In 2017, the congregation at First United Methodist Church of Sanford was at a crossroads. Having faced closure the previous year, the then newly appointed pastors, Revs. David and Meghan Killingsworth, found a congregation that was desperate to continue serving the Sanford community like it has done for more than one hundred years.
Like many other churches in the denomination, they faced some challenges. “We don’t have babies crying in the back row, and we don’t have a lot of young people coming in right now, and we don’t have the most beautiful plants out front,” Rev. Meghan Killingsworth reflected, “but what do we have?” As the congregation discerned the direction for the church, they focused on assets.
What were those assets? Space. A historical footprint. Many hands and feet willing to connect, serve, and bravely take risks to impact their neighborhood.
They developed a bold vision for a secondary building on their campus: to create a neighborhood cooperative space that would host and support nonprofit and social enterprise groups seeking to Good in the City of Sanford. They applied for a Future Generations Fund grant through the Florida United Methodist Foundation, and they were awarded $23,000 to seed the project. That gift, however, was just the beginning. “One of the things I didn’t expect was the confidence that receiving a grant from the Foundation could communicate to other funders and to the church community,” Killingsworth said. That confidence allowed First UMC Sanford to acquire matching funds from a private community partner and additional bequeathed funds.
The congregation worked with the City of Sanford to transform a secondary building into a multi-use space they call The Neighborhood Co-op, and includes a commissary kitchen, event meeting spaces, and private office spaces that support the work of nine nonprofits and local ministries. The kitchen is now used by food-based entrepreneurs, a ministry that welcomes and celebrates people with disabilities, and a food-based ministry which has grown from a part-time volunteer operation to a fully operational city-wide ministry called The Picnic Project that shares food with neighbors each week.
The Picnic Project is a powerful example of how First UMC of Sanford took the investments of the Foundation and funding partners, and God multiplied it. The project was initially a volunteer run meal-based ministry with no staff that offered a weekly Sunday meal. With the help of the Co-op, the project was able to hire help to shift their programming in response to the pandemic to a meal and grocery delivery program that could reach people in their homes. The Co-op was able to provide the needed storage, refrigeration, and church volunteers to scale the project across the city. The Picnic Project now offers cooking demonstrations though a partnership with Advent Health to help people learn to utilize food as medicine for health.
The Co-op has also given the First UMC of Sanford congregation opportunities to engage with ministries like Kairos Adventures, a group that applies an assets-based approach to working with adults with disabilities through arts and community service programming. “We got to be their first site, and now they have three sites across Central Florida,” said Killingsworth. “One of the benefits of the Co-op to the congregation is that it provides the church congregation with tangible ways of not only interacting with community folks we might not otherwise interact with, but also understanding the needs around us more, and helping us to see ways to be the hands and feet of Christ.” While The Neighborhood Co-op has transformed the congregation at First UMC of Sanford in numerous ways, multiplied the ministries and community impacts of its partners, and done much good for the City of Sanford, the project has also helped to stabilize the financial health of the church. This year the Co-op brought in $70,000 which will enable the church to maintain their buildings and sustain their ministry efforts. Rev. Killingsworth expressed her gratitude to the Florida United Methodist Foundation: “Thank you for believing in us and for making an investment that has paid extraordinary kingdom and financial dividends.”