BBUUC started donating non-perishable food items to St. Mary’s in April 2025. Since then, BBUUC members have donated about 73 bags of groceries to the food pantry, which serves up to 1,000 individuals and families each month with dry and canned goods, fresh bread, meat, and produce. According to a 2024 University of Florida report on food insecurity, 14.4% of Jacksonville households receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. However, 33% of food insecure individuals are above program eligibility income levels. That means that 1 in 3 people who are food insecure may not be eligible for SNAP benefits (https://uha.ufhealthjax.org/wordpress/files/2024/03/Food-insecurity-issues-solutions.pdf). By donating to the St. Mary’s Episcopal Church food pantry every month, BBUUC is addressing the immediate needs of people in our community who are ineligible for government-sponsored food assistance.
Here is a little more background on the food pantry in the words of Rev. Catherine Montgomery, Priest and Outreach Administrator at St. Mary’s:
“St. Mary’s began as a house church in 1888, and our sanctuary was built in 1912. In the 1960’s, the priest at the time made an intentional decision to devote the parish’s efforts to anti-poverty work, at which point we became a “mission” parish. This means that while we have a small but vibrant Sunday morning worshipping community, we rely on financial support from our diocese and other sources to do significant outreach, serving the most vulnerable in our community. Over the decades, this work included an early learning program, a free cafeteria, a clothing closet, and a dry good food pantry. In 2017, we made the decision to focus our efforts exclusively on the food pantry, expanding this offering significantly and becoming part of the distribution network for Feeding Northeast Florida.
Through that relationship, we have four assigned grocery stores which donate excess fresh and frozen food to us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We rely almost completely on donations from churches and individuals for dry goods. We are currently serving about 400 unique households each month and are on track to distribute more than 230,000 pounds of food in 2025. Our gardens will provide nearly 1,000 pounds of seasonal, organic produce for our pantry this year. Our pantry utilizes a trauma-informed market model, allowing guests to shop for the items that work best for them, in an environment that prioritizes relationship and pastoral care. The pantry and gardens continue to be almost entirely volunteer run, as people from all around the Jacksonville metro area log more than 120 hours each week to support our very small staff (currently two full-time and two part-time employees). We are thrilled to serve as a hub for outreach in the Urban Core, and welcome everyone into our life together.
We also host Church Without Walls, a congregation founded by our Vicar (Episcopal-speak for the senior pastor of a mission) in 2012, which bridges typical social boundaries — unhoused and affluent, churched and unchurched, believers and seekers alike — to create a community of radical belonging. Church Without Walls gathers every Sunday at 1:00 pm. For many years, this congregation met outdoors in a downtown parking lot, but is currently utilizing a small chapel at St. John’s Cathedral. We look forward to gathering back outside for special Sundays and possibly every week again during cooler months. Volunteers often serve as “Lunch Angels,” bringing thirty sack lunches (or hot lunches in to-go containers) and bottled water for our those who attend this service. This is a great opportunity for small groups to serve together and join us for worship.”
Members of the BBUUC Social Action Committee have visited and volunteered at the St. Mary’s food pantry and have this to say:
“I was impressed by their efforts to grow vegetables for the food pantry and the hard work of planting, tending, harvesting and delivering them to the food pantry for distribution to the community. They also plant and tend demonstration gardens so people can see how it’s done and hopefully try growing their own vegetables.
-Liz Baldwin
“St. Mary’s facilities are amazing; they are a hub for social services for the Episcopal Church here in JAX… I’m really glad I am now volunteering there, with state and federal support declining/disappearing.”
-John Wrightington
The BBUUC Social Action Committee collects non-perishable food items at the back of sanctuary on the 4th Sunday of every month