By Sheila Banks
Communications Specialist

Each year, the festive red and green shoeboxes fill churches around the Christmas season—the impact being made at home and abroad.

Since the early 1990s, Operation Christmas Child, a project of Samaritan’s Purse, has been collecting and distributing shoebox gifts, filled with small toys, personal care items, and school supplies to children around the world.

Delivered into the hands of children through local churches, every shoebox gift is an opportunity to share about Jesus Christ and God’s love.

For Fellowship of Faith Lutheran Church in McHenry, Ill., it’s been a way to make a global impact as well as grow their members in sharing the Gospel.

The program at Fellowship began in 2017 with one excited parishioner sharing her passion with the NextGen director, and then eventually branched out to the rest of the congregation.

“So when (the parishioner) was passionate about it, and I knew a little bit about it, it just made sense to kind of do something with that,” said Gwen Johnson, NextGen director at Fellowship. “We had a packing party at our Sunday night Boulder meeting, which is our big youth meeting of the week. Every year, we would pack about 50 to 100 boxes together as a student ministry, and then it transferred to the mornings when the children were doing it.”

By 2021, it had spread church wide. They stacked the shoeboxes up in the worship space each Sunday and asked people to take boxes home and pack them on their own. The festive stacking of shoeboxes coupled with promotional videos provided by Operation Christmas Child garnered excitement among the congregation. The first year of the churchwide involvement, they packed around 150 boxes altogether.

“It dovetailed into some packing parties on Sunday morning, not just in the children’s area, but out into the adult area, as well,” Senior Pastor David Gaddini said.

The following year, they challenged themselves to double their goal. They reached it by packing 300 shoeboxes.

“The big impact that we love hearing about and seeing is that the Good News is shared to (children in other countries),” Johnson said. “The gift is just a tool to get them the Gospel.”

While the boxes are making a great impact for children all over the world, they are also making a difference within their church at Fellowship of Faith.

“(Our children are) impacted by the idea that there are kids that have never been given a gift,” Johnson said. “We pray for (the shoeboxes) during the service. When we pack with the kids, we all put hands on boxes and pray for the boxes then, too. So more than once, they’re prayed over by our church. (When) they bring the box that they packed and put it on the pile and put their hands on it and are praying for it, that is a really cool moment to experience for them.”

“I appreciate the simplicity of it,” Gaddini said. “You're sharing the Gospel through a Christmas present to someone in need. Here’s a box to do it in. Here’s the supply list. It works every time.”

According to Operation Christmas Child, more than 84,000 churches collected shoeboxes last year, including what was done at Fellowship of Faith.

“We wouldn’t be able to collect and distribute these gifts without our church partners and volunteers around the world,” said Lizette Miller, media relations manager at Operation Christmas Child. “Church partners like Fellowship of Faith are crucial in reaching more children with the Gospel.”

Since 1993, Operation Christmas Child, the world’s largest Christmas project of its kind, has collected and delivered more than 220 million shoebox gifts to children in more than 170 countries and territories.

“Our mission is to provide local partners around the world with shoebox gifts as a means of reaching out to children in their own communities with the Good News of Jesus Christ,” Miller said. “We ship these simple gifts outside the United States to children affected by war, poverty, disease, and disaster.”

Anyone can pack a shoebox. Individuals, families, churches, and groups fill empty shoeboxes with school supplies, personal care items, and fun toys, such as dolls or soccer balls.

To find out how to get involved, please visit SamaritansPurse.org/OCC.

Photo Courtesy of Fellowship of Faith Lutheran Church