Pacific Presbytery’s Disaster Response Team:

COVID Disaster Relief 2020-current

Rent Relief 

When the COVID lockdowns began in the spring of 2020 and unemployment was at an all-time high, Pacific Presbytery secured funding for rent relief from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance to keep over 70 community and church members in their homes. This has been a pastor’s discretionary fund administered by the Mission Catalyst and Disaster Response Chair.

Church Food Ministry Support. 

Step 1: Assess Needs. In the spring of 2020, Pacific Presbytery’s Mission Catalyst began assessing churches who were providing food and/or homeless services pre-pandemic. She found that churches in Pacific Presbytery were deluged with enormous numbers of people coming to them, with lines of people needing food several blocks long in some cases. 

Step 2: Secure Funding. The second phase was to secure more funding to support these churches on the front lines. Pacific Presbytery secured several grants totaling $20,000 from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance for each of its churches on the front lines. We also formed a team who organized a hunger concert online and raised $12,000. 

Step 3: Form a Collective. By the summer of 2020, eight churches in Pacific Presbytery were meeting monthly for support and best practices, coordinated by the Mission Catalyst. They called themselves “The Food Ministry Collective” of Pacific Presbytery. 

Step 4: Open Up More Food Ministries in Churches. There were more churches who felt called to serve their community and we began resourcing and working with one another to coordinate services in neighborhoods that were underserved and still struggling with unemployment. 

Step 5: We Need a Truck! In the fall of 2020, the Food Ministry Collective was finding a consistent logistical challenge coordinating offers of food from wealthier parts of LA to pockets of poverty in church neighborhoods with food ministries. The Food Ministry Collective secured funds from the Synod of Southern California and Hawaii, church donations from Immanuel Presbyterian Women’s Fellowship, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, Hunger Offer Donations, and individual church donations to purchase a truck in the winter of 2020/2021. 

Step 6: 50,000 individuals per month. In the fall of 2020, at one of the Food Ministry Collective’s monthly meetings, we discovered that collectively, we were 12 churches feeding 50,000 individuals collectively per month. Pre-pandemic, we were feeding 1,000 individuals per month. God was providing for this ministry beyond our imagining, and yet we also knew the massive numbers coming to us was a sign of economic devastation; we didn’t know whether to grieve or rejoice.

Step 7: Ongoing connections and support. In 2021 and 2022, we continued to support churches in their food ministries by supplying kitchen supplies, food, and shared trucks, insurance and a driver. We have continued to meet monthly for devotions, connections, support, collaboration and inspiration. Want to join us? We meet the first Tuesday of every month at 5pm on zoom. Contact Rev. Heidi Worthen Gamble, Mission Catalyst, for the zoom link.

Churches in the Food Ministry Collective are: 

Immanuel Presbyterian Church
Hope on Union Church/United University Church
Westminster Presbyterian Church
Bethesda Presbyterian Church
Calvary Presbyterian Church Hawthorne
Union Church
St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church of Lomita
Bel Vue Presbyterian Church
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church
First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood
Wilshire Presbyterian Church
Mililani Presbyterian Church

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Woolsey Fire Relief 2018

Through the leadership of Rev. Dave Worth, Disaster Response Chair, Pacific Presbytery worked in partnership with non-profit, faith-based and government leaders in LA County to develop the Los Angeles Region Community Recovery Organization (LARCRO) to respond with a coordinated effort to people most affected by the Woolsey Fire and without fire insurance. With Presbyterian Disaster Assistance funds, LARCRO hired several Disaster Case Managers (DCMs) who worked individually with low-income seniors in the Seminole Springs Mobile Home Park to secure benefits for this community and help them recover. With a partnership with Habitat for Humanity, San Fernando and Pacific Presbyteries helped volunteer to restore and rebuild homes in Seminole Springs.

The formation of LARCRO catalyzed a then-dormant Emergency Network for Los Angeles (ENLA), of which Pacific Presbytery is a member and strong partner. 

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