How Galilee Ministries of East Charlotte grows with its community
- Gensie Baker
- Sep 21
- 12 min read
By Summerlee Walter
Disciple Magazine
On a cold, icy, day in January 2014—the sort of day best spent under a blanket on the couch—Bishop Anne Hodges-Copple, at the time bishop suffragan of the Diocese of North Carolina, convened a group of Charlotte-area deacons at Harper’s Restaurant in the SouthPark shopping district. She had been inspired by then-bishop diocesan Bishop Michael Curry’s recent pastoral address to the 195th Annual Convention a few months earlier, in which he encouraged the gathered clergy and lay leaders to “Go to Galilee.” In what would become a familiar refrain across the diocese in the coming years, going to Galilee meant considering new possibilities for Christian witness and ministry in familiar places. On that grey January day, it meant beginning to discern whether the recently closed St. Andrew’s on the east side of Charlotte might present an opportunity for a Galilee moment of resurrection after the painful process of closing.
Deacons the Rev. Rebecca Yarbrough, the Rev. Jane Holmes, the Rev. Susie Bruno, the Rev. Deb Blackwood, the Rev. Gene Humphries and the Rev. Russ Settles discussed the possibilities with Hodges-Copple for three hours, and by the end of their conversation, they all said yes to continuing the discernment process for the future of the campus.
“And we had no earthly idea what we were getting into,” Yarbrough recalled.
St. Andrew’s had played a key role in its economically vulnerable community, serving as the host site for a Loaves & Fishes food pantry, a clothing closet and English as a second language (ESL) classes. Many of the residents of nearby St. Andrew’s Homes, an affordable housing community for adults 55 and older, had depended on the food pantry. Getting groceries now required two separate bus rides to the nearest pantry. The once-flourishing community garden had become weedy and overgrown. While a Pentecostal congregation was leasing the building, they had replaced the existing partnerships with their own social services, which were closed to non-Christians.
Less than 14 months after the deacons first met, an Episcopal presence was back on the St. Andrew’s campus with a new name: Galilee Ministries of East Charlotte.
In March 2015, the Loaves & Fishes food pantry reopened. Central Piedmont Community College resumed offering ESL classes Monday through Thursday. In April, Galilee Ministries received one of the first five Mission Endowment Grants from the Diocese of North Carolina to repair the building and hire a program coordinator. In June, Refugee Support Services, a small nonprofit that helps refugees with resettlement, information about their new environment and support resources, began offering on-site services for 40-50 people each Wednesday. In July, Catholic Charities came onboard with a summer camp for refugee children and fellowship opportunities for high school girls. The offerings expanded into a full after-school program that autumn. Also that autumn, the community garden restarted, and Charlotte Community Kitchen helped renovate the Galilee Center’s commercial kitchen to offer rental space to people developing new food-based businesses or seeking to expand their current businesses.
Within six months of opening its doors, Galilee Ministries of East Charlotte was serving hundreds of Burmese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Middle Eastern, Bhutanese and other refugees from across the globe—as well as Charlotte natives—with food, educational opportunities, resettlement assistance, economic opportunities and a taste of home.
The remarkable speed with which the new ministry opened its doors and began operating at full capacity is only part of the story, however. For the past decade, Galilee Ministries of East Charlotte has served as a model for asset-based community development, an example of what can happen when we let go of our preconceived notions about a place and “the right way” to do things, and a vision of radical hospitality.
One of the enduring symbols of Galilee Ministries is the flag hall festooned in flags representing the various home countries from which guests come.
EARLY LEARNINGS
After their first meeting, the deacons who served as Galilee Ministries’ unofficial steering committee visited the church, many for the first time, in the spring. They were impressed by the spacious building and grounds and thought it would make a good base for Latino ministry in east Charlotte, where a large Latino population resided. They were half right.
The deacons invited a few community partners from local nonprofits and representatives from the police station next door to the campus to join their next meeting. One of the attendees, Louise Woods, then-president of Charlotte East, made a passing comment that helped to shape the ministry’s future. As Yarbrough recalls, Woods said, “One thing y’all just have to do is bring back the services that brought so many people to the church campus before. It was just so wonderful to see all those Burmese refugees out there working in the garden.”
