Good News: Willow Creek Care Center adapts in time of social distancing

Cars pulled up by the hundreds last week to Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington. Without church services, what could be the draw? Emergency food distribution at its Care Center on the campus.

This curbside distribution developed practically overnight, as Care Center leaders - who typically serve 1,000 families a week - brainstormed over how to continue to serve the needs of hungry families in the area, but without opening up the facility's doors.

Josie Michalak, director of compassion and justice ministries at Willow Creek, summed it up this way in one of the latest reflection videos on YouTube: “While it seems like everything is changing, one thing hasn't. We are the church, and we will continue to be the church to our friends and neighbors.”

In that same video, Michalak described how Willow Creek's Care Center, now in its seventh year, transformed itself into a distribution center rather than a walk-in facility.

In light of Gov. J.B. Pritzker's “stay at home” order, volunteers turned to a drive-up distribution center model. With a bare-bones staff of volunteers, they packed grocery bags with nonperishable items, as well as another bag of fresh and frozen food.

Within the first two days, they provided nearly 900 families with groceries.

That's not all. They deployed their Mobile Care Center - a truck loaded with pre-packed grocery bags - to schools the church partners with in Palatine Township Elementary District 15 and Schaumburg Township Elementary District 54.

Just like the curbside operation at the Care Center, families received grocery bags filled with nonperishables and fresh food items from the truck. During just one day of distribution, the church handed out food to 600 families.

“We learned that kids who are on the free and reduced lunch program normally get up to two meals a day at school,” Michalak said. “The schools are able to continue to get food to them, so what we did was work alongside of them to supplement families with even more groceries.”

Michalak concedes she has been reflecting a lot on the year 2008 and the economic toll that recession took on area families.

That year comes to mind, she said, because it was then that church members conceived the idea of building a multi-service Care Center, which would meet immediate needs of area families with compassion and dignity.

“So many people told us we were crazy to do a capital campaign just coming out of the recession,” Michalak said, “but we felt led, and we did it.”

The Care Center opened in 2013 on Willow Creek's South Barrington campus. Its myriad services - from a full-choice grocery store, to clothing, job assistance, legal aid, health clinic and car repairs - regularly draw 1,000 visits a week, or an average of 12,000 families a year.

“We welcome anyone to come,” said Alisa Healy, who handles communications for the Care Center, “though most of our guests come from within a 5-mile drive of the Care Center.”

Now, with the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic affecting so many families, Michalak sees the vision to open the Care Center as providential.

“I realize God is using the Care Center in incredible ways during this season,” Michalak said.

Distribution continues during the pandemic, with the Mobile Care Center deliveries and curbside grocery pickup taking place from 10 a.m. to noon Tuesdays, as church members remain true to their mission of fighting poverty and injustice so that lives are transformed.

“We know there's a great need in the community.” Michalak said, “and we want to do all that we can to meet that need.”