by Frank Lee
Stephen Reetz and Haji Yusuf knew it wasn’t just a free meal they were offering at the Salvation Army last month but the chance to educate others while doing good in the community.
Members from the Christian and Muslim communities volunteered to serve the meals that were offered in St. Cloud as part of a five-day effort to foster unity and feed the hungry.
“We are working together to help the needy in our community,” said Jeff Sackett, lead pastor at Celebration Lutheran Church, “so more people can see the efforts being made to find common ground between these two groups.”
The organizers of the meal service at the Salvation Army approached local restaurants, which provided the food for about cost, said Reetz, who attended the Salvation Army service project.
“The restaurants graciously participated as partners in this program by providing the labor and preparing and delivering the food for us,” he said of Texas Roadhouse, Dickey’s Barbecue Pit, Flying Pig Pizza Co. and Somali Café.
Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is an evangelical part of “the universal Christian Church,” with a Bible-based message and ministry motivated by God’s love, according to its website.
“Food brings people together, and it’s showing compassion for an immediate need,” said Reetz, a Thrivent financial associate. “There’s 150 to 200 people that show up there to eat lunch every single day.”
Reetz, who serves on Celebration Lutheran’s adult education committee, came up with the idea of the meal service at the Salvation Army after having coffee with Yusuf, a Somali from Kenya and a resident of St. Cloud for about a decade.
“Thrivent’s ‘Action Team’ program helped defray the costs of the food for all five days with $250 per day,” Reetz said of the joint service project. “The Muslim community raised the other half of the money.”
Yusuf is a business owner and co-founder of a group called “#UNITECLOUD,” which is “working to promote peace and understanding between cultures in the community.”
“It’s a coming together of faiths to do God’s work – Muslims, Christians coming together and providing food on the table just like our faiths tell us to – to look out for those who are in need,” Yusuf said.
Yusuf has been helping with the meals at the Salvation Army, whose mission is “to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination.
“We’re giving back to our community and having a conversation about our community,” Yusuf said, “about everyday struggles that people have, about issues of homelessness, poverty, unemployment that affects all of us, regardless of faith, race or gender.”
Reetz said, “We really look forward to continued growth together and extending peace in our community and just to make more people think maybe they should get involved or do something, and it’s not that complicated.”
Muslim neighbors
The joint meal service project at the Salvation Army resulted from Celebration Lutheran’s adult educational series about Islam entitled My Neighbor is Muslim.
“I think it’s getting better,” Yusuf said of race relations in St. Cloud. “The community has been getting better at knowing who their neighbors are, where they come from, what their history is, and also the new neighbors are getting to know those who are already here.”
The Sartell church began the faith-based adult-education series on Jan. 10 that was intended to bridge the cultural and religious divide between Christians and Muslims.
“We had the largest attendance we’ve had for any series like that,” Reetz said, “and it just revealed the high interest in our community to understand and to deal with the issues surrounding embracing the Somali community, the Muslim community.”
The free educational series hosted by Celebration Lutheran was an attempt to reduce the ignorance, fear and stereotyping that may exist, particularly in light of the terrorist events in France and hate crimes in America.
“There was the realization of how similar our values are – not beliefs, but our values that we share in common, things such as concern for the poor, compassion, forgiveness, love and mercy,” Reetz said of the series. “Those values (of Muslims) are mirror images of ours.”
Reetz said about 50 to 60 people attended each of the sessions at Celebration Lutheran, which offered the 10-part series featuring invited Muslim speakers at the Christian church.
“There was a deepening of compassion for them as people and seeing them as individuals – not just stereotyping all people who look differently in our community as ‘bad‘ or ‘wrong,’” Reetz said of Muslims in Central Minnesota.