Food Ministry

Following Christ’s Command to Feed the Hungry

Christ Cares has a long history of following Christ’s commands to feed the hungry.
Currently there are SIX ways you can help with this mission:

#1 Prepare meals for our Homeless Programs

More information about preparing and donating food for our homeless programs is found here.

#2 Holiday Meals

This past year Christ Cares was blessed to be able to provide nice Thanksgiving or Christmas blankets to approximately 100 families in need.

Learn how you can make a difference in a family’s life HERE (Link?)

If you are able to help feed the homeless on Christmas Day, please let us know HERE (Link?)

#3 Food Pantry

We’ve had a food pantry on and off through the years, co sponsored with New Life Church – We are now actively seeking food for our food pantry as the request for food help has skyrocketed. Learn how you can help here.

#4 Snack Packs

These are sack lunches that we are able to use to pass out to homeless or people in need as we come across them. We are expanding our homeless outreach into new areas and these are especially helpful as we meet new people. We are also considering adding an outside hot cooked meal on a daily or weekly basis… please contact us for details if you are interested in helping

#5 & 6

The Pandemic has had a huge impact on the whole country, but the urban neighborhoods have been especially hard hit with covid and the economic impact has been devastating…

(See our Homeless Ministry page to learn about this and our adjustments to the Homeless Ministry.)

One major change is the homeless population has dropped in the Chicago Heights area (Housing and temporary shelter opportunities increased in response to Covid) and the food needs of economically hard hit families has greatly increased.

We felt God’s leading to follow the need and increase our food outreach to families in need. Of course our ultimate goal is sharing Jesus with people so the food goes out with a Christian Witness. We’ve made two major changes in regard to this:

1. Due to extra government funds due to covid, many of our homeless friends got into housing programs. Although they are blessed to have a roof over their heads, that does not solve their financial issues. On Tuesday mornings, Rev. Jamil purchases a few food basics like eggs, produce, and a little meat food and then drops it off at the houses of recently homeless friends. We currently are spending about $100 a week on this – we expect this to grow in the number of families we are helping and also the amount of food we give. Rev. Jamil is also a spiritual encouragement to these families.

2. We’ve decided to aggressively get involved in providing food for needy families, especially during these perilous times… Right after we felt led to make that decision, GOD SENT A MIRACLE TO PROVIDE AND CONFIRM THIS ENDEAVOR! I received a phone call from a Christian Businessman who said he has heard a lot of wonderful things that Christ Cares is doing. I met with him and in the past two months HE HAS DONATED 15 PALLETS OF FOOD – thousands of meals… 

We have teamed up with the FOOD MINISTRY of the church I founded – New Life. They already have a wonderful distribution set up where they are helping approximately 75 families weekly with food. We are not sure if the food donations (from our new Christian businessman contact) will continue , but we are grateful and inspired to keep this going… We also gave school supplies to go with this and I was thrilled to hear that over 10 people responded to the Gospel! New Life does have a source for food, but it is quite limited in scope and we are trying to expand this ministry.

How Can You Help?

• We desire to upgrade New Life’s infrastructure for the food ministry. We are looking for donations of quality refrigerators and freezers. We want to be able to add produce, mild, and meat to the weekly food distributions… we also need a way to store the perishable items. We have a couple lined up and plan on renting a truck in November to pickup – let us know if you would like to donate a freezer or purchase one for us. We also hope to upgrade the industrial stove which is about 50 years old and has issues… this would increase our ability to more easily cook hot meals for the homeless and those in need as well as church activities.

• We are looking for an electrician who can help us with the necessary electrical upgrades so we won’t have fuses blowing and food melting. 

• We are looking for food sources to increase the weekly food distribution. Please let us know if you have contacts with non profits or stores that could help us with this.

• We are looking for volunteers who can pick up the food donations for us.