is from Social Security.

They make about $25,000 a year combined, Greg Allen says.

But they give about a third of it away, every year, to help feed poor people in Wichita. That’s about $8,000, Allen said.

Their theory about finances and survival, as his mother Gin said, is “if you need something, give something.”

Their church pastor taught them that.

Pastor Matthew Hudson says he and his church members used that theory to turn a nearly bankrupt church into a solvent one a long time ago.

Along the way, they became one of Wichita’s more storied charities. They give away a million pounds of food every year to the poor.

‘God has graced this church’

Hudson, pastor of the Living Word Outreach Church on South Hillside, helped arrange last Saturday’s annual give-away of Thanksgiving meals to 2,300 needy Wichitans at the church’s Bread of Life food pantry.

Besides the annual Thanksgiving giveaway, the pantry gives food to hundreds in need each week.

In several of those weeks this year, 1,000 people showed up to receive boxes of free food.

The pantry gives away about 1 million pounds of food every year.

The church spent about $40,000 buying turkeys and other food for Saturday’s giveaway. About $10,000 of that came from church members; the rest came from grants from foundations and donations by Wichita businesses.

Living Word has about 130 church members, including children. Most church members, Hudson said, live at the lower end of the economic scale.

Meanwhile, the annual cost of the food pantry, with its once-a-week giveaway, is about $175,000, said Connie Manolopoulos, the church’s systems coordinator and grant writer.

Grants and business donations take care of about $120,000 of that; about $55,000 comes from church members.

“God has graced this church with givers,” Manolopoulos said. “We’ve never had a lack, never shut the doors.”

Giving starts at the top. Hudson earns about $41,000 as the pastor and gives $4,000 to $5,000 annually from his income to keep the pantry and church running, he said.

“And yet I still have plenty,” he said.

“There’s no more powerful feeling than to have enough money that you can give to people who need it,” he said.

Many church members, including some with small incomes like the Allens, are giving thousands of dollars each to feed the poor, no questions asked, Manolopoulos said.

The story behind that is a miracle, Hudson said.

Divine message

Twenty-six years ago, when the church was on the verge of failing to repay its bank mortgage and when Hudson felt utter despair, he gave a sermon one day to his Living Word church members.

He asked them to put their loose change into a 5-gallon bucket in the hallway. But the money was not to repay the bank loan.

He told church members that he had prayed, asking for a miracle to pay the loan.

He told them God had replied that Hudson and his church were to start feeding the poor in Wichita.

This baffled him. His church was going to close its doors from insolvency soon, and God was telling him to start giving away resources.

“I told God that we didn’t have any money and that we couldn’t repay the bank loan.

“God said that ‘if you take care of the poor, I’ll take care of the church.’ ”

Within days of starting that giveaway program, Hudson said, he went to the bank that held the loan.

He told the president they could not make the current payment.

Things looked bleak – until the bank president asked him what they were doing in their church, besides not paying bills.

“I told them we are now feeding and clothing the poor,” Hudson said. “They got real quiet.

“And then the bank president said, ‘Well, then, we’ll just put that note on hold. You’re going through a valley, and we’ll see how you come out.’

“Then they prayed with us.”

The next week, the money coming in from church members doubled.

“We haven’t missed a payment since.”

‘Lowest of the low’

Greg Allen and his mother, Gin, have a more personal reason for giving a third of their income to help the church and the poor.

Hudson and the church accepted Greg Allen as a member four years ago, even though he told them he’d just been released from prison in Nebraska, where he says he served eight years for sexual assault.

“I was the lowest of the low,” Allen said of his crime. “I was selfish and didn’t care about how it affected other people. I took what I wanted.”

He lost nearly everything because of his crime, he said. He lost his own family; he has a daughter, 12, that he hasn’t seen since she was 5 weeks old. He lost his income and a home.

Many churches would not want a person with his record as a member, especially right after the prison term ended, he said.

After his release from prison, his mother searched for a church that might accept her and her son as members; they chose Living Word.

Hudson not only accepted Allen, but he and the church helped Allen get back on his feet, Allen said. They hired Allen as the church’s part-time janitor. He also mows the church lawn.

Both mother and son do volunteer work at the church and pantry, Gin Allen as a counselor helping the poor coming in for food, and Greg Allen, among other things, directing traffic in the pantry parking lot when thousands of people show up wanting food at the annual Thanksgiving meal giveaway. Gin Allen also bakes cookies and pies to give to the needy.

Handing over a third of their income means they give to the pantry, the church and sometimes, as Greg Allen says, “to people who need it.”

“But after what they did for me, how could I not give like that?” he said.

This story was originally published November 23, 2016 at 5:07 PM with the headline "How one church in Wichita saved itself by feeding the poor."