The deacons learned two things from that comment. One, St. Andrew’s closure had left a hole in the community. Two, there were Burmese refugees in Charlotte. Because they remained open to the Holy Spirit and the community’s needs, however, the deacons had no problem pivoting from a vision for Latino ministry to something more expansive.
“The mustard seed was planted with the vision of opening the building up and opening the doors to the people,” Joanne Jenkins, chair of Galilee Ministries’ board of directors, explained. “It was very intentionally directed towards meeting the needs of a very rapidly growing refugee and immigrant community. That was a huge vision, but I think from the beginning [we also were thinking about] how do we welcome the people in the community who have known this place as a church since the late 50s and who will see a church no matter what it looks like. How do we walk the line of welcoming the brand-new neighbors in Charlotte, whose language and needs are very different, into the midst of an old neighborhood?”
As a member of St. Andrew’s until the day it closed, Jenkins was one of those community members who still saw a church when she looked at the building. Becoming engaged with Galilee Ministries helped to heal her grief over losing her church home, but it was a long journey. Jenkins was not the only neighborhood resident who mourned the closure.
Angie Forde, who as a stalwart advocate for the poor and “troublemaker in chief” at St. Martin’s, Charlotte, was deeply involved in the early stages of Galilee Ministries. She appointed herself as a stealth listener at neighborhood meetings. As Yarbrough recalls, Forde reminded her fellow Episcopalians that “You can’t go telling people what you’re going to do because none of them trust The Episcopal Church right now because of what happened to St. Andrew’s.”
So the Episcopalians asked questions instead.
Holmes reached out to Central Piedmont Community College about restarting ESL classes, and the school’s director for immigrant work invited a friend from another nonprofit to the next community meeting. Yarbrough talked to her friend in community and neighborhood services at the City of Charlotte, which led to him pitching his friend’s commercial kitchen start-up idea. As word spread, more local nonprofit leaders, government and diocesan officials, and community stakeholders joined the conversation. It became clear to Yarbrough and others that the diocesan discernment group needed to let go of its “Episcopal privilege.”
“We didn’t have to give up who we were, but we had to give up insisting that everybody else talk the way we did,” she explained. “What we were really doing was just uncovering all the lights that were already there and bringing them together in one place.”
By October 2014, the Galilee vision had grown into a plan, and the deacons rolled it out during that month’s Clergy Conference. By the end of the year, the diocese and the congregation leasing the St. Andrew’s building mutually agreed to end their lease, and during its January 2015 meeting, Diocesan Council gave its blessing to Galilee Ministries as a special mission of the diocese.
At that time, due to the extensive repairs the building needed, Yarbrough anticipated opening in June. Instead, through the sustained and faithful efforts of the Charlotte Convocation and dozens of volunteers from Episcopal churches and the neighborhood, Galilee Ministries opened its doors two months later, in March.
Of course, there were still more things to learn. Organizers inadvertently scheduled the official opening celebration on the first day of Ramadan, and much of the food at the reception was not halal. None of the Muslim families from the ESL classes or Refugee Support Services could partake. Once they realized their mistake, organizers apologized profusely and offered to-go snack boxes of halal food for the families to take home and break their fasts at iftar.
The situation turned out to be a lesson in hospitality in two ways. First Galilee Ministries’ leaders learned they needed to continue examining their Episcopal privilege. Then they learned how the Galilee community was already coming together in mutual support. Yarbrough recalls walking into the kitchen to see the Rev. Suze Cate, who at the time served at St. John’s, Charlotte, working with one of the Jewish guests and one of the Muslim guests to package food.
“It was exactly what you wanted it to be.”
RADICAL HOSPITALITY
The opening celebration was the first of many examples of the adaptive, open hospitality for which Galilee Ministries would become known.
“Welcome is in our mission, and it always had been in the DNA of who and what Galilee is all about,” the Rev. Emily Parker, Galilee Ministries’ current executive director, explained. “To meet people where they are on a very human level and to see folks and to acknowledge folks and get into a conversation, if that’s of interest…. If someone comes to the door and needs something, we slow down and take the time to figure out what it is that they need and try to be of service and to really be present for people.”
