Dubbed “Top Chef Temple,” the event inspired by the Bravo network’s cooking show was one part service project, one part churches working together and two parts opening young people’s eyes to a world beyond iPods and soccer practice.
Organized by Temple Bible Church youth pastor Dave Tate, the event involved sixth- through 12th-graders from Temple Bible, Memorial Baptist, Canyon Creek Baptist and Foundation United Methodist churches. Students and adult volunteers cooked main dishes and desserts in their homes and churches, and brought them to Martha’s Kitchen, where some 200 diners feasted on the sprawling buffet before voting for their favorite dishes.
Students also donated canned foods to the shelter’s food bank.
“This exposes them to service, setting aside their needs to care for someone else’s,” Tate said. “I don’t pretend that this event is doing all we need to do, but it does cast the vision before the students that being a Christian isn’t about just taking in a bunch of doctrine, but it’s about living out that doctrine in your life.”
Memorial Baptist’s banana pudding took top honors in the friendly competition between churches. Enchiladas were the favorite main dish, although bragging rights had to be shared since multiple groups brought the Mexican staple. The prizes – two $100 grocery store gift cards – were promptly donated to Martha’s Kitchen, which serves about 500 meals and houses 100 daily at its Avenue G site in Temple, said Ray Severn, board chairman.
Area churches often chip in by serving Saturday breakfasts at the soup kitchen and homeless shelter. Tate said when he and TBC youth volunteered last spring, he noticed that “most of their meals are pretty basic” and a lot of the food had been donated by area businesses after it sat unpurchased.
“A lot of what they’re eating is our leftovers,” he said. “I thought it would be really cool to do an event and bless them with home-cooked, good food.”
One shelter resident, Alan King, was moved to tears by the offering.
“It’s nice to see young people taking the time to come help everybody,” King said. “Maybe they will see if they become involved in crime, drugs, alcohol, maybe this isn’t a place you want to be.”
James Ellis of Foundation Methodist said it was good for his students to venture past their west Temple environs.
“It helps show them there’s more to life than their small community in the suburbs,” he said. “We hope it gives them perspective on how hard life is for some folks.”
Tommie Schiller, formerly of Thrall, spoke to students after the meal, encouraging them to “take the right road and follow the Lord.”
“We are homeless, but we have shelter, food and good people here,” said Schiller, who came to the shelter recently after he and his wife, Anna, lost everything in a storm of critical health problems, unemployment and burglars pillaging their home during Anna’s hospitalization. A former septic tank builder, Schiller later said that they would get back on their feet again.
“Sometimes we feel like no one knows we exist,” Mrs. Schiller said. “Sometimes it’s a blessing to know someone does care.”
Natalie Powell of Canyon Creek Baptist, said that’s why she was there.
“I get joy out of this,” said Miss Powell, a student at Belton High School. “I love helping. Jesus loved to serve people even though people should have been serving Him. He would still go out and help people. I feel we should, too, just to show His love.”
Tate said he hopes students will think about the experience when they go back to school in a few weeks.
“Christ came to earth to be with us and to experience what we experience,” he said. “That’s the incarnation. I’m not comparing us to Christ, but we are to go into people’s lives that we normally wouldn’t go into.
“When a kid goes to school and sees a kid this fall that they wouldn’t normally relate to, they can choose to enter someone’s life incarnationally and try to make a difference for Christ,” he added.
--cwaits@temple-telegram.com
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