Brown Bag Brigade steps up to serve community

The Brown Bag Brigade will descend on a southwest Minot neighborhood this weekend – and for a good cause.

The brigade from Our Savior’s Lutheran Church aims to build community connections and support a good cause by delivering empty brown bags to the doorsteps of 465 residences on Saturday, Jan. 31. Residents are encouraged to fill the grocery bags with needed food pantry items or monetary donations and leave them on their doorsteps on Saturday, Feb. 7, when the brigade returns to gather the bags and deliver them to the nonprofit The Lord’s Cupboard.

Saturday’s event is only the second for the OSLC brigade, but it plans to continue on a quarterly basis in selected neighborhood blocks of 400-500 residences, with the goal of covering the entire city over time.

Rev. Dan Haugen, senior pastor at OSLC, said he brought the concept from his former church in Portland, Oregon, which had operated a similar brigade for several years. He said the intent had been to get the congregation into the community.

“Lutherans haven’t been the greatest at getting outside their walls. And so, this was just a way to do it. We didn’t know that it would be so successful,” he said.

In Portland, the church supplied a charity for homeless youth with most of the supplies it needed. After the first event in Minot, OSLC took about 1,500 pounds of food to The Lord’s Cupboard.

Haugen said the OSLC’s confirmation students are playing an important role with the brigade, but the project is designed to engage the entire church in service and also in meeting and talking to community members about why they choose to serve.

“It’s something the church is really excited about,” he said. “They want to be a community church, where we serve all of Minot and North Dakota.”

Haugen added the church’s brigade is open to assisting other charitable organizations that need items, whether its food, toiletries, shoes or other supplies. It also is open to collecting for other local food pantries and encourages other churches to join them with their own Brown Bag Brigades.

“It’s been a really neat thing to do,” Haugen said. “The congregation knows that they’re making a difference. And that’s important, too.”

The Brown Bag Brigade will be making drop-offs this Saturday in the neighborhood near CVS around 11 a.m.