Middletown United Methodist Church is looking for a few good medical providers for its Mobile Medical Ministry.
Actually, more than a few. When it comes to ministering to people in some of Louisville’s most hurting neighborhoods, the more the better.
Middletown United Methodist Church is a part of the Kentucky Annual Conference.
“The people who come and volunteer with us the first time, they’re hooked,” said Cindy Wyatt, who along with Roni Evans runs the Mobile Medical Ministry – literally, a doctor’s office on wheels.
“There’s so much pain, so much need; so much can hurt,” Evans said. “You just want to help and do whatever you can for these people.”
Middletown’s congregation has enthusiastically embraced the biblical charge to serve as the hands and feet of Jesus, stepping up with financial and material donations as needed for the Mobile Medical Ministry, said the Rev. Nancy Tinnell, a retired deacon who remains on staff at Middletown.
The ministry has its origins in a Sunday school class Tinnell was teaching several years ago. They were using a curriculum that called for participants to do ministry in the community. It detailed a partnership between an Arizona United Methodist church and a children’s hospital in which an RV was converted into a mobile clinic to reach homeless children and youth.
Tinnell recalls that a nurse practitioner in her class said afterward, “I would so love to do this.” Then that Sunday night, the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” aired a segment on a mobile ministry in West Virginia.
They got the message. “This is not a coincidence,” Tinnell recalls thinking.
In 2017, Tinnell wrote and submitted a grant for $55,000 to Good Samaritan Ministries. The grant covered getting a van at cost from a local Chevrolet dealership and refitting the interior with an exam bed, desk, chairs, lighting, heating and air conditioning – “everything we would need,” Wyatt said. The church pays for the upkeep of the van, including gas and insurance.
Middletown – located in an affluent area of eastern Louisville – partners with the Family Community Clinic, a nonprofit based at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Butchertown, another inner-city neighborhood. The partnership is important, as the Family Clinic provides liability insurance for the mobile ministry health providers.
Tinnell was initially heavily involved in the ministry, including traveling to clinics. These days, Wyatt and Evans coordinate the ministry, helped by a number of volunteers, including their husbands. Both women are now retired, although when the ministry started, they were still working, Wyatt in health care administration and Evans as a registered nurse. Both are members at Middletown.
Their medical backgrounds, as well as their passion for helping the less fortunate, make them the ideal team. Wyatt handles the administrative duties, while Evans coordinates the medical care.
“I feel like the Lord put us together,” Evans said.
Tinnell, who has served at Middletown since 1997, agrees. “Cindy and Roni are absolutely wonderful at running the mobile unit.”
She added: “We have such dedicated volunteers for this ministry in our church. It’s very much appreciated by our members, the fact that we’re getting out there and providing something so vitally important.”
As the pandemic waned, they gradually again ramped up the mobile ministry. For a time, all they were doing was providing a health clinic once a month at Fourth Avenue United Methodist Church. In November 2022, they connected with Catholic Charities and in March 2023 began visiting the Father Jack Jones Food Pantry.
Those are the two monthly ministries the mobile unit does these days – the second Wednesday at Holy Name Catholic Church for the food pantry, and the fourth Thursday at Fourth Avenue, where the church’s Open Door Ministry provides a free lunch six days a week. Both churches are located in some of Louisville’s most challenged neighborhoods.
excerpt from a story by Alan Wild, Author, Kentucky Annual Conference
This story represents how United Methodist local churches through their Annual Conferences are living as Vital Congregations. A vital congregation is the body of Christ making and engaging disciples for the transformation of the world. Vital congregations are shaped by and witnessed through four focus areas: calling and shaping principled Christian leaders; creating and sustaining new places for new people; ministries with poor people and communities; and abundant health for all.
