Soup, soap, salvation: Lebanon Rescue Mission thankful for 80-year ministry

For the past 80 years, the Lebanon Rescue Mission has served Thanksgiving dinner to area residents. 

And 2025 will continue that long-standing tradition for mission residents and the Lebanon County community when doors at at 1223 Bittner Blvd., Lebanon, open at 11:30 a.m. and dinner is served from noon to 1 p.m., according to executive director Susan Blouch.

“I think it’s one of the very unique aspects of the rescue mission,” Blouch said. “From the beginning for Reverend and Mrs. Miller, those things that were important to our founders, those missions, the reason they started the ministry, are the same mission and same areas of importance to us today, 80 years later. We’ve worked hard to make sure that we hold on to our mission.”

One of the hallmarks since the organization was founded in 1945 was to offer food as a way to meet individual needs. That year, Rev. Lester Miller and his wife Dorothy Ritzman Miller established the first Lebanon Rescue Mission in a rented room on North Lincoln Avenue, near Cumberland Street.

“From the very beginning, offering a meal, a warm meal, was an introduction to get people to think about life change, to change their circumstances where they’re struggling,” Blouch said. “And so, children were very important to the Millers. They did a lot of community events, but Thanksgiving, in particular, was a celebration of family and community. We have early pictures in the 1940s of Rev. Miller, you know, with his chef hat on and carving a turkey.”

Thanksgiving has always been a holiday celebrated at the Lebanon Rescue Mission – even in the face of a worldwide pandemic in 2020. 

“To my knowledge, I looked back through some of our historical documents. There has never been a Thanksgiving that we did not (serve dinner),” Blouch said. “During the two years of COVID, we didn’t bring people into the dining room for Thanksgiving but we did to-go meals. So there was still a Thanksgiving meal served those years.”

Meals are served daily throughout the year to the mission’s male residents, which lately has been at the maximum capacity of 55 individuals.

“We’ll serve all the men that are staying with us. So that’s 55. And then we’ll serve another 200 community members. That meal is prepared during this whole week that is full of volunteers coming in doing the preparation,” Blouch said.

Blouch is grateful for her staff that work that day as well as volunteers who are integral in keeping the tradition alive.

“There are volunteers who come in and pick down the turkeys. There are volunteers that come in and do the potato filling. … There are volunteers who cook pies for us and rolls for us. So Thanksgiving Day, there’s only four staff members here and about 25 to 30 volunteers, which brings a level of, again, an opportunity,” she said. “Some of those volunteers would be alone that day. Maybe their family has moved away. Maybe they’re just alone and don’t have family in our area. They get to come in and be part of a welcoming, caring family atmosphere.”

The mission and staff have grown over the years – Blouch says that God has been good to the organization. LRM receives no state or federal funding, meaning its $2.5 million budget is funded by private donations. 

“The very first meetings, if you will, of the Lebanon Rescue Mission were on the second floor of what was then Kinney Shoes on Cumberland Street,” Blouch said. “And, you know, they believed in what we call soup, soap, and salvation.”

Blouch explained what that meant then and still today.

“Providing a warm meal, soup, providing personal hygiene items that a person might need, and then the salvation message of the Gospel,” Blouch said. “From that humble beginning is where we grew. And so, food, particularly those Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter events where someone that’s struggling is not gathering with families, they’re not gathering with friends, that they have a place to come and experience fellowship, a place of gathering.”

Blouch notes that having a sense of community is what drives people to come celebrate those holidays at the mission, and she’s happy that their doors are open as a community resource in the Lebanon Valley.

“None of our community meals are about need. Our community meals are about fellowship, about gathering. And honestly, I believe in my heart and soul that homelessness has less to do with a house and more to do with a lack of relationships,” she said. 

“You’ve run out of relationships. You’ve burnt every bridge with friends and family. And so no one’s going to take you in anymore for a myriad of reasons. But that lack of relationship is what really begins the downward spiral to homelessness. And so, meals, holiday meals in particular, are an opportunity to gather and start rebuilding relationships with those who are experiencing what you’re experiencing.”

Blouch says there are three cornerstone programs that manifest “soup, soap and salvation” at Lebanon Rescue Mission: Men’s Campus, Agape Family Shelter, and Lebanon Free Clinic. Other initiatives include Agape Christmas, Back Dock Ministry, and Mobile Senior Pantry.

Men’s Campus

The local mission’s first outreach began in 1944 with its men’s campus, now located at their headquarters on Bittner Boulevard. Today, the facility has 55 beds and serves three meals per day while also offering shelter, technology training, and other assistance for what Blouch says are “men in need of life change.”

