Harding students come together to help the community in their own unique way with the “Pizza Ministry,” which is a group of students who reach out to low-income neighborhood kids in an effort to lift their spirits and fill their stomachs.
The ministry started as a Bison’s for Christ project seven years ago for Gamma Sig Phi. It became a weekly event three years ago when conversations with the kids made members realize there was a real need in the community for the kids they saw on an annual basis according to Senior Matt Collins.
“It’s more than just pizza,” Freshman Ashley Buckner said. “We get to connect with the parents and love on the kids, and that’s what it is really about.”
During Bison’s for Christ they had a fundraiser in the student center, where they asked for spare change and ended up raising over 1,200 dollars.
“A couple of the guys were talking to the kids out there, and one kid said this is the first food he had eaten since yesterday morning and that got us thinking,” Collins said. “Then someone asked them how many of them knew who Jesus was and only three of them raised their hand out of like fifteen, so that semester they started going every afternoon.”
Caesar’s Pizza started donating pizzas every Monday until recently when a new tax law prevented them from donating unless it is to an official organization. This put the group into action to make themselves an official campus organization, which they are in the process of finalizing.
The group, which consists of students from a variety of clubs, majors, and classifications meets every Monday at 4:00 p.m. in the cafeteria parking lot to go together to the neighborhood behind College Church. Junior Kai Bishop said they usually average ten college students per week and have around fifteen to twenty kids. Numbers vary depending on the weather. When they arrive they pray as a group, introduce new faces, and then go to meet the kids and pass out pizza. After that, they play with the kids for around an hour and a half.
Pizza Ministry has no designated leader. The group instead communicates via their Facebook page to organize every week.
“They’ve invested in us so much,” Bishop said. “When we pull up, they run out to our vehicles.”
Bishop has been involved for a year and a half and even stayed active during the summer. He said he hasn’t missed a Monday since he started.
“We are just a bunch of people who are trying to live out what God wants us to do and trying to set an example for the kids there,” Bishop said.
