January’s meal will be on Tuesday, Jan. 31 from 6 – 7:30 p.m.
The community meal ministry began last year and has been a great success, thanks to local partnerships said Pastor Brad Atkins.
“We were really pleased with the response,” Atkins said.
The church reached out to the Tabernacle Children’s Home on White Horse, offering the leftover food from the community meals.
“It became a weekly ministry helping to feed 120-140 people in our community,” Atkins said. “It really has been a beautiful thing.”
The meals are also feeding single mothers who are members of the Good News Club, and help assist three Romanian children sponsored by the church.
The meals are completely free to the community.
Meals have ranged from spaghetti, to lasagna to chicken alfredo.
The idea for the program came from church members Kelly and Brad Holder.
Kelly Holder teaches Culinary Arts at the B.J. Skelton Career Center in Pickens County.
“She is the one who prepares all the food,” Atkins said.
Holder is assisted by church volunteers. Sometimes her classes at the Career Center also help prepare the food.
“It is some phenomenal food,” Atkins said. “She is a blessing. She is so talented. This is a ministry that God has birthed in her heart.”
Last year, before Thanksgiving, the church reached out to area schools to ask officials if they were aware of any needy families in the area that could use a helping hand at Thanksgiving.
“This past year, we gave out 64 complete Thanksgiving meals,” Atkins said.
In addition to the Thanksgiving meals, which families picked up at the church and took home, the church also gave a special supper that week.
“The Sunday night before our community supper we set up inside our auditorium and we hosted an actual sit down Thanksgiving with all the fixings,” Atkins said. “We had the families come, so when they came to pick up their Thanksgiving meals, they were also given a Thanksgiving Meal here.”
He estimated that 75-80 percent of the families picked up their meal and joined in at the Sunday supper that night.
“It’s a beautiful thing to see our church body interacting with the body of the community,” Atkins said. “As a pastor, it just blessed my heart to see that taking place.” The church is involved in other ministries as well.
“Our youth group is taking part in a canned food challenge,” Atkins said.
The “Souper Bowel of Caring” runs from now all the way to the Super Bowl, Atkins said.
The challenge pits girls against boys to see which group can collect the most food for the church’s food pantry ministry.
“They each have grocery carts set up,” Atkins said. “Each week the community brings food to donate, which goes in our food pantry ministry.”
Hunt Meadows Elementary recently helped the church by holding a canned food drive of its own.
“They blessed us with hundreds of canned food items,” Atkins said. “We have a lot of families that really benefit from our food pantry ministry, families that come to us and say ‘We just have a couple days until our next paycheck, can you help us?’”
The youth will also collect monetary donations in soup pots, funds which will also be used to help the needy.
“We use that money to buy $20 gift cards from area grocery stores,” Atkins said. “We will give them the nonperishable canned food items and then give them a gift card they can use to buy the perishables.
“It’s a great way to get teenagers involved in ministry,” Atkins said. “We draw from Easley, Pickens, Wren. We’ve got three different high schools that we’ve got kids from.”
“On Super Bowl Sunday night, we’ll announce who won,” Atkins said.
Last year, the boys won, but this year the girls are gunning for the prize.
“The boys got treated to a pizza blast,” Atkins said. “Needless to say the girls really want to win this year. It was really close last year, just a couple cans of food and a couple dollars separating them. It’s a good competition for a good cause.”
The church also operates a clothes closet for families who have lost everything.
Donations to that ministry can also be dropped off at the church.
“We have a benevolence ministry,” Atkins said. “People in need can fill our paperwork, telling us what they need and we’ll put together some items for them. We’ve had a lot of donations to that ministry, which has been great.”
This year’s community meals are being sponsored by Powdersville Self Storage, who sponsored meals last year, and new sponsor Landscaper Supply of Easley, formerly Tri-County Equipment and Rental.
“We certainly want to give credit where credit is due,” Atkins said. “These businesses partnering with us make this possible. Powdersville Self-Storage underwrote the expense for the whole year. We provided the location and the manpower, and they picked up the expense. It was a true community ministry.”
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