One of the earliest signs of welcome at Galilee Ministries was the weekly community meals that opened Galilee back up to the broader community. Everyone from clergy to unhoused people to white collar professionals to recent immigrants gathered for a weekly lunch, served restaurant-style with plates, glasses, waiters and not a Styrofoam cup or cafeteria tray in sight. People who would never speak to each other in their daily lives shared a dignified meal and conversation across language, class and cultural barriers.
In August 2016, Toni Hagerman, Galilee’s first program coordinator and later its first executive director, shared a story about how the Galilee Center allowed people to connect with one another in unexpected ways.
“This past Thursday, I had the opportunity to sit down for several hours with 14 women who were making knit hats. Together, we represented people born in Pakistan, Germany, Switzerland, Bhutan, the mountain highlands of Vietnam, and five different states in the U.S. We talked about faith a little bit. Some of the women go to church. Some to mosque.
“The refugee ladies were all talking about going to a pool party later in August at the Jewish Community Center (JCC). The JCC is providing towels, bathing suits and little mesh bags for everyone who signs up for the party. The Muslim women told us about the types of bathing suits they wear to remain covered, which led us to conversation about bias they feel against them because they wear the hijab. And yet, still, these Muslim women were discussing the possibility of attending the pool party at the JCC!
“Barriers are coming down. Friendships are forming. Understanding and empathy are developing across language and cultural barriers.”
“That’s how Galilee works: Cultures show up, and they learn how to work together,” Jenkins said.
The Rev. Robin Sands, who started as a front desk volunteer at the Galilee Center before discerning her call to the diaconate and now serves on the board of directors, has fond memories of another moment of cross-cultural sharing. From her position at the front desk, she observed that many of the refugee women who arrived at the center fumbled for their pens, bus tokens and other items in the plastic grocery bags they used to transport their belongings. To make their lives a bit easier and to help them adapt to some of the customs of their new country, Sands began collecting handbags, purses and volunteers for what would become the first in a series of ladies’ teas.
During the first tea, clusters of refugee women and American women gathered around tables set with tablecloths and fancy treats to discuss what you might carry in your purse (money, tissues, ChapStick) and what you should not (legal documents). They used visual aids on the table to help communicate across language barriers. After the meal and conversation, each of the refugee women selected her new purse and received a starter kit of purse supplies.
Later ladies’ teas covered everything from financial literacy, school norms for their children, women’s health and domestic violence—underlying questions or problems most of the refugee women would not or could not discuss with men and were not able to learn about anywhere else.
The refugee women, of course, were not the only ones who benefitted from the Galilee community. It changed Sands’ life, too.
“Being in Galilee in those early days is what brought me to ordained ministry.”
A lot changed at Galilee Ministries during and after the COVID-19 pandemic: the community meal program moved outside to a food truck and began serving tenfold the number of meals; the Galilee Green expanded into a place of community rest and respite; tower gardens supplemented the outdoor community garden; and when need was greatest in the early days of the pandemic, the nave served as a remote learning site for children, who also made use of the outdoor labyrinth.
GROWING INTO THE FUTURE
Spending time at the Galilee Center changes people, but the center itself has also changed throughout time. This nimbleness allows the ministry to adapt to the changing needs of its community—and even redefine what community looks like.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many in-person services stopped, moved to another site or completely changed how they operate. The stoppage in refugee resettlement that coincided with the start of the pandemic halted other services. But new opportunities arose, and others expanded.
As unemployment spiked, the need for feeding ministries exploded. The Movable Feast food truck, once a staple of diocesan young adult ministry, moved to the Galilee Center and began serving 1,200 meals each Tuesday. The socially distanced line spread down the street and cars encircled the block. Furloughed restaurant workers volunteered their time to prepare and serve meals, and Chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen donated money to Latin American restaurants along Central Avenue to provide food for the truck.
