Synod Spotlight: A Year of Ministry as your Hunger Fellow, reflections from Autumn Byars

We extend our heartfelt thanks to Autumn Byars, our Grand Canyon Synod Hunger Advocacy Fellow, for her dedicated year of service with Lutheran Advocacy Ministry of Arizona (LAMA). Her work has been an inspiring example of how mission support from congregations flows through the synod and the ELCA to return as impactful ministry in our communities. We invite you to join us in praying for Autumn’s continued good work in the church and the world.

Reflecting on a year of impactful advocacy, Autumn shares key moments, including testimony against restrictive SNAP bills and support for the Grand Canyon Food Pantry. LAMA empowers congregations to turn their faith into action, advocating for justice and food security at all levels of government.

By Autumn Byars, Grand Canyon Synod Hunger Advocacy Fellow

One of the many ministries supported by your continued gifts to the Grand Canyon Synod is Lutheran Advocacy Ministry of Arizona (LAMA)! LAMA joins with the most vulnerable in our society to voice our common needs in the public square, activating our faith in love. We do this by advocating at the local, state, and federal levels for policies and programs that reflect the values of our faith. We work with politicians, partners, and members from across the political spectrum to bear witness to God’s plan of justice and care for all people.

I have spent the last year with LAMA as a Hunger Advocacy Fellow. This Fellowship is sponsored by ELCA World Hunger and places young adults in ELCA Advocacy offices around the country to work on public policy that impacts hunger and its root causes. This is an important part of Christ’s instruction to "feed his sheep" (John 21).  

According to Bread for the World, “federal nutrition programs provide 10 times as much food assistance as private churches and charities combined.” In a world where we grow more than enough food for every person to be fed, hunger is a solvable problem, but to solve it, we must address the systemic barriers, economic policies, and infrastructure gaps that keep our neighbors from regularly and safely accessing enough food.

 LAMA exists to help churches around Arizona take their generosity, commitment to neighborly love, and passion for charity and begin working for justice. Almost every single ELCA congregation in Arizona hosts or works closely with a food bank, and that work is an incredibly important means of service. It is also important that we address the reasons people end up at our pantry doors and work toward a world where the fewest possible number of people end up food insecure in the first place.

Over my time at LAMA, I have had some amazing opportunities to work with our congregations on policies at all levels of the democratic and legislative process. One of the highlights of my fellowship was when I got the chance to testify against a bill during a Health and Human Services Committee hearing at the Arizona Senate in March.

HB2502 & HB 2503, the bills in question, sought to drastically restrict how low-income Arizonans could participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps). These bills would have cost the state a great deal of money, without any positive impact for taxpayers or people in need of assistance. Estimates from the most knowledgeable groups, like the Arizona Food Bank Network, predicted that thousands of Arizonans in need would no longer be able to access the help that SNAP offers if these policies were to be adopted. LAMA worked long and hard with our community members to advocate against these policies. Through our weekly newsletter, we educated Lutherans across the state on these bills, and with our Action Alerts, we empowered them to advocate to their lawmakers on behalf of SNAP participants and our hungry neighbors.

However, the bills progressed through their various committees and passed through the House. When the bills reached the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, we felt strongly enough about this policy that we decided to represent the Lutheran perspective on hunger and neighborly love at the committee hearing. I used the legislature’s “Request to Speak” system to sign in and sign up to speak against HB2502. I was in line behind representatives from some of our partner organizations like the AZFBN and the Morris Institute for Justice. When the committee eventually discussed the bill, I was called on to testify last. The other organizations were able to offer economic breakdowns and numbers-based projections that warned against the negative outcomes of this type of policy, while I was able to provide a perspective of care for my fellow citizens.

