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ELKINS – The First United Methodist Church of Elkins will celebrate the fifth anniversary of its Lunch With Neighbors program on Oct. 13 with a free meal that will be open to the public in the church’s Family Life Center.
The event is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. and lunch will be served at 12:30 p.m. Since the program’s inception in 2021, it has been serving free meals to the community on multiple days each week.
“The program has really evolved and stabilized, and at our peak, we were doing three servings a week,” First United Church Pastor Tim Edin told The Inter-Mountain. “We are now serving meals two days a week and it has been a wonderful thing to be a part of.”
The Lunch With Neighbors program is self-supporting and is staffed completely by volunteers, he said.
“There’s a lot of layers to the program,” Edin said. “It’s creating community among the elderly, creating community among the lonely, and there are families with young children who attend.”
Edin said the program not only offers free meals for those who visit the church on its current days of operation, which are on Tuesdays and Thursdays (12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.), but takeout dinners are also available.
“We allow carryout meals for those who can’t be present,” Edin said. “And we do delivery for people who absolutely can’t leave their home. And if someone has a friend who can’t make it to the church for the meal, we will send them home with several boxes so they can feed whoever they want to feed.”
Edin said there are several ways the church funds the Lunch With Neighbors program.
“We do all the grants that are available in the region, such as the Snowshoe Foundation, and we have been able to receive funds from the Department of Agriculture and the Mountaineer Food Bank over the years,” he said. “So those are kind of the big parts, but we also receive items from Walmart and Kroger, and we also receive odds and ends from Sheetz.”
Edin said there are many people who have a hand in making the program a success each and every week.
“We have a great team in terms of helpers,” Edin said. “And we never run out, even when we have been nervous. We have never run out of money, we’ve never ran out of food, we never run out of able bodies. So the real testimony is that this program is not the work of just one person, but an entire community.”
Edin said that close to 500 meals are served each week during the program’s two days of operation.
“The grand total is always over 20,000 meals for the year,” Edin said. “We try to encourage everyone to come out, because it’s not only for the poor and the homeless. If someone wants to participate, support, eat with us, or spend time with us, I encourage them to come out. I try to create a bridge to the rest of the community so that relationships and friendships can be built. It’s so much more than the meal. The meal is the thing to get someone in the door. But we offer so much more once someone is in the door.”
Support for Lunch with Neighbors can be made via the First United Methodist Church. Gifts can be mailed to First United Methodist Church, 315 Kerens Ave., Elkins, WV 26241, or can be dropped at the church office during office hours (Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m – 1 p.m.). Gifts can also be made online at http://www.fumcelkinswv.org.