We continue to exegete the minutes of Highland Presbyterian Church to discern how God is given expression in the most ordinary of churches.
Jesus said, “…for I was hungry and you gave me food…” Highland has also found an expression of their faith in their concern for the hungry of their community and around the world. In 1968 the Session joined in a call for a day of prayer and fasting for the renewal of the church and to build awareness of the hungry of the world.
Church school classes which sensitized people to the growing problem of hunger followed and eventually resulted in the Session in 1976 sponsoring the first CROP Walk in Winston-Salem and joining Bread for the World, a Christian lobbying group on behalf of the hungry. After a brief hiatus, the CROP Walk resumed in Winston-Salem with the support of Highland and has been an annual event ever since. In 2008, a time of economic crisis in our nation, the CROP walk raised more money and had more walkers than any time in its history.
By 1978 another church school study of hunger resulted in the development of a program to ask members to give two cents a meal to help combat hunger both in Winston-Salem and around the world. Seventy-five percent of what they gathered would go to the CROP program and twenty-five percent would be given to Crisis Control Ministry, a local ministry to the poor and hungry.
These were not radical acts but simple responses of faith in response to the Scripture confronting the issues of our society. God does that among ordinary people.
