In December Ken Whitten, senior pastor of Idlewild Baptist Church in the north Tampa suburbs, preached a series on generosity titled “The Gift.” After that message, he told the Florida Baptist Convention, he thought of the accumulating school lunch debt owed by parents and how it would be due in January.
He said, “[Those parents] couldn’t afford to send money with their kids for lunch during these hard times, We wanted to demonstrate what the gospel demonstrates for us. God gave us an opportunity to give a visual expression of the verbal message of the gospel. I always ask, ‘If our church were gone tomorrow, would our community miss it?’”
Recently, an anonymous church member approached Idlewild with a large financial gift. The individual didn’t want to dictate how it would be used, leaving that up to the church. That gift ended up erasing $38,367 in school lunch debt for thousands of juniors and seniors in Hillsborough County schools as well as those of all ages attending public schools in Pasco County.
The debt relief isn’t Idlewild’s first connection to local schools. Six years ago, a new local missions emphasis focused on hope for schools, hope for communities, and hope for orphans.
The emphasis had the church working with schools through a mentoring program. The program has had hundreds of members from several schools involved.