By Heather Mustain
Today is Wilshire’s annual Souper Bowl of Caring. For nearly 30 years, Wilshire has offered a soup luncheon on Super Bowl Sunday that benefits hunger and poverty alleviation efforts all over the world. Historically these funds were given to the World Hunger Offering through the Baptist General Convention of Texas, an offering established by the late Wilshire member Phil Strickland, a Baptist giant in both faith and deed. The BGCT would disperse these funds to ministries focused on eradicating hunger and poverty in many different communities all over the world.
When Wilshire was asked to leave the BGCT in 2016, our World Hunger Offering dollars were no longer accepted. So in 2017, Wilshire’s Missions Committee immediately voted to rename our offering the Phil Strickland World Hunger Offering, and we became, for the first time, responsible in dispersing all funds raised.
Over the years we’ve helped build a dormitory for 100 girls in Tanzania, helped a Tanzanian nonprofit buy land for a farm school, supported South Point Market run by Cornerstone Baptist Church in South Dallas, funded a DISD afterschool program and supported Delta Hands for Hope, a partner in the Mississippi Delta, among others.
This year’s Souper Bowl of Caring provides us the opportunity to practice care and solidarity with our neighbors by supporting grassroots partners involved in immigration court observation training as well as clergy support and accompaniment at the Dallas ICE field office. These ministries rely on shared generosity to provide office supplies, books and stickers for children, snacks and mutual aid for families whose loved ones have been detained.
Today our communal worship provides us the sacred space to reflect on both our own physical and spiritual hunger; we gather at a table that offers us the nourishment our bodies and souls need, reminding us that we find God in the most mysterious of ways. In her memoir, author Sara Miles recounts her first experience at the table as a then self-proclaimed atheist: “And then we gathered around that table. And there was more singing and standing, and someone was putting a fresh, crumbly bread in my hands, saying ‘the body of Christ,’ and handing me the goblet of sweet wine, saying ‘the blood of Christ,’ and then something outrageous and terrifying happened. Jesus happened to me.”
I hope that as a community of faith we too will find the outrageous and terrifying love in the generous and outpouring love of God and find the courage to do and be likewise in our giving today.
Go Seahawks.