NASHVILLE, TN — Spruce Street Baptist Church, Nashville’s oldest African American church, is continuing to make an impact each week through its long-standing food ministry. For 35 years, the Spruce Street Tuesday Feeding Program has distributed meals through delivery and takeout to hundreds of people across the community.
Since the start of this year, the program has served more than 8,386 meals. That’s 323 more meals when compared to this time last year. In 2023, from January to December, a total of 16,239 meals were served and the church is on track to meet or exceed those numbers.
“We continue to survive and thrive with the prayers, support, hard work and blessings from our Spruce Street family and friends,” said Darlene Stephen, chair of the Tuesday Feeding Program. “The program could not feed the hungry without our generous volunteers, donors and contributors.”
Founded by the Rev. Raymond L. Bowman and the late Mary L. McEwen, the Spruce Street Tuesday Feeding Program was established in 1989. It was a natural development for McEwen whose passion for cooking and helping others are the essence behind the program’s success. During her time overseeing the program, McEwen was also instrumental in solidifying important partnerships, most notably with A Dream Come True Events and Catering, which continues its support of the feeding program today.
Those partnership opportunities have continued to evolve. Cigna Group employee Niki McKnight partnered with Spruce Street Community Development as part of her participation in The Cigna Group’s Community Ambassadors Fellows program which awards each person as much as three months of paid leave and up to $20,000 to develop and launch programs that improve the health and well-being of people around the globe. In 2023, McKnight selected the Spruce Street Tuesday Feeding Program to help with major upgrades to the church’s kitchen so the program could continue providing food security.
“We remain grateful to Niki McKnight for selecting this important ministry as part of her Cigna program,” Stephen said. “The generosity of that gift, along with that of so many others, has truly created avenues for us to meet the growing demand of providing nutrient-rich meals to fight food insecurity and create a stronger sense of community.”
Along with hot meals, the Spruce Street Tuesday Feeding Program has expanded its outreach into distributing food boxes, personal hygiene and toiletry items, snack packs and clothing to the homeless, working poor, homebound children and seniors. A team of volunteers come together every week to make the program happen, including members from the Vareda Williams Missionary Circle, the Outreach Ministry and the L-Club, Hillsboro Presbyterian Church, to name a few.
For more information on Spruce Street Baptist Church’s Tuesday Feeding Program or how to help through volunteering or donations, call (615) 329-4105.
Spruce Street Baptist Church, known as the “Mother Church” of Afro-American churches in Nashville, originally began as the First Colored Baptist Church in 1841 when the congregation at First Baptist Church at 7th and Broad permitted its Negro members to hold a separate meeting under the superintendence of a Standing Committee on Negro Problems. Formally this congregation would remain a mission of the white church until the end of the War Between the States. In September 1865, the First Baptist Church of Nashville agreed to the ecclesiastical separation rendered necessary by the war. By 1873, the members of the First Colored Baptist Church had grown to approximately 3,000 members. The church was incorporated as Spruce Street Baptist Church in 1895 and has been served by some of the greatest preachers, theologians, scholars, orators, financiers and has developed laymen and laywomen who have held outstanding positions throughout America. Visit www.sprucestreetbaptist.org.
