DEEPWATER – For a church that’s over 160 years old and has an average Sunday morning attendance of 40, Mount Zion Baptist Church in Deepwater seems surprisingly youthful and energetic in its ministries. Its largest ministry, the Storehouse at the Mount, serves the community through regular distribution of food and household items.
It was begun by member Alesha Jenkins, who says the pantry was miraculously founded and continues to experience miracles.
She had been homeschooling three sons but felt “spiritually stuck and didn’t want to feel that way.” After praying for a ministry, the idea of a food pantry came to mind. Not long after, in a different church, in a town more than an hour from her home, without mentioning the pantry idea, she left a prayer meeting when a stranger surprised her by saying, “I don’t know why, but I feel like I’m supposed to give you food.”
Seeing that as God’s confirmation and direction, she began volunteering at a pantry two hours from her home, bringing home the leftover food to give away through her home church at the time. The need grew quickly from an initial 30-40 families. She reached out to Mt. Zion, which has supported the Storehouse since the summer of 2021.
“It all started with the vision that God laid on the heart of Alesha Jenkins,” says Mt. Zion Pastor Brian Miller. “The food distribution ministry is called The Storehouse, based on Malachi 3:10-12. The Scripture commands believers to bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, and God will then pour out blessings on the nation.”
The ministry has been blessed and has grown.
Today, the Storehouse serves an average of 350 households every other Friday. The rural church 45 minutes south of Warrensburg sees people come to the ministry from local communities within a 30-mile radius. It is now supplied food through the Harvesters, a food bank two hours away in Kansas City.
“This ministry has never been about the food,” Miller says. “We started this ministry with the core of the calling to serve the spiritual needs of the community. We ask every person in line, every week that we serve, how we can pray for them.”
DEEPWATER – Mount Zion Baptist Church members help load boxes for the “Storehouse at the Mount,” a ministry of the church that provides regular distributions of food and household items for the community.
Praying for Storehouse visitors, Jenkins says, has been done “from the beginning and most people are just so excited for prayer.”
She says the prayers have been powerful.
“We started to see people get healed,” Jenkins says. “We had a lady come in who was dying. She had weeks to live. It has been almost three years…and she still comes through our pantry. We’ve had legs that couldn’t walk dance into the Storehouse. We’ve had tumors fall off. We’ve had all kinds of diseases and physical healings.”
Pastor Miller, who is also superintendent at Pomme de Terre State Park in Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources, says about a quarter of the church’s members have come through the distribution ministry.
Aside from providing food, the ministry supplies other needs as well. “We also have a household distribution with items like toilet paper, medicine, first aid, shampoo, soap, and cleaners,” Jenkins explains.
Toys for Tots blesses Storehouse families with Christmas toys. The ministry gives away hundreds of other household items through the annual Big Giveaway, which was created primarily as an evangelistic outreach event. During last year’s event the gospel was shared and “seven people came to the saving grace of Jesus Christ,” Miller says.
Freedom Fest is another annual evangelistic effort of Mt. Zion. The church partners with “other churches and denominations in the area to come together to celebrate the freedom in Christ” through musical worship and gospel preaching, according to Miller.
The Storehouse is staffed by volunteers from throughout the area. “The Storehouse is now a full operation of a lot of amazing servers who give their time for free each week to be the hands and feet of Jesus,” Jenkins says.
Miller agrees. “It has created community with the servers and those we serve. Families have been restored, lives have been changed, people have been saved right there in our parking lot.”
