St. Clare of Assisi Episcopal Church

The Back Door Food Pantry is committed to helping people in need by supplying food to all those who come to our door in a welcoming, friendly, and non-judgmental environment.

History

Food Pantry FoundersThe Back Door Food Pantry was founded in March 2007, by four local women dedicated to reducing hunger in the Ann Arbor area.  Originally providing “basic calories” by distributing canned and packaged goods, the pantry now provides an array of nutritious food items including bread, eggs, milk, meats and local produce.  The pantry also distributes personal hygiene items and paper products and provides help with food stamp applications and other financial and food aid programs.

The pantry is located at the Wisdom House on the Genesis Campus at 2309 Packard Street.  It is open every Thursday from 4 to 7 PM.  Each week the pantry distributes groceries, fresh produce, meats, bread and basic hygiene items are distributed.  Currently, over 250 individuals per week depend on the pantry for basic food support.

The Back Door Food Pantry began as an outreach program of St Clare’s Episcopal Church, distributing items from Food Gatherers.  The pantry is operated completely by a dedicated group of volunteers who help with everything from ordering food, unloading delivery trucks, stocking shelves and helping distribute food each and every week of the year!  Since opening its doors, the need for food assistance in our community has increased significantly.  To help meet this growing need, Temple Beth Emeth joined the effort in early 2009 providing additional funding and more volunteers.  In late 2010, Muslim Social Services also joined the effort to help further expand the reach of the food pantry.

In February 2012, the Back Door Food Pantry become a “client choice” pantry allowing clients to choose from a wide variety of food to better meet their personal dietary needs.  The client choice approach also provides clients a greater sense of dignity and higher satisfaction with the food they are able to choose.  It also reduces waste and ultimate reduces costs.

Support

While food donations are vital, the majority of the food distributed each week is actually purchased from Food Gatherers.  Costs vary throughout the year depending on subsidies and grants but now exceed $42,000/year.  Funding from St Clare’s, Temple Beth Emeth and Muslim Social Services underwrites about 20% of this total.  The other 80% comes from generous donations from individual, local businesses and fund raising efforts.   Please visit our Donations Page to learn more about how you can help.

In 1966 the Temple Beth Emeth (House of Truth) began as a Reform Jewish congregation in Ann Arbor.  In 1970, after several years of meeting in other Ann Arbor churches, the growing temple entered into a rental agreement to hold their services on Friday nights and their religious school classes on Saturday mornings in the St. Clare's facility.   During the next 4 years, as the two congregations shared the upkeep of the building and grounds, and began holding joint education classes and a communal Passover seder, a proposal was made that they might share the facility more completely than as landlord and tenant.  In June 1974, with the approval of the Diocese of Michigan and both congregations, an agreement was signed to create a new non-profit organization to be known as Genesis of Ann Arbor, which would own and operate the facility in a way that honored their individual religious identities, traditions and goals.

Over the next 40 years, through the construction of a larger Sanctuary, additional offices and classrooms, the two congregations continued to grow and prosper.  An enlarged new worship space was designed to quickly transform from a Jewish temple to a Christian church and back again.  The center two of six cherry wood doors behind the altar open outward to disclose a beautifully decorated Ark containing the Torah scrolls.  When they are closed, the two flanking doors can be swung together over them and the two halves of a large burnished brass cross meet in the center, leaving niches on either side for communion vessels.  When all the doors are closed, the ecclesiastically 'neutral' space can be used for concerts, lectures and community meetings.

During this period, the Jewish and Christian congregations found opportunities to build their ties. Pulpit swaps, in which the Episcopal priest gave the sermon at the Temple's Friday Shabbat service and the Rabbi preached at one of the Sunday services, and a joint Erev Thanksgiving (Thanksgiving Eve) service with a combined choir, became annual events. Their strong individual Social Justice outreach programs found willing partners in each other to host the Washtenaw County's Rotating Shelter for 25 homeless men for a week each winter, to provide quarterly meals to the Interfaith Hospitality Network's Alpha House family shelter, to jointly build 2 Habitat for Humanity homes in Ann Arbor and to operate the Back Door Food Pantry on the Genesis premises.

In 2015, members of both congregations and their governing boards undertook a significant process of partnership discernment, culminating in the formulation of a revised Genesis Vision Statement: "By daily embracing mutual trust and respect, we partner with God and one another to heal a broken world" and a revised Mission Statement: "The Mission of Genesis of Ann Arbor is to exemplify interfaith understanding, cooperation, and friendship, and, through its board, to steward its shared space in ways that strengthen St. Clare's Episcopal Church and Temple Beth Emeth and the broader community". It is hoped that this Genesis Covenant Renewal will form the basis of the next 40 years of partnership in our shared space.

Saint Clare's is active in Haiti Outreach Mission.  We are one of 7 Episcopal and Catholic parishes supporting the St. Pierre Episcopal Church Medical Clinic in Mirebalais, Haiti.  We, along with the other parishes, send medical and dental missionaries and supplies down to the clinic for one week once a year.  The flouride team alone provides 1,400 - 1,600 flouride treatments and deworming pills to school children.

