80 WBM april 2014 Every week without fail the table in the center of the large parish hall at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church is decorated with a cornucopia of appetizers, sandwiches, fruits and desserts. The women behind the spread are dedicated volunteers organized into eight teams of six or seven by their ringleader, Virginia Chiarello. Chiarello took over the Sunday lunch from its founder, Jere Lewis, who has since retired from the church’s kitchens. However, a sign still hangs above the kitchen window that reads: Jere’s Place. “It is a labor of love and you have to have good people,” Chiarello says. “If I didn’t have good teams it wouldn’t happen. I have been here since 1991 and we have never missed serving Sunday lunch.” Staples for the lunch table include fruit plates, chicken salad sandwiches, deviled eggs, Brie spread, spanakopita, cranberry almond bars, an assortment of desserts, and white grape and ginger ale punch. Each dish is created by one of the members of the team on duty that week and some come from the church’s cookbook, “Sharing Our Best.” The placement of each dish around the table is premeditated as Chiarello has discovered what order helps move the line of 130 along each Sunday. “You can’t get to know each other sitting in church,” she says. “Around this table and in this parish hall is where we built St. Paul’s.” Parishioners young and old spend about an hour after Sunday service mingling and conversing over the spread produced by the volunteers and Chiarello says she loves watching new bonds form while sharing the food they prepare every week. “If people just come here for the food that is fine too but we really hope they nourish their spirit and then have the food,” Chiarello says. “It gath-ers people and it is a place for people to meet and greet, and that is what has allowed the relationships in this church to be built so well.”
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