Homelessness Ministries
Get Involved in the Hands-On Ministries At Market Square!
As a downtown city church, we have a unique opportunity to help our neighbors who are homeless. Unhoused individuals can come to Market Square for a Friday night dinner, a Saturday food pantry, and a Sunday morning breakfast. Here is your chance to be involved in Market Square's hands-on ministries!
Friday To-Go Dinner
Market Square Presbyterian Church's Friday night to-go dinner began in April 2024. It was implemented because Friday night was one of the only nights of the week when hot food was not available to unhoused/indigent individuals anywhere in downtown Harrisburg. Every Friday afternoon a group of dedicated volunteers drawn from both our congregation and the Harrisburg community at-large prepares a nutritious and calorically dense hot meal and serves it promptly at 5:30 PM outside the Church's main entrance on 2nd Street.
Examples of What We Serve: Spaghetti and meatballs with bread and a garden salad; mushroom-onion-barbecue cheeseburgers with tater tots; chicken-broccoli-mushroom alfredo rotini, barbecue chicken with macaroni and cheese and green beans, Chicken fajitas with onions and peppers, served with salsa and sour cream and scallion rice, three-egg omelets over scallion-rice and cheesy-garlicy black beans. Each meal is served with a cold bottle of water. On a typical Friday evening we serve between 100 and 125 hot meals to anyone who self-identifies as needing one.
Saturday Food Pantry
Every Saturday morning from 9 AM until 11 AM, Market Square Presbyterian Church operates a food pantry in Fellowship Hall. No ID is required to sign in. Attendees receive milk and eggs most weeks, as well as an assortment of dry and canned goods acquired from the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank via our partner in this program, the International Service Center (ISC). Some weeks, meat is available as well.
The ISC runs an afternoon food pantry on Friday afternoons in the same space. Taken together, we provide up to 100 needy individuals per week with food they can prepare at home. Additionally, on Saturday mornings we provide coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and cold cereal with milk, so that our attendees can eat something on the spot in addition to getting food for the week.
Sunday Breakfast
Market Square Presbyterian Church's longest-standing ministry for unhoused and impoverished individuals is our Sunday sit-down hot breakfast, served in Fellowship Hall from 8am-9am. Our typical menu includes pancakes or French toast, scrambled eggs, sausage links, and sometimes hash browns. Coffee, tea, and cold cereal are also available, as is fresh fruit and fruit juice. we typically have between 100 and 150 guests each Sunday morning. The breakfasts are prepared by a rotation of volunteers from other local churches - they arrive early and begin cooking.
Our breakfast servers and cleanup volunteers arrive at 7:30 AM, and manage the front of the house land cleanup while the visiting cooks are at work in the kitchen. Some of our breakfast servers are from our congregation, but others are simply members of the community who want to get involved.
If you have questions about any of these ministries, or if you would like to either volunteer or support us financially,
please contact our Coordinator of Homeless Ministries, Ben Perez, at perez@marketsquarechurch.org