“It (the number of residents) fluctuates, but certainly at 55 men, we’re full. That means every bed has somebody in it in this building. Two years ago, that number would have been more like 20, 25,” Blouch said. “So in two short years, we’ve doubled our sustained capacity of men who are being served. Unfortunately, we’re full more nights than we’re not.”

Around a third of the men currently at the shelter are there for reasons other than some kind of substance abuse. 

“30% of the men that are staying with us tonight are over the age of 60. 30%. And many of them have no addiction background, no chronic unemployment. They’ve never been homeless before. They don’t have family support. And their only income is their social security,” Blouch said. “So they have an income, but certainly not enough to live in community housing.”

Seniors having a place to call home is a problem that exists in Lebanon County and across the nation, she added. 

“So the least expensive apartment right now, if you find an efficiency, if you’re lucky to find a one room efficiency with a bathroom and a hot plate, you’re still looking at, you know, $800 to $1,000 a month,” Blouch said. “Many of our seniors are only getting $900 a month. So they need to be in income-driven senior housing.”

Agape Family Shelter

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Blouch said the Agape Family Shelter was founded in 1986 and offers a Christian home and safe environment for 10 women and their children until they can overcome the challenges of being homeless. 

LRM served only men until the early 1980s, when community members decided that a women’s shelter was needed in Lebanon County.

“Out of that group of community members came Agape Family Shelter, and as they raised money to buy the building and renovate the building, they started saying, ‘Okay, who’s going to run the shelter?’ You know, it’s one thing to buy it and build it,” Blouch said. “This group came to the Lebanon Rescue Mission and said, ‘We would like this to become part of your women’s ministry.’”

LRM partnered in those early years with Jubilee Ministries to run the shelter. 

“In the very early years, the early ’80s, it was a partnership with the rescue mission and Jubilee. Because at that point, the rescue mission in 1985 had no women staff and had never run a women’s ministry. And by that time, Jubilee was here and they did have women on staff. So it was a ministry of the Lebanon Rescue Mission, but we partnered with Jubilee for staffing and to build the program.”

The need that was first addressed in the mid-1980s still exists today, according to Blouch. It is so great that LRM has embarked on a capital campaign to construct a new $8.5 million shelter directly across the street from its current location. 

The new 25,126-square-foot facility will be situated on the former Goodman Vending property located at 1250-1310 Bittner Blvd. Groundbreaking is tentatively scheduled for February or March, with move-in occurring in April 2027 upon completion of the 12-month construction project.

The new facility will have 40 private rooms and space to accommodate 100 beds. 

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“We’ve had a nonstop waiting list for women and their children to come to Agape for five, six years. And Agape in its current location is full 95% of the time,” Blouch said. “So we’ve known that there was a need, but finding one for the board to make a decision, ‘Okay, we’re going to commit the resources to expand that part of our ministry.’ That was a big decision.”

Blouch says over 600 families have been served since Agape Family Shelter was founded in the area of 9th and Walnut streets in Lebanon.

“You have to remember women stay longer because they have some come pregnant and stay through the birth and their first year. Some come with little tiny kids when they arrive.” she said. “Our director just attended several graduations of Agape kids.”

Blouch noted that the impacts of this program are enormous and run deep. 

“The 600 families now ripple out to those children and their families. Those Agape kids are having children now. The generational effects of serving women is enormous,” Blouch said. “That’s the legacy, the generational legacy of Agape.”

The key is being there to help them rebuild their lives.

“Many of those women rebuild their lives, rebuild their relationships with family, if they have it or they have their own family. Now they interact with coworkers and now maybe they’re part of a church family that they started while they were at Agape,” Blouch said. “I heard a quote, I won’t be able to give it to you with the right wording, but it says when you serve a male guest, you generally will affect that individual. But when you serve a woman, now that affects her and her children and her grandchildren and so on. The ripple effect of serving women is enormous.”

Lebanon Free Clinic

Launched in 2009, the free clinic offers quality health care services for those without insurance or access to care, according to Blouch. The clinic is designed to serve about 400 to 450 patients a year, providing them with ongoing care until they can obtain insurance.

“Our patients don’t just come once and done because we’re providing acute care, mental health, emergency dental. We partner with those in the community that can get emergency dental work. So often every patient is seen multiple times throughout the year,” Blouch said. “So we have about 3,000 patient visits a year. It’s a significant number of individuals. The goal is to help them get health insurance. So we take care of them while they have no insurance and then work with them to get health insurance and then help them transition to community care.”

It’s located at 135 S. 9th St., adjacent to the Agape Family Shelter.

“That was our next big step, opening the clinic. And we have served the community since 2009,” Blouch said. “It will move here, move to the new building. So once that new building is open, our entire organization will be on Bittner Boulevard.”

