An old saying goes, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”
The Parker County Center of Hope certainly resembles that phrase.
The Center of Hope is a Christian charity whose mission is to combat poverty. Although most people come to the Center of Hope seeking assistance for immediate needs such as food or help with bills, the center works with many people to also address the causes behind their problems.
“Many of our participants (a term the center prefers using instead of clients) come in the door and we talk a lot about poverty,” said Courtney McKeown, director of Development at the Center of Hope. “It’s not just financial poverty or poverty of things. You can have people that walk in the door that have poverty of community. They might be elderly. They might be somebody that doesn’t have a family. We have people that come into our dining room every day just so they’ll have somebody to talk to.
“…We talk a lot about finding worth in yourself and what that really looks like,” McKeown said. “So when they come in the door, they’re greeted with a smile, a hug, [and we ask] ‘how can we help you?’”
The Center of Hope has two locations, one in Weatherford at 1318 Clear Lake Road and the other at 112 Optimist in Springtown. The former is larger and serviced more than 25,000 families last year according to Courtney. As of December 2025, the Center’s locations provided a total of 71,000 services.
Originally, the center was in Aledo and known as the Provision Center. It was started by Terry Jones, who had gotten back on his feet after falling on hard times and wanted to give back to his community. He gave people money. However, the people assisting Jones believed there was a better way to assist people. They got help from five local churches, and the Center of Hope, as it’s now known, came to be.
“What we were finding were people were just going from place to place, and telling the same story and trying to get services from everybody… The churches were like, ‘We can’t help everybody. So why don’t we pool our resources together and have one hub and location that we can send them to, and the churches will just support that location.’ It streamlines the process and we can do more for the participants because we have so many people that come behind us and support us,” McKeown said.
The center later moved to Palo Pinto, where it stayed for a long time. Finally, as more services were introduced and the need for space grew, the center was moved to its current Weatherford location in 2020. The Springtown location began in a church in 2020 and moved to its current location almost two years ago.
The center offers numerous resources, from literacy classes to discounted dental care. The staff even recently ran a More than a Pantry campaign to emphasize this fact. Of course, the center also has a food pantry, which McKeown said is the most visited part of the center. However, according to McKeown, the center’s biggest offering is its education programs.
The center’s career development program is designed to teach participants lifelong skills to help them gain employment. S.T.E.P.S. (short for Start Today Empowering Personal Success) is one class that “focuses on helping participants begin their journey toward self-sufficiency by examining financial, social, emotional, physical, educational, and spiritual needs” with the help of a life coach, according to the center’s website.
Jobs for Life, one of the center’s most successful classes, is a national Christian-based organization out of South Carolina.
“We (the Center of Hope Jobs for Life) are the longest running program in the United States. …The first four weeks is really working on [the participants’] confidence and their self-esteem, which is what a lot of people don’t have when they come into the center,” McKeown said. “When they come in, we spend time going through their story and just really getting them to break down those walls. So, the next four weeks, we spend helping them with the resumé, helping them on their 32nd sale, like how to sell yourself, ’cause if they come in and they’re not confident, they don’t know that they have skills that they can sell. We teach them how to do that.”
The center advisors also teach individuals who have long gaps in employment how to address the gap in interviews with confidence. Community members will then come in and give the participants practice interviews. According to the center’s website, Jobs for Life is a “job training program held twice a week in the fall and spring semesters.”
The center also offers classes for computer skills and GED and citizenship test prep. Graduates are then celebrated.
The center’s two locations had more than 4,500 class sessions combined in the previous year, according to McKeown. All these services are only scratching the surface of what the Center of Hope has to offer.
Faith is the core of the center’s service along with the belief participants can rise above their circumstances with God’s help.
“We aren’t the hero in their story. … God’s the hero, and he walks them through to get through this. If we just came in and we just gave them food and gave them no accountability, they would just come in and just keep taking food. But … we’re like, ‘No, we want to give you the tools to be successful because we aren’t going to be there with you 24/7 the rest of your life. We want you to be able to be self-sustaining,’” McKeown said. She added the center wants everyone coming in to feel valued.
Staff members are readily available to pray with participants if desired. Pastors also come in different shifts from Monday to Thursday so they are available to anyone in need of a listening ear or an extra layer of prayer.
However, faith isn’t the only vital ingredient to the center’s success. According to McKeown, the other true strength of the Center of Hope is the community surrounding it. The center partners with 60 churches and 60 businesses across Parker County. The center serves lunch from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every week from Monday through Friday, and a different business, organization, or church will bring their church family to cook, clean, or assist with other tasks. Other big groups will also come in to help, such as youth groups, students from Trinity Christian Academy or Weatherford Christian School, or folks from the Hope House (an addiction recovery house) out of Hamilton. All of this work is done by volunteers.
If the center is not able to help meet a certain need, such as long-term housing, then the participant will be connected with another resource. According to McKeown, the local nonprofits are very helpful with each other, which also goes a long way to help obtain resources to those in need.
“I would like people to know that we could not do this and serve the community and the capacity that we do without the community. It is truly a community organization. You can’t fill 4,700 volunteer spots with our 28 staff,” McKeown said. “Without our community and the support that we have, it would not happen. We wouldn’t be helping our neighbors like we should. We just couldn’t do it. So I would just encourage anybody that has a heart to serve in any capacity. We can use every skill.”
For more information about the Center of Hope and its resources, visit www.centerofhopetx.com.
The Center of Hope has two big events approaching. One is Toys for Hope, a toy drive that begins this month and runs until Thursday, Nov. 19. New, unwrapped toys may be dropped off at the Weatherford or Springtown Center of Hope locations from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday. The toys will be given to local children for Christmas.
Interested individuals should contact Tammie Freeze at 817-594-0266, Ext. 310, to sign up or ask for more information.
The other major event is Wrapped in Love, a Christmas event in which individuals, churches, and businesses can host a Joy Station to help people in need. Small Joy Stations have a 2-foot by 4-foot table and two chairs that fit up to four volunteers. Large Joy Stations include a 4=foot by6-foot table and four chairs that fit up to eight volunteers. The stations are decorated by the volunteers hosting the station and must include supplies to share with families, such as gloves, hats, socks, hygiene products, activity books, and sweet treats. There is no sponsorship fee and the center will provide a table, table cloth, and a rolling rack to hold the goodies.
The Weatherford Wrapped in Love will take place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 12, at the Weatherford Center of Hope. The Springtown event will take place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 16, at the Springtown Area Senior Center (1070 N. Main St., Springtown).
To reserve a table or ask for more information, contact McKeown at courtney@centerofhopetx.com or 817-360-8173.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here