Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Fellowship Missions started as one small house rented on faith.
Tuesday at the Kosciusko County Community Foundation’s annual celebration luncheon, Brooke Skeans, a member of Fellowship Missions’ donor development team and the daughter of Fellowship Missions founders Eric and Tammy Lane, and Jerry Yeager, Fellowships board member, talked with Community Foundation CEO Stephanie Overbey about the work of Fellowship Missions and about a new initiative the Community Foundation is partnering with them on to meet the current needs of the people Fellowship Missions serves and to provide a source of sustainable revenue for the future.
Started In A Church Basement
Skeans said Fellowship Missions started in 2010.
“My parents both worked at Warsaw Community Church and my dad started with putting a shelter in the basement of WCC. All these churches came together during the winter and said, ‘Hey, we need to house these individuals that are out on the street. We’ve never done this before,’” she said. “My dad started that Jan. 1. We had five guys consecutively, from the months of January to April 1.”
Just because winter was over didn’t mean those men had a place to go. Eric and Tammy Lane had a friend who had a house across from the old Marsh building and he was willing to rent that out to the Lanes for the men they had. There were no women at that time.
“Later on down the line, there was a young girl that was dropped off at the doorstep of the men’s house. It was her 18th birthday, and her parents said, ‘We’re done with you, we want nothing to do with her anymore, she’s yours.’ So we ended up having her at our house for a few months, which then increased the need. We knew that there was something going on and God was pushing my parents,” Skeans recalled.
They then got the old Heartline Pregnancy Center. The city gave it to them for $1 a year, and that was used for a women’s house.
“Something we always say is the day we moved in is the day we outgrew, and so we ended up in 2014 getting the facility we’re in now, and that houses 46 men and women and children, as of right now, and we’re looking to expand, but it was all just because my parents were able to yes to a calling that they had,” Skeans said.
Programming
Along with offering people a safe place to shelter while they’re there, Fellowship Missions has their Catalyst Program. “That means all of our residents that come in, after a two-week stay of us kind of feeling out where they’re at, they then join ... the Catalyst Program. What that looks like is, they are able to join, if they need addiction recovery, counseling, they do life skills. We also have a food truck that our food service director helps kind of get them started in the culinary arts skills. There’s a lot. We also have a therapist on site.”
Outside of the shelter, Fellowship Missions has The Gathering Place in downtown Warsaw. There are more than 11 classes there for recovery and mental health that happen weekly, and there’s mental health counseling that happens upstairs there as well.
Skeans said they also partner with another organization, Project Ebenezer, to help first responders with their counseling needs. Another program provides mentoring for high school students.
Thrive Farms & Next-Step Housing
“And then we have some houses coming online called Thrive Farms, and that’s going to be for women with children, and then we have two men’s homes coming up on Center Street that will be like next-step housing, and then in 2027 we’ll have a women’s next-step housing,” Skeans said.
Yeager, sharing more about Thrive Farms and next-step housing, said, “As Brooke explained, the passion arose out of trying to meet a need, and that need was somebody needed a place to stay, they needed shelter. ... So think about, you have no hope, you don’t know where to go and, thankfully, Fellowship Missions was born out of that.”
They then looked at how they could move from creating a shelter for people to moving them out and getting them to be a participating member of the community.
“So that’s where the triage element of the emergency shelter ended and the start of the Catalyst Program, which is designed to bring about those skills so folks can get reacclimated, get the services they need to join back in,” Yeager said.
Thrive Farms was the first gap Fellowship Missions experienced beyond that, he said, and that was due to single moms needing a place more than Fellowship Missions had.
Yeager said Thrive Farms is a home for moms and kids on 20 acres.
“So, beyond that, now you’ve got people that get through the Catalyst Program and they’re ready to enter back out, but they’re not quite ready financially. So, they’ve graduated, but where do they go? And that’s that step program that we have, which is designed to give them a place to stay, where they now take on a role of taking care of a home. They’re pulling themselves up with their own finances. There’s budgeting help, and we’re continuing to walk alongside them,” he stated.
Overbey asked Skeans to tell more about Thrive Farms and when the next-steps home for women will be ready. “What will that program offer to women, and what are the kinds of barriers that they’re facing now that these partners might help them overcome? Who are you serving?” Overbey asked.
Skeans said when women with kids come into the shelter, Fellowship Missions tries to make the shelter still feel like a home, especially for the kids who didn’t have an option for the situation they’re in. A lot of the moms coming into the shelter feel the weight of the world on their shoulders and “they are walking in something that nobody wakes up one day and says, ‘This is the situation I want to be in, this is what I’m going to get myself into today, and my kids.’ So it’s super important to have that space for them,” she continued.
With Thrive Farms, Skeans said the kids will be able to play outside and get dropped off from school without being looked at differently.
“So, it’s just really important for the mental health of our moms and those kiddos. Those kiddos don’t go unnoticed, so for Thrive Farms, that’s really what we’re going to do,” she said. “There’s going to be parenting classes. We’ll still have the same programming that we have at the shelter over there for them. Obviously, timing of all that will look a little different to make sure we’re accommodating, and it’s also not a free-for-all. So we’re not just putting anybody in there. It’s moms that are ready to make the change, and we feel it’s very important to respect that and the individuals in that house. We’re very much quality over quantity, so we’re not going to shelter a bunch of women over one roof, it still needs to stay peaceful and serene to them, and a place where they can feel the love of Christ and grow there.”
