The history of Feed My Sheep began in 2010. It was announced that the homeless shelter named Martha’s Kitchen, having been in operation for 26 years, and housing up to 120 people at any one time, was to be shut down to make way for a new Salvation Army shelter in Temple. Unfortunately, in August 2011, Martha’s Kitchen was shut down, a couple years before there would be funding available to build the new shelter. During this transition period, a local woman had been praying about how God wanted her to use her time after her son graduated high school. She was active in her church, but felt God wanted her to serve outside the church, and when she learned of the soon-to-be displaced homeless population, she knew she needed to help.
Starting in August 2011, once a month, she began making brown bag lunches on her own, bringing them to Jones Park, down the street from the closed Martha’s Kitchen, and passing them out to anyone that needed food. She started with 25 sack lunches. Over the next few months, friends from her church began helping her, and the number of lunches made and given out grew to 100. By the end of the year, although the new shelter was still far from beginning construction, Salvation Army sent one of their food trucks to Temple to help facilitate the feeding initiative, as part of what they named the “Feed My Sheep program.” Granted use of the food truck, the growing number of local volunteers began to serve hot meals and sack lunches every single day, on the street corner outside of the shuttered Martha’s Kitchen.
By the end of 2011, up to 20 local churches and many more individuals had already partnered with the ministry, providing food and volunteering to serve those in need. In January 2012, the feeding program moved from out on the street, to inside a vacant, for-sale building that the owner loaned to the program to use, free of charge. While it was a blessing to have a building to serve out of, regulations prevented both cooking and dining inside the building at the time. Food was brought by volunteers, and people in need came to pick up their food and had to take it with them as they left.
Over the next year, the building began to be renovated and was authorized to be used to cook, serve and dine in. From the collaborating churches and individuals comprising the ministry, a Feed My Sheep “steering committee” was appointed to oversee our direction and operation. As an organization, Feed My Sheep began to fall under established, local nonprofit Churches Touching Lives for Christ as a parent organization, for the purposes of legally receiving tax-exempt donations. Between 2012 and 2015, Feed My Sheep increased in scope to offer more and more services, as volunteers identified needs and solutions.
In December 2015, enough funds were raised from the community to purchase the building that, up until then, was still being loaned to Feed My Sheep by the gracious, previous owner.
In September 2016, we officially became our own organization by being granted nonprofit status.