In January 2015, Blue Ocean Faith Ann Arbor was planted by co-pastors Ken Wilson and Emily Swan with prior members of the Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor, who split from that church over its adoption of policies that forbade full welcome and inclusion of same-sex couples.  Blue Ocean Faith Ann Arbor (BOFAA) is part of an emerging network of churches with the goal of a spiritual revival in the secularized West, making faith accessible to the growing sea of people who have spiritual longings combined with religious aversion.

As BOFAA sought a worship space for their new communion, building on strong personal ties with the BOFAA clergy and a deep commitment to LGBT acceptance, St. Clare's offered a short-term rental agreement for the use of our social hall (used for worship before the construction of the current Sanctuary) and class rooms to BOFAA for a Sunday service. In January 2016, following a year-long trial period, with the approval of the board of Genesis of Ann Arbor (the legal owner of the facility), the board of Temple Beth Emeth (who shares the facility with St. Clare's), the St. Clare's Vestry and the Diocese, a lease continuing BOFAA usage of our facilities for up to 3 years was signed.

In addition to our building, the clergy and members of the two congregations have found other missions to share.  We have a common Children' Minister and share some youth ministry, participate together in the Sunday of Service, and join with temple members in supporting the Shelter Association of Ann Arbor's Rotating Shelter, in which congregations host up to 25 homeless men in their facilities at night, for a week at a time during the winter months.

A cell group is a small group, but one that has unique characteristics. The four elements of a cell group include:

1) Authentic community

2) Bible study/application leading to life transformation (moving from knowing Scripture to applying it)

3) Service together (at least once per quarter)

4) Prayer

Each cell group has a covenant, which is a written document spelling out the cell group members’ commitment to one another, including values and goals, ground rules, and length of time for initial commitment.

The purpose of a cell group can be summed up in two words: deeper discipleship. Connecting with other Christians in a small group designed specifically for spiritual transformation is a powerful experience, and an effective cell group will help its members become disciples who engage the world There is a simple hymn that we sometimes sing during a service: “Take, oh take me as I am; summon out what I shall be.” That in its simplest form, is what cell groups are all about. 

The children and teens of St. Clare’s are on a journey, a journey of faith.   We are excited to be on this journey with the kids and parents of St. Clare’s.  Through Milestones of Faith, we will be celebrating faith experiences along the journey. With each new milestone we have a celebration here at church and encourage families to honor and recognize these milestones at home.

Each child or teen has a Faith Journey Box, a symbol of the presence of God in our homes, much like the Ark of the Covenant was to the children of Israel on their faith journeys.  As milestones are celebrated a “faith stone” will be received to remember that phase of their journey.  Along with these faith stones other milestone tokens, pictures, etc. will be collected in the Faith Journey Box.  In other words, this box will be a representation of each child’s faith journey as they learn and grow.

This idea of celebrating faith milestones is nothing new.  God often directed the people to build up stones to remind them of God's place in their lives.  Upon crossing into the Promised Land, God spoke to the people:

"Take twelve smooth stones from here out of the middle of the Jordan...and lay them down in the place where you camp tonight. ....when your children ask in time to come, "What do those stones mean to you?" then you shall tell them..." Joshua 4   

Milestones celebrated include: Celebrating our Baptism, Learning Together, Exploring God's Word, Exploring Holy Communion, Worshipping Together, Exploring Prayer, Responding to our Baptism, Practicing Stewardship, Acting for Justice, Made in the Image of God (sexuality), Recording the Journey.

For over 10 years, Music Theater Church Camp has offered children who have completed grades 1 through 7 a week-long, end-of-summer experience! The camp includes singing, acting, swimming, and growing in our faith together. Teenagers are invited every year (by application) to participate as counselors, and all participants enjoy a safe and supportive environment to grow together with friends. The week concludes with a fully-staged musical presentation that includes chorus, soloists, props and lots of fantastic choreography!

Sunday of Service (SOS), also known as St. Clare's Outreach Sunday, is an annual one-day event, which traditionally takes place in May, in which many parishioners get together to execute service projects for twenty or more non-profit organizations around the Ann Arbor area as well as some "inreach" projects for St. Clare's parishioners and programs. The event is now in its sixth year, and since 2015, the St. Clare's congregation has welcomed parishioners from Blue Ocean Faith to plan and take part in SOS. Between 100-200 parishioners have taken part every year. The day starts with a church service followed by a blessing to go out and do "the work you have given us to do". Participants may buy a t-shirt, which is a different color each year. The photo of all the participants has become more multi-colored each year as past participants sometimes chose to wear shirts from prior years. The service projects generally take about 2-4 hours to complete, and then the teams can come back to the church for a celebratory post-event dinner. Service projects often take place at locations who have welcomed our help every year, but SOS organizers are always open to suggestions from either church.

Sacred Ground is dialogue series on race, grounded in faith. Small groups are invited to walk through chapters of America’s history of race, racism, and whiteness while weaving in threads of family story, economic class, and political and regional identity. The 10-part series is built around a powerful online curriculum of documentary films and readings that focus on Indigenous, Black, Latino, and Asian/Pacific American histories as they intersect with European American histories.

Sacred Ground is a resource coming out of Becoming Beloved Community, The Episcopal Church’s long-term commitment to racial healing, reconciliation, and justice in our personal lives, our ministries, and our society. This series is especially designed to help white people talk with other white people, while being open to all racial/ethnic groups. Participants are invited to peel away the layers that have contributed to the challenges and divides of the present day – all while grounded in our call to faith, hope and love.