I was given three minutes to speak, during which I introduced myself as a Fellow working for the Grand Canyon Synod. I outlined the importance of assistance programs like SNAP, both in my personal experience and for my neighbors. I spoke about my gratitude for a system that uplifts those in need and how glad I am to have my tax dollars help put food on families’ tables. I shared how seriously Lutherans take the commandment to feed and care for ALL people. Since the SNAP program helps so many more people than our food banks can, it was important to express our dissatisfaction with bills that would make love unnecessarily harder for our neighbors.

The committee ended up passing HB2502 and HB2503, and the Senate voted to pass the bills by one vote. We, along with countless other groups, continued our advocacy and, eventually, Gov. Hobbs vetoed both bills. This testimony was a thrilling opportunity and an important step in my personal journey as a citizen and advocate. I was also grateful to be trusted to represent a Lutheran perspective—one of care and practicality—on a policy that would undoubtedly affect our own neighbors and members.

LAMA does much more than testify on bills and mobilize around legislation. All the work we do, from education to building relationships with our lawmakers to choosing policy priorities to focus on, is based around the things already happening in our churches. We are a tool to be used by your congregation to amplify the work you are already doing. To make sure that our advocacy is both poignant and effective, we spend as much time as we can working with outreach, justice, and service ministries around the synod. Over the course of my fellowship, I have had the chance to travel around the state, learning from all sorts of Lutherans doing good work for our many neighbors. One of my very favorite visits was to the Grand Canyon Food Pantry. While the Pantry is not specifically a Lutheran ministry, it is run by a Lutheran and greatly supported by Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Flagstaff.

Mike Scott and his wife retired to the Grand Canyon area, where they noticed surprisingly high levels of food insecurity. Many of the park staff, as well as members of the Havasupai tribe that live within the park, struggle to put enough food on the table. This is due to a complicated set of factors, including the park’s remote location, high food prices, and historic disenfranchisement. The Pantry first started as a summer lunch program; Mike wanted to make sure that kids from low-income families would still be able to eat lunch without the free and reduced-price lunches available during the school year. Mike partnered with the national park as well as a Christian group made up of park residents to make and distribute lunches for kids living within the park.

In December 2018, the federal government entered its longest-ever shutdown, and life at the park was greatly impacted. Wages were frozen, staff were cut, and the park closed, all of which revealed just how close to crisis many park residents were. During this time, Mike and his team advocated tenaciously for the establishment of a pantry, and with help from St. Mary’s Food Bank and a truly massive donation from Good Shepherd Lutheran, the Grand Canyon Food Pantry was born.

While visiting in July, Mike shared this story with me. Rural food banking is a unique endeavor, and this Pantry is the only one operating within a National Park. Mike now partners with businesses and groups both in and outside the park, the city of Tusayan, and, of course, Good Shepherd Lutheran, where he and his wife are members. While shadowing Mike, I got to speak with many of the Pantry’s clients and learned about the details of food insecurity they face. The park’s remote location, for example, means that fresh produce is much more expensive than it is in the city. I also got the chance to meet the Tusayan mayor and learn about the locally relevant policy issues.

My visit to the Grand Canyon Food Pantry gave me an up-close, detailed, and unique understanding of the struggles faced and needs met by this specific project. Each visit I made did the same. This means that LAMA’s advocacy stays grounded in the issues that our ministries care about and the difficulties plaguing our neighbors and communities. In the future, we will be able to use the Grand Canyon Food Pantry as an example of food insecurity and inequity in our state, as well as a relevant example of how these issues play out in real life when advocating to our lawmakers. We will also be able to invite lawmakers from this region to learn about the specifics of hunger in their jurisdiction.

Sometimes the problems that we, as followers of Christ, face are so large that we don’t know where to begin. Luckily, God does not ask us to fix the world, but to serve it where we can—taking the step-in front of us. For me, and for Lutherans around Arizona, the next necessary step in serving our community is engaging in advocacy to address the inequalities we face. Thanks to your congregation’s generous support of the Grand Canyon Synod, the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry of Arizona has been able to represent Lutheran perspectives and interests in the halls of government, as well as empower our members to advocate for a society reflecting God's justice.