The SOURCE Foundation in Westover is generating an expanding circle of community strength and stability. At the center of it is Pastor Kevin Cain: Rev Kev.
If you haven’t had Rev’s Brisket & BBQ, you’re missing out. If you have had it, you didn’t just enjoy some great smoked meat—you supported The SOURCE Foundation in feeding kids and strengthening families in Westover and beyond.
This story is about the motivating force behind The SOURCE: Kevin Cain, “Rev Kev,” pastor at Kingdom EMC in Westover. It also isn’t about him because, like many good leaders, Cain’s M.O. is to identify challenges, inspire people to rise to them, then step out of the way.
It’s all grounded in Cain’s deep family history of service in Westover. His grandparents served on Westover City Council. The ball fields at Westover City Park are named for his dad, also a councilman. Cain attended Westover schools and was the youngest person ever elected to council.
He started Kingdom EMC in 1998. True to the Evangelical Methodist mission, the church did outreach, and meals were an early theme. “I met Kevin through football at Morgantown High School,” says Chad Callen, CEO at West Virginia Junior College. Cain started the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) around 2004, and he and his wife, Lesley, would invite the whole football team over for meals. “We loved to eat—and it opened our hearts and minds to his words.” Monongalia County Assessor Mark Muchow’s son was involved with FCA, too, 2007–11. “Kevin was one of the people in my son’s life that he respected during that time.”
Around then, in 2010, Cain learned that Westover’s Skyview Elementary had one of the highest poverty levels in the county. “These are kids that are hungry,” he says. Church volunteers started packing weekend meals for weekly distribution to any student who signed up, and the lunchboxes became an annual school-year program. Unlike the FCA, this wasn’t a way to talk about the church—it was simply practical good works, another part of the evangelical mission. Then, when Skyview needed help with before- and after-school care in 2017, Cain established The SOURCE Foundation to draw a clean line between the church and its members’ activities at the school. He and some willing volunteers took the before-and-after care on—and then they added an all-day summer program, too.
It was making a difference, but Cain saw that families needed more. He went back to college for pastoral counseling, then started a program of holistic coaching, enlisting certified mental health coaches from his circle to help. “How does a person come to know who they are as an individual?” he asks. “Then, where do they apply that in their occupational work, their personal life, and their rest? And we look at that from the context of spiritual, physical, emotional, cognitive, and social health.” The framework gives participants grounding in everything from fulfilling relationships to better physical fitness.
The SOURCE’s persistent, loving generosity—supported by the congregation and BBQ sales, with donations from farther afield as word spreads—is carried out by dozens of members of Kingdom EMC and offered to the community at low cost or free, without expectation. Lunchbox distribution passed 2 million meals a couple years ago and grows each year. “This year, we’re distributing meals for Skyview, Excel, Mylan Park Elementary, Clay–Battelle Middle and High School, and Mason Dixon Elementary—at least 400 kids,” Cain says.
Muchow’s daughter has become a teacher at Mylan Park Elementary, one of the schools served by The SOURCE. “Some of these kids, that may be the meal they get,” he says. “It’s a real benefit to them to have nourishment like that.”
Now an active supporter of food security initiatives, Callen has been impressed by The SOURCE and all it’s doing. “They’re always so innovative,” he says. “There are a lot of people with good intentions who have great ideas, but a lot fewer execute them—The SOURCE shows real outcomes. It’s remarkable.”
Cain takes a long view. “If we can build a generation of folks that are housing secure and food secure and clothing secure, maybe The SOURCE can keep expanding that pocket of strength. We’re always going to bump into insecurity, but if we can continue to widen the circle of security, I think this is going to be amazing.”
You can give directly to The SOURCE Foundation using the Give Online button at kingdomemc.com.
READ MORE STORIES FROM OUR WINTER 2025 ISSUE
Leave a Reply