The Board of Directors exclusively directs activities at or about the Community Hope Center and the House of Hope.

From Lyn Cloninger, our Executive Director

It is truly amazing when people of so many different backgrounds, with varying passions, gifts, and abilities come together to perform a ministry. Great churches, international relief agencies, and even great local service agencies are all formed when people of faith come together to serve a cause much greater than themselves. The Community Hope Center is just such an agency. You can not look at a building or any individual or group of individuals and say they are the Hope Center. It is made up of so many different kinds of people, corporate directors, department directors, business people, church leaders and laymen, volunteers, individual donors, promoters, and a host of prayer supporters.

We who comprise the Hope Center ministry serve a client community who annually make over 7,400 visits to our facilities and receive food and donation services for over 22,000 individual family members.

Our food pantry collects and distributes an average of 1,860 pounds of food each day. We annually distribute over $350,000 worth of food and over $1,000,000 worth of donated clothing, household items, toys, furniture, and small appliances.

Our dedicated staff of volunteers makes up a work force valued at over $32,000 monthly and devotes over 31,000 hours of labor each year to the ministries of the Community Hope Center.

In short, the Community Hope Center is a very large community of people working each day to provide hope to the hopeless and extending the love of Jesus Christ to all in need.

What an awesome privilege to be a part of something that offers so much Hope to so many people.

Community Hope Center, Inc. Board of Directors 2009

CHC Board of Directors Biographical Overview

Lyn Cloninger - President: Lyn has been associated with the Community Hope Center for over 4 years; initially helping to finish construction of the Children’s Hope Center. He is a retired Systems Manager from Southwestern Bell and has worked in ministry in the River Bend Area and overseas for the past 30 years. He has three years of Bible College and a B.S. degree in Organizational Leadership. He has worked in volunteer ministries for over 30 years and currently serves as the Executive Director for the Community Hope Center, Inc.

Floyd Worthen - Vice President
Floyd has three children and six grandchildren. He has been a member of the Church of God, home office of Cleveland, Tennesee for 42 years and has served as a Sunday school teacher, bus minister, mid week program director and church custodian. He is presently attending the Bethalto Church of God.

He is a veteran that served two years in the U.S. Army. Most of his time was spent in Germany; 249th Engineer Battalion, as a company clerk and driver for the Company Commander.

He is retired now after working as a technical artist for Boeing/McDonnell Douglas for 42 years

Robert Bethel: Bob has a Master’s Degree in Education from SIU Carbondale and a B.S. in Industrial Education. Bob has been an ordained Deacon in the Southern Baptist church for the past thirty years and has held positions on numerous boards & committees. He has been a member of the Board of Directors for the CHC for the past 11 years.

Lenora Bethel: Lenora is a homemaker and mother of three sons and four grandchildren. She has over 30 years of volunteer experience – local hospitals in hospice work, Scouts, and five years at Operation Blessing food pantry in Wood River, IL. In the past, she has ran a daycare from her home and worked in the local schools and at H&R Block. She has held her position as Board Member of the CHC for 11 years and currently serves as the Clothing Services Director.

Amy Maberry
Has grown up in the Riverbend area, and is fortunate to know many friends and family members that have joined her in working to help others. Amy’s background in Real Estate development, has lead her into a career of custom home building and custom remodel designs. She is currently serving as the Director of Maintenance, which means she works closely with groups who are coming out to volunteer for all kinds of special projects, to help maintain and improve the quality of the facility in which we serve our clients. In the summer, her primary job is to work with the College/High School students who come one day a week to work. Being a mother of three, Amy has seen first hand the impact the ministry of helping others has had on her children; she encourages everyone to get their kids, youth groups, sports teams, any organizations involved in volunteer work.

Gerald (Jerry) Scroggins
Jerry has a Master’s Degree in Environmental Studies and a B.S. in Special Education from SIUE. He currently is a Managing Consultant for IBM and in this position travels quite frequently. Jerry has many years of maintenance experience while working almost 18 years at the Shell refinery prior to its sale to Conoco-Phillips in the late 1990’s. Jerry has been a member of Main Street United Methodist Church for over 10 years and has been active in youth education and has been involved in their Sunday School programs. Jerry has been involved as a volunteer for the Hope Center for a number of years but this last fall was called to create the Wheels of Hope Ministry. This ministry involves obtaining and repairing bicycles for the annual Christmas Toy Giveaway program in addition to providing safe, reliable bicycles to area adults for transportation.  
 
Jim Ellebracht
I have been a long time-resident of the Riverbend area with my wife Debbie and we have two sons and daughter-in-laws and two granddaughters. My background is in Architectural Design and Project Estimator, plus Business and Personnel Management. Currently I own a cleaning business after being unemployed for eight months which led me to volunteer at the Hope Center.

 My hope is to continue to encourage more people to get involved because it has made such a difference in my life.

CoAnn lives in Midway with Dan, her husband of 37 years. She has 2 sons and daughters-in-law who have blessed her with 5 grandsons. Some of the positions in the church she has held are secretary, music director for the vocal and bell choirs, served on the Board of Christian Education and Worship Committee. She was the Administrative Assistant to the Edwardsville School Districtʼ's Director of Special Education for 11 years and retired early to provide day care for her first grandson. She has been volunteering at the CHC for 2 ½ years, starting in the office for Client Services and then moving to the administrative office. She accepted a position on the Board of Directors in April, 2008 as Secretary/Treasurer.

Jim Johnston is the senior minister at First Christian Church of Alton. He has been in the ministry for 47 years. He married June 41 yeara ago. They have three married children and five grandchildren. He earned a BA, BTh, two MDiv's and is a certified Marriage and Family Therapist. He loves the ministry with Christ's Church and to all his people. He works one morning a month at Community Hope Center as a client counselor. He is currently part of our Human Resources Committee and is working on developing training for our client counselors.

Pastor David Weimer is a native Illinoisan and has resided in the River Bend area since the spring of 2000. He received a BS in Ed in 1962 from SIUC, his MDiv in 1968 from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and his ThD in 1988 from Kingsway Christian College & Theological Seminary.

Pastor Weimer was licensed to preach in March, 1957 and ordained to the Ministry in November, 1964. After serving 4 churches, two of which he pioneered, for a total of 21 years, he and his family moved to West Indies to plan Bible Colleges for Kingsway Fellowship International. He served in the Caribbean for 15 years. He is now the Pastoral Care Pastor at New Testament Fellowship in Alton and Executive Director of Midwest Bible Training Center.

Ed Mercer graduated from Zion Bible College in 1981 is a business owner and minister. He has been married for 25 years and has two children.

Angela Valdes – Development Director - Please contact Angela Valdes, development director to schedule a speaking engagement and have her share about Community Hope Center with your church, business or civic group.
angelavaldes@sbcglobal.net or 618.558.6433

1201 Hope Center Lane - Cottage Hills, Illinois - Phone: 618-259-09598

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