Cooking Christmas dinner for 400 neighbors will be a lot easier next year after Bob and Stacy Ball move their food-prep operations into a newly rehabbed kitchen at 300 N. Madison St. in Muncie. Until then, the volunteer crew at Blood-N-Fire ministry will work alongside the construction area and somehow serve hot meals every Saturday at 5 p.m. to residents of the McKinley, East Central and Gilbert historic districts. The kitchen team isn’t complaining. The currently cramped quarters are an improvement over the early days, before the urban ministry acquired the cavernous building that once housed a car dealership. “We used to cook the meals on barrel grills outside,” recalls Bob, who founded Blood-N-Fire 16 years ago this month.
Two grants from The Community Foundation are helping to equip the industrial-sized kitchen that is a key to Blood-N-Fire’s growing presence in the inner city. This presence is likely to expand dramatically when Bob introduces “Inside Out,” a community development corporation (CDC) he formed to strengthen the nearby neighborhood and the families that live within its boundaries. Blood-N-Fire will continue to host the Saturday meals and worship gatherings, but Inside Out will oversee all community programming that occurs daily in the shared facility.“Blood-N-Fire has a good reputation with people who know who we are,” says Bob. “But it isn’t an easy name to market. As we roll out the CDC, the Blood-N-Fire name will fade into the background and the building will become known as the Inside Out Community Center.”
Many programs that unfold within the community center have been operating successfully for several years. Among them are after-school tutoring and mentoring clinics, a monthly food pantry, a resale clothing store, and a prom shop that offers gently used formal dresses to high school students on tight budgets. New programs will have an empowerment component that will teach participants life skills that also are marketable. Persons who take advantage of the free meals will be encouraged to help stock the food pantry’s warehouse, work in one of the urban gardening projects, assist in the kitchen, and staff the annual Christmas store. “We want to give people opportunities to invest in themselves,” says Bob.
The belief that change happens from the inside out permeates Blood-N-Fire’s ministry and gives the CDC its name. “Inside Out believes that change begins at the individual level with the people who make up the core of our community,” says Bob, whose family became part of that core several years ago. “Once Stacy and I moved into the neighborhood, something happened. We were accepted. Now six or seven families have intentionally moved within a few blocks of the community center to become immersed in the neighborhood. What sets us apart from other organizations is that we live among the folks we want to serve. We think that will help bring about positive change.”