Agape Christmas

In 2016, LRM began its Agape Christmas program as an outreach to senior citizens. The mission is preparing 750 bags this year to deliver over the holiday season. 

Each bag contains a variety of food items, a Bible word search, devotional materials, personal care items, and a handmade item crafted with love by local members of other organizations and churches. 

“During the first week in December, about 85 volunteers will deliver 750 Agape Christmas bags to seniors,” Blouch said. “If you’re a senior and you need food support, you’re part of a program like PACE. But those programs don’t allow you to buy toilet paper or paper towels or dish detergent, shampoo or deodorant. So we’re putting together items that both personal care and things that everyone uses – things that they can’t use their food support for to purchase.”

Back Dock Ministry

The evolution of this ministry just over five years ago that sees the redistribution of very large donations to LRM happened by chance. 

“This purely organically program, what we call Back Dock ministry, is because we had a loading dock in this new building. We started to get phone calls from trucking companies that maybe had their load refused,” said Blouch.

Human error in ordering products is what led these massive pallets of food and other goods being refused and offered to LRM.

“If we don’t take it, they’re going to have to take it to the dump and get it out of the truck. Because they have to go to their next pickup. We started taking very large donations. We keep what we can use, and then we redistribute all the excess to 40 other nonprofits in the community,” Blouch said. 

The saying that the “Lord works in mysterious ways” certainly seems to be applicable to the Back Dock Ministry program. 

“It was food in the beginning,” Blouch said, but then the program morphed into something else altogether. “It was crazy. We got a call from a local printer that was working on a big job.

“A mistake had been made. He had 650 hoodies that he needed to get out of his shop so he could reprint 650 hoodies correctly. He brought all 650 hoodies to us. So we kept what we could use, and then we pushed those hoodies out to organizations all over the county. Some of them even went to Philadelphia to a partner ministry.”

Having to refuse a skidload of frozen turkeys contributed to the mission purchasing a large, walk-in freezer and places to store these items which otherwise would go to waste, added Blouch.

Mobile Senior Pantry

Back Dock eventually begat another program that works as a distribution system for these perfectly fine items. Mobile Senior Pantry takes food and personal items directly to seniors living in six local community homes or properties managed by the Lebanon Housing Authority. 

“We’re sending out over 10,000 pounds of food as part of Mobile Senior Pantry, which is a ministry that came out of the excesses of Back Dock,” Blouch said. “We served about 47% of those living in those six buildings. And in the course of the year of ’24, we shared 10,427 pounds of food. Now, this year by October, we were already at 10,000 pounds of food. So we will be well ahead of that by the end of ’25.”

By the numbers

Lebanon Rescue Mission is a statistical-driven charity, says Blouch, given the vast volume of people they serve. 

“We’ve already served 30,000 meals, and that was at the end of October. And those served meals don’t include 10,000 pounds of food that has been taken to the senior buildings of community homes with our Mobile Senior Pantry,” Blouch said, adding that they will have had over 500 unique touches with men this year. “So we’re on track, we’ll probably have served or provided 55,000 meals this year. That is about 30% over what we did last year. So that’s a significant jump in one year.”

Part of the reason that’s the case is because of the mission’s Sunday Supper program. 

“I think because we’re serving so many more men that that increases dramatically our meal count. We’ve also had a pretty relatively stable number of community members coming for those Sunday meals. We are the only ones that provide a Sunday supper in the community.”

“So we do the Sunday meals so that LCCM (Lebanon County Christian Ministries) doesn’t have to provide a hot meal on Sunday because they are providing them with lunches throughout the week.”

Lebanon Rescue Mission’s future

Blouch said several senior level directors will stay, more or less, at the mission until the new shelter opens and then retire to enjoy their senior years. She is tentatively targeting a date in 2028 as her last.

“We’re planning for the transition of the leadership – myself and several of the other directors – as we approach retirement. We’re pouring into the next generation that will lead this ministry for the next 30, 40, 50 years,” she said. “So it is an interesting time because simultaneously with the largest step of growth, you’ll have the largest transition of leadership in our organization. So we’ve taken kind of a long view so that we’re not all going out the door the same day. We’re bringing on staff who don’t just want a place to work, but they want a place to grow and stay and grow in leadership.”

The reason to be thankful

In this Thanksgiving season, Blouch said she is not only grateful for God’s graces throughout the year but for the past 80-plus years of LRM’s existence in the Lebanon Valley.

“God is so good. So good. And we truly believe that as long as we stay focused on what the Lord wants us to do, which is ultimately his mission, he will provide the funding,” she said. “And we’re seeing that with this new project. He has provided almost $3 million in pledges in less than 11 months. That makes it perfectly clear who’s moving this project. So to him be all the glory because that is not typically how (capital) campaigns go.”