A food pantry organized by a local Christian-based nonprofit and designed to resemble a grocery store is coming to Hurst-Euless-Bedford residents in 2024.
“They can choose the things that they want and that their family will eat. There’s less waste and there’s more dignity because they get to choose for themselves,” said Trasa Cobern, 6 Stones’ chief development officer.
The Tarrant County nonprofit 6 Stones, broke ground in Euless Tuesday morning to build its Hope Center. The 25,000-square-foot resource facility will provide food, clothing and other resources to Texans. The nonprofit has served the area for 14 years.
The community lives within a school district where 60.8% of students are considered economically disadvantaged, according to 2021-2022 data from the Texas Education Agency. For the first time, the Hope Center will add a “client-choice food pantry,” which will be built to look like and work like a grocery store.
How does this work?
6 Stones already has a food pantry in Hurst that provides emergency food every Tuesday and second Saturday of every month. At this location, residents talk with a 6 Stones staff member, called a hope builder, about their family size and what resources they need. The hope builder then goes into the facility and picks out the food and other items for residents based on their family size.
The client-choice food pantry will be designed to simulate a grocery shopping experience, said Cobern. Once the Hope Center is built, people can walk into the pantry, grab a shopping cart and have the option to pick what food and brands they want. The quantity of food people can shop for will still be based on family size, said Cobern.
The Miracle
Similar to their mission to alleviate poverty, 6 Stones was created after their founders, First Baptist Church of Euless, now known as Cross City Church, paid off $6 million of debt that the church had.
“The church was going through a financial crisis,” said Josh Merriott, executive pastor of communications & technology for Cross City Church.
In 2005, members of the church started a campaign to get rid of their debt and made three prayers, Leney said.
Prayer
- “Lord, is this of you?”
- “What’s my part?”
- “Lord, bless your people so they may give generously.”
Once the debt was paid off in 2007, the church placed six stone markers in their courtyard that surrounded a center stone in the middle that was engraved with the words “The Miracle.” Each stone marker symbolized each million that the church paid off.
“Even when the debt was paid off people kept giving,” Merriott said.
Financial controls were put in place of the church, Merriott said. In 2008, an apartment complex near First Baptist Church of Euless caught fire and one of the residents asked the church for help, but the church did not have a good way to assist, according to the 6 Stones website.
This caused John Meador, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Euless then commissioned Leney’s predecessor, Scott Sheppard, to start thinking of ways that the church can help their community. That led to meetings with the church staff and local government officials. The church voted to launch 6 Stones and fund the nonprofit through its early years, Merriott said.
6 Stones started in a building owned by the church, called Campus West, which was located across the street. The organization became an official nonprofit in 2009.
They fed and clothed the HEB community in that building for years until Cross City Church sold Campus West to help fund a new building for kids and students on the Euless Campus, as well as needed campus-wide renovations. The Campus West sale closed on December 17, 2021 Merriott said.
“Their church today is 125 years old and they had not done all the renovations that were needed,” Leney said. “They did a big huge expansion campaign and needed to sell campus West.”
Finding a new home for hope
In 2019, 6 Stones started a campaign to raise money for a more permanent building, Cobern said. Through donors and grants, 6 Stones raised $6.9 million for their new facility, according to their campaign page.
The Hope Center also aims to assist families who have immigrated to the HEB neighborhood from other countries, Cobern said.
About 19.8% of people living in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District were not born in the United States, which is a higher percentage than the rate of Tarrant County as a whole, according to 2021 data from Census Reporter. That’s why any forms or paperwork that people need to fill out have translations in English, Spanish, French and Arabic, Cobern said.
“It’s a hugely diverse community,” Cobern said. “We have huge communities of people from the Congo who speak French and people from Nepal.”
The Hope Center will be located at 3200 W. Euless Blvd. and is expected to be completed in 2024, Cobern said. On top of the client-choice food pantry, the facility is also expected to have a clothing closet, computer lab, counseling center and open workspace.
“This has been a really great growing time for us, and we really think that the future is going to be really bright for 6 Stones going forward,” Cobern said.
Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org or on Twitter at @marissaygreene.
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