COMMON HEART MISSIONAL COMMUNITY

Common Cupboard is our first resource developed by Common Heart for for "people helping people". Our location in Indian Trail, and our newest in Peachland, NC serve over 1000 people a month. The bigger story to me is that there are nearly 150 regular volunteers from 25 local chuches that make this happen week after week.

Common Cupboard came about because we regularly came into contact with people who could use a little help. For whatever reason – possibly a family crisis, unemployment, or illness – they had difficulty meeting their needs. Often they were single parents or people who due to illness or a fixed income just needed a little help. You know people like that too. We helped out the best we could by grabbing an extra bag of groceries at the store, or going to our own pantries or cupboards and giving what we could to help. It dawned on us that if we pooled our resources of money and groceries, along with donations from community businesses and organizations that we could help out a lot more folks and equip others to reach out through active kindness too.

We believe that people helping people has much more positive potential than an organization or agency giving handouts. Because of this philosophy we want to keep Common Cupboard in the background and invisible to those receiving assistance. We enable faith communities and individuals to reach out into the community without having to "reinvent the wheel." This is why we encourage and seek out partherships between local churches and Common Cupboard. Through the food pantry, training, and other assistance we are able to help churches equip their own people to reach out personally with love and kindness.

While distribution from a central location is convenient, we feel that it sets up an institutional mentality that we desire to avoid. By visiting people, developing relationships, and seeing needs firshand we can make a difference in a way that we couldn’t from an institutional approach. Using a "central distribution" model would not facilitate this as well as visiting families in their homes. It may take time and energy, but we believe it is worth it.