Community Outreach
Shopping for and fixing food for our Sunday Meals on Wheels program, as well as maintaining the driving routes, scheduling prep teams, cook teams and delivery teams requires multiple people. Coordinating and preparing for HTLC participation in Family Promise involves setting up, recruiting volunteers to prepare & serve meals, host evening & overnight & breakfast shifts, and taking down at the conclusion of the week we host. This ministry also coordinates management, purchase & delivery of backpacks as well as setting up to collect then delivering items donated on Socks & Undies Sundays to homeless schoolchildren in the Kingsport City, TN and Dickenson County, VA school systems.

Sunday Meals on Wheels are prepared and delivered each Sunday of the 52 weeks every year to ~30+/- needy persons. Meal recipients also receive an Easter lily and a Christmas poinsettia. Sunday Meals on Wheels also provides a Pet/Furry Friend Component co-led by JoRita McMurray, Jenny Trumbo & Brenda Mooneyhan.

Family Promise is hosted by HTLC on a regular basis multiple times each year. We typically provide a place to sleep, an evening meal and breakfast, as well as snacks. During the COVID-19 pandemic, apartments were leased for the families and meals were either provided or gift cards for meals were donated.

An annual fundraiser is held by HTLC – a craft sale.

Second Harvest Food Bank receives food donated by HTLC members through our Little Red Wagon ministry. We also participate in annual food drives (i.e. Souper Boal Sunday, etc.)

Food Bags including non-perishable items are stocked and kept in a closet to be available for those hungry &/or needy people who come to the church door in need. Bags are also given to HTLC members to have available in their cars for when they encounter people in need in the community or on the street.

Salvation Army Weekend Serving Program is supported on Saturdays during the year with HTLC members volunteering to serve lunch at the Salvation Army downtown.

KCMC (Kingsport Community Ministry Center) requires volunteer receptionists, interviewers, etc. for walk-in needy persons.

Homeless schoolchildren in Kingsport, TN city schools and in Dickinson County, VA schools are supplied annually with backpacks and school supplies (for ~100 children), usually each August. Sometime before Christmas each year, HTLC schedules “Socks & Undies Sundays” during which hats, socks, underwear, gloves, etc. are donated and then given to homeless schoolchildren in those same two school systems. All items are donated by HTLC members and delivered to the school systems’ Homeless Schoolchildren Coordinators.

Additional outreach support is provided to Friends in Need, CASA, Sunday Meals on Wheels, Meals-On-Wheels of Kingsport, Family Promise, KCMC, Providence Medical Clinic, Kitchen of Hope, Hope Haven, Oasis, Hunger First, Salvation Army, etc.