BREAD Organization, Columbus Ohio

How Does BREAD Work?

Micah 6:6-8 (NRSV)
"He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Mission: People of faith building power to “do justice”

Doing Justice:

Most congregations are very good at pursuing the humble walk with God and they are often strong at demonstrating kindness (or mercy). But when it comes to doing justice, most of those same congregations fall significantly short. One of the primary reasons for this shortcoming is that a single member, pastor or congregation does not have enough power to hold key decision makers accountable for protecting the weak from the strong. BREAD provides a vehicle for congregations to practice justice by joining together large numbers of people. These large numbers of people give us a chance to "do justice." Since congregations gather weekly to remind themselves of their humble walk with God, we challenge them to gather that same number of people once a year for a BREAD Justice action.

Past Accomplishments:

Three examples of what BREAD has done to achieve a greater degree of justice are:

• Spearheaded a campaign with other allies to pass state legislation to lower the interest on payday loans at 28%.

• Got the City of Columbus and Franklin County to form and fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund in 2001. In 2007, the fund created more than 5oo units of affordable housing.

• Pushed the Franklin County Prosecutor to create the KEY Truancy Reduction Progam which improved attendance for 200 students in six schools in the 2007-8 school year.

How does BREAD Work:

BREAD uses a four-step process to surface and win issues of justice:
1) We listen to our members in 1-1’s, house meetings and town hall meetings in order to surface community problems for research and action. The listening process also serves to enlist more people in justice ministry networks in congregations;
2) Then we research the problems to identify workable solutions;
3) We gather a large number of people, in order to show our power and get the attention of a public official to work on the solution;
4) Lastly, we follow-through on the public commitments in order to ensure that there is action to address the problem.

How do people get involved in the work of BREAD:

People can be involved in BREAD’s work at many levels: researching problems, raising money in the support drive, enhancing the justice teaching in their congregations. The base level of the justice work in BREAD is to: 1) bring three people with you to the Nehemiah Action (May 4, 2009) and 2) attend two other meetings to help prepare for the Annual Nehemiah Meeting: the rally (April 20, 2009) and the Annual Meeting (November 16, 2009).

See the calendar for dates of key upcoming meetings.