On next-step homes, Skeans said it will be the single women who are more independent and ready to move on from the shelter, but it’ll have an accountability piece to it.
“So maybe they’re not financially ready to go on their own, but they hit every single other check mark they could and we see that it would fit them and fit the household,” she said, adding the women would still get programs but would be living on their own. “They’re running that house, but they’re still having that accountability piece, and the goal is for them to learn that so when they move out on their own, they can stay there.”
Overbey pointed out the Community Foundation has identified access to housing as a strategic priority and have been working on it since 2022. She said the Foundation has responded to some grant applications from Fellowship Missions to the Foundation’s competitive grant application process and awarded those grants.
“However, the bulk of our funding since 2022 has been aimed at helping lower-income families in our community access homebuyer programs and even some home repair programs,” she said. “The families and the individuals that you’re serving at Fellowship Missions are probably not ready for homeownership, and yet they need safe, stable housing. Why is it important for our community to invest in housing and support services for the individual, but also for our community?”
Yeager said, “Eric likes to think of this as a ladder, so the needs that the Community Foundation is focusing on are near the top of the ladder, and the needs that we are working on is at the very bottom run of the ladder, and in many cases the runs are missing, so there’s no way that these folks that we are serving are going to be able to qualify, so to speak, until there’s a lot of work done.”
At the top of the ladder are owning a home or renting a home one is completely financial for. “The people that we’re serving, their first step is to get sober, stay sober, get a job, keep a job, show up for counseling and doing that hard work, and then once they get into a safe place, with people walking alongside them, our team of staff and volunteers, then they can make a step forward in that,” Yeager said.
For the community, he said, “If you’re not mentoring them, then the community services are needed. There’s health needs. The jails get more full. The courts get busier. So there’s an obvious need there.”
All For Love
Overbey said Lilly Endowment announced their Giving Indiana Funds for Tomorrow (GIFT) IX Initiative in 2025 for community foundations.
“As part of GIFT IX, the Community Foundation chose to use a portion of the match dollars they gave available to us to help Fellowship Missions build an endowment fund that will provide a lasting source of support for their work,” she said. “I spoke with the Fellowship Missions Board early in 2026. Our board offered to use up to $600,000 of the match opportunity given to us by Lilly Endowment to let Fellowship Missions raise money for an endowment that would support the renovations, maintenance, equipment and furnishing needs of their organization in perpetuity.”
Also as part of GIFT IX, Lilly Endowment offered the foundation a 2-for-1 match opportunity for donations to Community Fund Endowments. For that part of the match, they needed to raise $450,000 in order to get their $900,000, and by the end of business day Tuesday, they had met that portion of the match.
At the same time, the Community Foundation understood because of the new Thrive Farms homes and next-step homes, Fellowship Missions had some immediate needs.
“Our board offered your board the opportunity to raise money for an endowment that would benefit your organization forever, and that for every dollar raised for endowment, we would grant a $1-to-$1 for your right-now needs ... up to $600,000, and you said yes,” Overbey said.
The endowment fund was established by a personal gift from Eric and Tammy Lane and is called the Fellowship Missions’ All For Love Endowment.
“Eric and Tammy’s gift offered a wonderful start to the fund, but it’s still far from being fully funded at the $600,000 level that is needed to meet the Lilly Endowment match requirement,” Overbey said.
The $600,000 has to be raised by Fellowship Missions by June 30, 2028.
“The goal is a big goal, it’s a huge goal, and, thankfully, we have time to do it. We have until June of 2028 to get it done,” Yeager said. “But having every dollar that is contributed count for another dollar, that enables us ... to continue focusing on the people while that endowment can help us with the maintenance of the shelters that are required to make this all work.”
The Lanes made their financial gift at a difficult time for the family as Tammy’s father died as did a longtime Fellowship Missions staff member.
“Why was it important for your parents to make this sacrificial gift during a time of hardship for your family?” Overbey asked Skeans.
“This past year has been a hard one for our family. We lost my grandpa and our Fellowship Missions family lost Tom Pennington, who had been a part of our team since almost 2011. Seasons like that make you think about what really lasts. From my parents, the answer has always been people and this ministry. Fellowship Missions started with them renting one small house on faith, and they’ve given more than 16 years of their lives to it. Starting this endowment was their way of making sure that work outlives them, so the moms, kids and men who need a safe place 50 years from now will still have one,” Skeans stated.
“It also mattered for them to go first. My parents would never ask anyone to give something that they weren’t willing to give themselves. Before asking this community to step up, they wanted to step up. And at the end of the day, it’s why they do any of this. They’ve been loved by God, and they want every person who walks through our doors to know that love, too. That’s what they hope this fund will carry forward for generations.”
In order to qualify for the Lilly Endowment GIFT IX dollars, Lilly requires that all gifts to the Fellowship Missions’ All For Love Endowment be made directly to the Kosciusko County Community Foundation. Overbey said they can’t accept gifts from Fellowship Missions, it has to come from outside of Fellowship Missions.
Lilly will match gifts of cash, checks, stocks, crops, qualified charitable deductions from IRAs and gifts from donor-advised funds that are held outside of the Community Foundation. They will not match gifts from donor-advised funds that the Community Foundation already holds.
For more information or to give, visit https://www.kcfoundation.org/funds/all-for-love-endowment-fund/
