Holmes County churches come together for SAC
Holmes County Share-a-Christmas is a group effort each year, and area churches are a big part of that.
Holmes County Share-a-Christmas is all about individuals coming together as a collective group to help those in need.
The fruits of everyone’s labor are coming to fruition on Dec. 10, when the items collected over the past few months get distributed to 200 area families, senior citizens and veterans.
Char Kellogg is the chair for the church portion of SAC. She begins the process of putting together a list of which items are needed and how many are needed in mid-summer. She then sends out that list to local churches in mid-September to early October, and the churches let her know which item they plan to collect that year.
“(The churches) choose themselves,” Kellogg said. “I send them a list, and it has this is what we want and how many we want. But you can choose as many as you think your church can fill, so some of the smaller churches will say, ‘We can only do 50 of these or 75 of these,’ and somebody else picks up the slack.”
The list’s items may vary from year to year. The SAC committee — which Kellogg said is “such a wonderful committee. Their hearts are so into it, and they’re so passionate about what they do” — recognized a particular need in the community, prompting some changes to this year’s list.
“(The committee) changed up this year because they saw that more and more kids were having to feed themselves,” Kellogg said. “We did everything we could this year to make it easier for the children. With more and more kids being home alone and cooking for themselves, I think this was a really good move this year.”
Some of the items on this year’s list were canned pasta, laundry detergent, macaroni and cheese, pancake mix, peanut butter, ramen noodles, squeezable jelly, stuffing and toilet paper. The quantity of each item varied from 250 to 1,200, with the goal of collecting 10,000 total items.
Like in previous years, that goal was reached. And that’s part of the beauty of SAC — people coming together for a greater cause.
“The generosity of Holmes County knows no bounds,” Kellogg said. “You just can’t beat a community like Holmes County. It’s small enough that it can be intimate. You can know a lot of people. You can be accountable to and for a lot of people, but just the I am my brother’s keeper kind of approach to life that is so evident in Holmes County is just heartwarming.”
After the items are all collected, what is known as Church Day takes place the Sunday after Thanksgiving each year in the Baker Building in Millersburg. That’s when all the items are distributed evenly into boxes thanks to — again — a group effort.
“We set up all the boxes, and the churches bring their goods,” Kellogg said. “We have people that come in every year (to help with packing). We have sports teams that come in. The football team and the wrestlers come in and distribute the food to the boxes. They come in and distribute as evenly as they can among the boxes. When we come in, all the canned goods that the schools have collected are already in the boxes, and (the schools) do an unbelievable job (with collecting canned goods). We just build on what they’ve already lined the bottom of the boxes with, and then we put our stuff on top of it.”
Any extra food items that aren’t given to those being helped by SAC are donated to area food banks, according to Kellogg.
Churches often disagree with one another about theology and things of that nature. All of that is pushed to the side, though, when it comes to SAC.
“It just is the very picture of what the church should be in joining together for one cause without any competition or theology arguments or membership comparing,” Kellogg said. “Everybody does their part, and they do it well, and they don’t try to compete with each other. They just know that this is something that needs to be done for the community. And they are the hands and feet of Christ. They’re that grocery cart of Christ in delivering things to people.
“It’s just the model of what the church should be. It’s very beautiful.”