Walking It Out at Timothy

If you had been sitting in the pews at Timothy Lutheran Church on Sunday, March 2, you might have been surprised at one moment in the service. Near the beginning of the service, music suddenly filled the room, and it did not come from an organ. Someone had turned on the hip-hop song “Walk it Out,” and a group of youth was walking down the aisle toward the chancel, carrying food. Why were a bunch of young people bringing food to the front of the church with a hip-hop song blaring behind them?

Because of the Hunger Walk. At Timothy Lutheran Church, the Hunger Walk is predominately an event for the youth. To promote it among the members of the congregation, Cindy Schuster, the Youth Director at Timothy, and the young participants in the event wanted to do something different and engaging. As a way of calling attention to the walking that they will do at the event, they chose to play “Walk it Out” while strolling up to face the congregation to make an announcement about the Hunger Walk.

The youth have good reason to go all out with their marketing. If they reach their goal of raising $1,400 for the Hunger Walk, the church will buy them all dinner when they gather after the event for their annual post-walk meal at Steak & Shake. The kids also know that the money they gather will be going to a good cause: with the grant that it will receive from LSG, Timothy contributes to its food bank, which feeds about 60 people a week in Cherokee County. Perhaps the team at Timothy will even win our Hunger Walk Challenge by raising the most money among youth groups, which would mean that they all get tickets to Lutheran Night at the Braves in September. To get enough donations from congregation members, though, they might have to “walk it out” at their Sunday services more than once.