Our Community Free Supper Each Thursday Evening

Since this is one of my own (your webmaster) ministries, I will tell you just a little about it. Every Thursday evening, 50 or 51 weeks of the year (the exceptions being mostly for Neewollah week each year in October and Maundy Thursday of Holy Week), in cooperation with other churches in Independence offer a free supper meal to the community. It is always held in our parish hall, but the other churches provide the food: United Methodists one week, Presbyterians another week, the Southern Baptists, Lutherans, St. Andrews Roman Catholic Church and the AME churches on still other weeks, and there is a week for us as well. We personally serve the food about once every six to eight weeks, but we provide the space each week. Typically, there are between eighty and one hundred people from the community come for these suppers; some of them are members of the various churches involved but many others have no church affiliation at all but wish to come for the meal.

Most weeks my duty there is as a greeter; I greet the people as they come in (we unlock the parish hall door starting at 5:30 pm) and keep count of the number of visitors for statistical reasons so the cooks know the amount of food which will be needed. The food serving begins at 6:00 PM and the people are generally out and on their way back home or wherever about 6:45 - 7:00 PM. There are many 'regulars' there each week; people whom I suspect depend on us to provide them with a good, wholesome meal. Its really an exciting ministry which I am involved with.

PAT