Photo provided Pastor Ed Boston, left-right, Mary Bailey, Amber Fleming, Doug Fleming, and Donna Brady prepare one of the church’s meals.
When The Father’s House pastor Ed Boston and his wife Amy started the Share-a-Meal program out of their home church four years ago, they never expected it would take off the way it did.
In only a few Share-a-Meal sessions, they went from feeding 40 people quarterly to double and even triple that, to the point where they may have to move out of preparing meals from their home kitchen.
“Wherever God leads, we want to follow,” Ed Boston said.
Ed Boston, who has been a pastor since 2003, began The Father’s House church out of their home at 1417 Pearl St. in 2021. The church has about 15 to 20 participating members, he said.
“… within the house or the church, we actually have a part of our house we call ‘the sanctuary’ and it doubles as the area of the house that we put together the meals,” Ed said.
Ed said they try to run the Share-a-Meal program once a quarter on Thursdays. In creating the program, Ed said they wanted to show the love of Jesus in a way that no one was doing in that manner. He said their Share-a-Meal program is a little different from others in that there are no restrictions in who can benefit from it.
“Literally, Share-a-Meal says everything it is about what we want to do. We just want to share a meal with no strings attached,” Ed said. “We don’t harass people to come to church, we don’t put any stipulations on it. We’ve had a couple of donations but we don’t charge for the meal, we don’t solicit donations for the meal, it all comes from the folks here at The Father’s House.”
Ten days before the program is to be held, Boston said he and their congregation members will spend time gathering names and spreading the word that it is occurring. The meals consist of chicken and noodles, mashed potatoes, green beans, a dinner roll and a homemade dessert, brought in by church members.
Everything is prepared at The Father’s House by eight to 10 members of their church. Ed said the volunteers all arrive by 2 p.m. on Share-a-Meal days and they try to get the food out the door for delivery around 4 p.m.
Amy said they package everything up and deliver it themselves, though some also come by and pick their meals up. She said they can’t do what they do without the members of their church who help them, and those who help them out also love doing it, Ed said.
“It’s like an assembly line in here on Share-a-Meal day,” Ed said. “We have to move things around and get tables set up. It’s quite the ordeal and we’ve kind of got it down pat pretty well. We rarely have any snafus or anything like that.”
The Share-a-Meal program has garnered more attention than Ed said they thought it would have. Their first Share-a-Meal fed about 40 people, which then doubled to 80 people at their next one. The most they have fed in one afternoon has been 187, and their most recent Share-a-Meal in September fed 170 people, he said.
“Every time we did Share-a-Meal, we broke a record from the previous time until a couple of times ago,” Ed said. “So it has continued to grow, wouldn’t be surprised if it’s over 200 the next time. We’re to the point where Amy can’t produce many more chicken and noodles using just a regular kitchen stove, we have to go to a place and have a commercial stove.”
Ed said they are open to moving the Share-a-Meal food operations elsewhere if they outgrow their current space. He said they have received positive stories from those they have delivered meals to, and even in the hustle of delivering meals, he still stops and has a word of prayer with those he delivers to. But as they run the program, he said they never do it for praise.
“We just want people to understand that Jesus loves them,” Ed said. “We know that Jesus many times fed people before he ministered to them and if you’ve been around church work very long, you know that food helps people come together. We just had the idea back in 2021 or somewhere around there and had no idea we’d be serving the number of people we serve now.”
The next Share-a-Meal is planned to be held in early December.