Inside the building, Galilee Ministries hosted 24 children at the Learning Vine, a remote learning site through a partnership with the Greater Enrichment Program and Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools during fall 2020. It was the first time since St. Andrew’s closed that Galilee Ministries itself occupied the church nave.
Other changes have come about apart from the pandemic. When the ministry began in 2015, the area surrounding the Galilee Center contained clusters of government-funded refugee resettlement housing, so people could easily walk from their homes to their new safe haven. After refugee resettlement stopped and as the surrounding neighborhood gentrifies, many of the populations that historically depended on the Galilee Center are moving further east. The support services tailored for refugees have followed, but a host of new nonprofit partners have moved in.
No matter how the ministry changes, however, feeding people in mind, body and spirit remains central.
Now on a typical week, MyBaby4Me, a partnership with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints aimed at improving infant and maternal mortality rates, meets at lunchtime on Mondays and on Thursday evenings. On Tuesdays from 1-3 p.m., the Nourish Up pantry distributes a week’s worth of nutritious groceries to each of its clients. On Tuesday evenings, the moms of DefiningHER, a group for single mothers of color, meet for a meal and a program while volunteers provide childcare. On Wednesday evenings, yogis gather for Iyengar yoga in the flag hall. Nourish Up opens again on Thursday afternoons, and Tai Chi 4 Health occupies the nave on Fridays. The various groups of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Charlotte and the Women’s Chorus of Charlotte rehearse Monday-Wednesday evenings and perform at the Galilee Center a few times per year. Action NC, a community organizing and advocacy group, also has office space on campus.
Sundays are also busy days at the Galilee Center. A Congolese congregation, Desiring God Community Church, meets in the nave, as does Matters to Mission (M2M) Charlotte, a Presbyterian Church (USA) community dedicated to justice and service. In the flag hall, the Ethiopian Evangelical Church of Charlotte NC meets.
Every day of the week, Galilee Ministries continues to fill in the gaps in the community. While the Nourish Up food pantry provides critical, recurring support to people experiencing food insecurity, because it requires a referral from another service and operates limited hours each week, it cannot serve everyone who walks into the Galilee Center hungry. To provide extra support, in early 2023 Galilee Ministries opened Lydia’s Pantry, a no-referral, walk-in emergency food pantry open five days per week. The pantry offers shelf-stable food, options for vegan and halal diets, dignity products, paper products and diapers. Lydia’s Pantry and the Nourish Up pantry work in coordination; when someone receives emergency food from Lydia’s Pantry, volunteers also make sure they are registered in the Nourish Up system.
Outside the building, the front lawn of the Galilee Center has been transformed. The 43 plots of the community garden are bursting with produce from around the globe, and the Galilee Green, an edible landscape and native plant garden, is redolent with the scent of figs.
“There have been times when I’ve been at Galilee, and this group is here, and that group is here, and that group is here, and this group is here, and they’re all different and they’re all doing different things, but they’re all together and mixing and mingling, and the energy is good, and everyone’s having a good time,” Parker said. “Being in the middle of community, it’s very positive. It’s an antidote to the rest of the chaos going on; people can come here and just be. If you’re here, you’re here for a reason.”
For many people, that reason is community. At the Galilee Center, the concept of local community is ever-expanding to include more groups and people from more communities, both locally and globally. As the center sees fewer people from Southeast Asian countries, more people from Spanish-speaking and Arabic-speaking countries are arriving. Not every new arrival comes from across the globe, however. Recently a man came to Lydia’s Pantry from South Carolina after hearing about their services through word of mouth.
“God is telling us to revisit and reimagine local,” Jenkins explained. “You have no idea how far or how near the need is until you try to fill in the gaps.”
Summerlee Walter is the communications coordinator for the Diocese of North Carolina.
A Model for the Diocese
As Galilee Ministries of East Charlotte celebrates its 10th anniversary, it is helping to inspire another community-based ministry in a former church building that is just getting started. The New Hope Collaborative on the campus of the former St. Mark’s, Raleigh, also responds to its neighborhood’s needs through a variety of local partnerships, including a Nourish Up pantry and a highly regarded after-school program. Learn more at nhcraleigh.org.
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