INDIANAPOLIS — He crosses Grant Avenue and walks down the block, away from the red-brick church. He eats from a white styrofoam plate.
Inside the church basement, community residents file past two long tables with blue tablecloths. They pick up plates like the man’s, filling them with this week’s meal: Ham, salad, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, and pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies with orange sugar on top.
Serving them tonight is a group from McCordsville United Methodist Church.
For about 10 years, Tuxedo Park Baptist Church has been serving a meal to the community on Thursday nights.
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“There’s nothing like a home-cooked meal, right?” said the Rev. Eddie Smith Sr., pastor of the American Baptist congregation on Indianapolis’ east side, near Washington Street and Sherman Drive. “You can tell the difference.”
Different churches and individuals help out at each gathering, choosing to serve at weekly, monthly or quarterly intervals. About two years ago, a member of the McCordsville church learned about the Thursday dinners from a neighbor who attended Tuxedo Park.
The Hancock County church committed to send a group to help serve the meal on the last Thursday of the month. Smith said the McCordsville church is a “huge supporter” of what’s going on at Tuxedo Park.
“We always get more out of it than we put into it,” said McCordsville’s Jo Scott. “The people are so grateful.”
These gatherings, known as Bread & Word, begin with a 10-minute devotional and prayer, followed by the meal.
Those who come can also connect with a food pantry and clothing pantry. There are bags of dry beans, cans of vegetables and other non-perishables in the food pantry. More perishable items such as bread and desserts rest on a cart in the dining room for distribution. Down the hall, racks of clothes and shelves of shoes are arranged in shoplike order for visitors who come when it’s their turn to shop.
As dinner wraps up, Scott tells Ron Slaughter how much she appreciates his pre-meal devotions. At one, he talked about how his life has not been perfect since he left behind drugs, but said with Jesus it has been a whole lot better. Thoughts such as these that he shares stay with Scott, she said.
Slaughter, who light-heartedly introduces himself as “Ron the Baptist,” said he was raised better than some of the decisions he made in the past, but there was a day when “the truth” drew him back to where he should be. He says his life is like a verse in the Bible’s book of Proverbs: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).
“That’s the love of God,” Slaughter said.
Those gathered at Tuxedo Park say they’re trying to share that love, to offer hope to people struggling and to make people feel at home in a place where they themselves have found welcome and purpose.
Carol Munoz thinks a person walking down the block with a plate of food may one day feel comfortable enough to sit down to dinner. She’s seen people grow more at ease over time.
“They feel comfortable and know they’re welcome and not going to be looked down on,” Munoz said.
Munoz and her husband came from New Jersey when the plant where she worked closed. The company that bought it offered her a job in Indiana; after they moved here, one of her husband’s colleagues invited them to Tuxedo Park.
“We came here and never left,” Munoz said.
Now she and Opal Greensides partner to coordinate the weekly Bread & Word meals. Usually the church cooks the meal, but once a month food comes through the culinary training program operated by Second Helpings. Tonight that food graces the table next to salads from a Chick-fil-A.
“It’s a lot of working together — partnership — that’s what makes it a success,” Munoz said.
Smith, the pastor, considers Bread & Word a service at the church, ministering to 100 to 150 people a week. He says people are noticing the rebirth there; McCordsville United Methodist Church and others are seeing it and wanting to be part of it. He dreams of even greater community impact, including a community center.
It’s a welcome sight to Patty Lantry, who grew up about a mile northwest of here. Now she and husband Mike, who worship at The Creek in Franklin Township, are back most weeks to help at Bread & Word. It’s about community, she said.
“We love coming here … You get to know people’s names and have relationships,” she said. “It just feels like we’re one.”
