Church Canteen
Church canteen is financed from the following sources:
- in the first time, realizing this project, with all that means (the building, interior facilities) was possible because it was financed by some american brothers with big hearts, members of “First Baptist Church” from Paducah, state Kentuky, whom our church want to thank them for this essential implication in this project, without it, rising and implementing the canteen building could not have been possible;
- church funds (sisters and brothers from the church beneficence);
- external donations from the people who know this project, and want to get involved and bring the joy of an warm meal almost every Sunday to the poor people. In this way, our church is thanking the following companies for their donations: S.C. “VFI MEDICA” S.R.L. formTimișoara city and SC “BĂLEANU” S.R.L. from Moldova Nouă city;
Our future vision for this project is to try to preach the Word of God to those who come to our canteen and sometimes to our church services, because Lord Jesus Christ was doing the same thing multiplying bread and fish… He preached the Word of God and after that He gave them the food to eat. In this way the Bible is clarifying this aspect:
Mattew 4:4
“Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
But everyone’s choice is personal, therefore our church does not offer this warm meal to the people who need it, with the purpose to convert people as a condition in exchange for that meal, instead we offer that meal to the people who need it as a beneficience in the first way, and becouse we love them we share them the Gospel, becouse this is the meaning of a christian church, and this is what we belive is right to do.
Therefore the church canteen is frequented, also by people who are not members in our church, and some of them are not even frequenting our church services. Though it is true, we want this people to freqent our church services, but we are not offering the Sunday meal as an exchange for that.
For the Sunday meal are cooking brothers and sisters, voluntary, based on a schedule made by a church member, which is responsible for this kind of ministry.
We are cooking Saturday evening and Sunday morning, with aliments which were bought Saturday, to not have problems with perishable aliments.
The meal consists in two sort of food plus desert, we serve it to almost 58 – 60 persons, who are either members of our church, but from outside our church too. From this amount 35-40 people are serving meal in the canteen, and other 15-20 people receive their food at home (sick people, kids, persons with handicap). For this persons, the food is brought at home by a family member, or by the youth of the church, who are designated for this job.
For canteen cleanliness, a few young members are named every Sunday to do this job.
Before meal is served, youth of the church are making a speach from the Scripture in the canteen, followed by the thanking prayer for the food, and during the meal is served they keep an artistic program composed from christian songs, accompanied by their musical instruments.
The persons who can benefit to the Sunday meal are poor people selected by the church comittee, on this criterions:
- the number of personf for which our church has human resources and cooking utilities, or necesary space. In this moment the church can serve allmost 45 meals in the canteen;
- by their poverty situation (homeless people, mental diseases, people without any kind of financial resources)
Nevertheless, based on the level of unoccupied seats at the tables, or unserved food prtions, any person is welcome to the canteen, without even being selected by the church comittee, and this kind of situation appears allmost every Sunday, when our church is serving the meal, and untill now, we succeed to help a lot of this persons too.
