Every Saturday morning near a sidewalk in San Antonio’s historic Monte Vista district, scores of people gather for an 8:30 a.m. Eucharist celebrated by clergy from Christ Episcopal Church. On average, 60 to 70 people receive Communion. The Rev. Justin Lindstrom, the church’s associate rector for community formation, has helped lead the outreach event called Sidewalk Saturday for over seven years.

“I would say it’s probably one of the most important ministries that I’ve been part of,” Lindstrom said. “It’s really become the congregation that I get to serve.”

By 9 a.m., staff and volunteers distribute bags of food. Congregants can also receive clothing, bed sheets, and towels. Thanks to the apparel company Bombas, a Certified B Corporation that donates a pair of clothing for every pair it sells, the San Antonio parish distributes thousands of T-shirts and pairs of underwear—up to 10,000 pairs of Bombas socks annually.

A Christ Church parishioner who volunteers his time is on site as a social worker. “We help people find jobs … help with electric bills and rent,” Lindstrom said. Breakfast tacos and coffee are served. By 9:30 a.m., they hold a Bible study.

Fr. Justin Lindstrom celebrates the Eucharist during Sidewalk Saturday. | Christ Church, San Antonio

“This has become an extension of our worshiping life,” said the Rev. Joe Dewey, who began serving as rector in May. He said Lindstrom has his fingerprints on the service in a significant way, with him and fellow clergy leading the service on rotation.

In the past several years, the Sidewalk Saturday community has witnessed 12 baptisms, four weddings, and two funerals.

“Everything that we do as a church on a regular basis, we’re doing here,” Lindstrom said.

Expanding the Outreach

Several years after she began worshiping at Christ Church, parishioner Tina Honsaker began praying for the next ministry she’d join. It was 1997, and she was already involved in several ministries but felt “they weren’t all complete.”

“What I did is I laid them all before the Lord,” she said of her volunteer work. “This is important, because we do things … but sometimes it’s not always the way God wants us to serve him.”

During that season of contemplation, she believed the Spirit would lead her to the right ministry. “I was directed to the food pantry,” she said.

The food distribution ministry was in its early days, and although she had served on various parish ministries since, including the altar guild and Sunday school, she had always been most committed to the food pantry. Lindstrom calls her its director, but she refers to herself as a steward.

Honsaker still remembers when parishioners began bringing household items and books to be given out, until it became a sort of marketplace. “We had all these different things. We gave out food, had a prayer ministry, had [household] things … we also had some hygienics,” she said. They would create little manna bags for the individuals they serve—whom they call clients.

Many clients are working poor, including an elderly woman taking care of her family, not expecting that she would live her later years in such a situation. Some of the clients are homeless.

The team serving in the food pantry, which became Sidewalk Saturday around 2016, was initially working out of the church’s conference room. They then moved to a carriage house—a historic structure. Later, Christ Church built an extension of its campus to serve as a hub for community outreach.

“It just grew. When you serve the Lord, and you glorify him and not yourself, he’ll take it, and he’ll just let it expand,” Honsaker said.

“It’s amazing what Jesus does,” she said.

The 1.6-acre lot called Outreach Pavilion encompasses the carriage house. Another structure was built to house all the other items the church gives out. The pavilion also has a sprawling green lawn with a playground for the community’s younger members.

Food supplies requiring the right temperature are stored in industrial-size refrigerators, and the pantry follows the guidelines of the San Antonio Food Bank, which also provides items for distribution.

The website of the San Antonio Community Resource Directory describes Sidewalk Saturday as a place where neighbors in need receive food, clothes, household items, support, and referrals to other services. But primary to the listed offerings is a faith community.

“In some ways, coming from a church that had seven services on a given weekend in Dallas, prior to being the rector of Christ Episcopal, there were always dynamics in which any particular service had its own feel as a congregation itself,” Dewey told TLC. “This one is a unique congregation.”

The rector said the feeling of worship is very different. “People raise their hands for prayer, and members of our prayer team come around and lay hands on those individuals,” the rector said, while adding that the traditional Prayers of the People are observed. He said the ministry is one of the reasons he was drawn to Christ Church.

“The gospel is always word and deed,” Dewey said, as he told the story in Acts 3 in which a man lame from birth sought alms from the Apostles Peter and John. He paraphrased the words of the Apostle Peter: “I don’t have money, but what I have I will give to you freely, and he says, ‘Stand up and walk.’”

What the parish does during Sidewalk Saturday at the Outreach Pavilion embodies the idea of both proclaiming the gospel and practicing the gospel, Dewey said.

For Lindstrom, serving in the outreach ministry has given him a greater understanding of people in crisis. When faced with a trial of his own, he drew strength from the experience and interactions he had near the sidewalk.

“I was actually diagnosed with Parkinson’s about four and a half years ago,” Lindstrom said. Because of those he met on Saturdays, who are dealing with their own struggles, it was easier for him to understand the struggle of Parkinson’s at age 49.

“I was very open with my disease and what I’m going through with everyone and anyone, because I knew that it was important for me to do that. … If I don’t, then I could be going through it alone,” he said. In explaining the concept of poverty, Lindstrom said it can be defined as a lack of relationships in one’s life.

Illustrating the idea, he spoke about those who may need to go to the hospital but with no one to bring them, or one who needs food but lacks support. “If you don’t have the relationships, then you’re gonna have to come to a place like Sidewalk Saturday,” he said. “We have to be those relationships to the folks that don’t have anyone in their life.”

In its 2025 Impact Report, the San Antonio Food Bank said federal funding cuts have been one of its biggest challenges—a situation mirrored by food banks nationwide. Lindstrom nonetheless prays for lots of donations, and that the church would continue to support the program wholeheartedly.

Another important prayer: “That people would come to know who Jesus is and that they would come to know a newfound hope in him.”

Caleb Maglaya Galaraga is The Living Church’s Episcopal Church reporter. His work has also appeared in Christianity Today, Broadview Magazine, and Presbyterian Outlook, among other publications.