Every Christmas, New Mickle Baptist Church (NMBC) [1] in Camden, New Jersey, serves an extraordinary Christmas Dinner. Dozens of church members start cooking four days before the holiday, and on Christmas Day, volunteers serve approximately 400 meals to those in need. The food is bountiful—offerings include chicken, ham, roast beef, turkey, baked macaroni, collard greens, string beans, and candied sweet potatoes. Most of the meals are served at the church, but more than 100 dinners are also delivered to homebound folks living in nearby senior citizen high-rise buildings.
“These meals are part of our church outreach to the community,” says Minister Thelma Miller, who serves as NMBC’s Coordinator of Community Outreach and has been organizing these dinners for the past 12 years. “We just want to extend the love that we feel that Christ gave to the world. Around Christmas, people can often feel disconnected if they don’t have family or friends around, so we try to offer a setting that provides not only good food but also the fellowship that people need.”
On December 25, the folks who enjoyed NMBC’s Christmas Dinner were given another gift as well: An energy-efficient compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb as well as the opportunity to learn about the energy savings offered by CFL bulbs. A total of 250 CFL bulbs were distributed, part of Project Porchlight New Jersey’s campaign to distribute energy-efficient light bulbs to residents across the state. Project Porchlight is an initiative of One Change [2], and the campaign is made possible thanks to funding by the state Board of Public Utilities (BPU) [3] and New Jersey’s Clean Energy Program (NJCEP) [4].
Minister Miller was delighted to have Project Porchlight join the Christmas Dinner. “It was a wonderful day,” she says proudly. “Certainly Project Porchlight, in giving out a resource that helps people to be more effective in their use of energy, was like icing on the cake. We appreciated it.
“With the way our economy is now, it’s just wonderful when anything can help people,” adds Minister Miller. “We’re interested not only in providing food, but any resource that helps our community.”
When it comes to protecting our environment, simple actions matter. Even something as simple as changing a light bulb can have a huge impact. “There are a lot of people who might think, ‘I would replace my bulbs with CFL bulbs, but they cost more,’ not realizing that while they may cost more, in the long run, they are more cost-efficient,” says Minster Miller. “Project Porchlight did raise their consciousness, and now that these people have started using the CFL bulbs, they’ll continue. And they may say, ‘Now I can talk to my neighbors about why I’m using it.’ All the people who received CFL bulbs are much more apt to use them than they were previously.”
Project Porchlight empowers people to believe that simple actions matter and to make smart choices that protect the environment. “Project Porchlight is a fabulous campaign, absolutely, because it makes people stop and think,” says Minister Miller. “We’re all supposed to try to protect the environment. That’s one of God’s resources for us. We are supposed to be good stewards of the earth. Project Porchlight helps us do what we know we are mandated to do as custodians of the earth.”