Saints, Sinners, & Sandwiches:
A Dinner Church in Dayton

 

Rev. Richard Freudenberger
Coordinator, Southern Ohio Synod Cultivate Ministries

 

“Church in a deli? Why not?” That’s the motto on the home page of Saints, Sinners, & Sandwiches, a dinner church in Old North Dayton.

 

As you can see from the picture accompanying this article, even in the dreariness of a cold and sunless late-winter day in Southwest Ohio, the back room of Charlie’s Deli is filled with warmth and good cheer. People have started to arrive by 5:00 PM for the 5:30 PM gathering. Some are animatedly catching up on the week’s events, while others sit quietly, often creating splashes of color on adult coloring pages. Sometimes, the coloring takes center stage for a while: Intricate mandalas, fanciful birds and goldfish, graphics from Illustratedministries.com illustrating one of the week’s readings. The conversation and the coloring are warm, peaceful, and—above all—sincere.

 

Saints, Sinners, & Sandwiches (sometimes called “S3”) was started nearly three years ago, in the late spring of 2022. This was toward the tail end of the worst of the pandemic. Christ Lutheran Church, two blocks away, had weathered the storm of the pandemic with its food pantry, clothing pantry, hygiene pantry, and community meals intact. It had not faired as well, though, with its worshiping community, which by-and-large had not come back when the doors reopened for live worship.

 

So, the church moved out into the neighborhood and something new was born. Pastor Richard Freudenberger approached the owners of the deli, and they quickly agreed that the church could start a Thursday evening gathering in the deli’s back room. There have been ups and downs in the last three years, but the concept of blending worship and food together has proven to be fruitful. Several of the attendees are long-term members of Christ Lutheran, but most are not. Some of the attendees come every week; some come once in a while; and some only come once or twice because the neighborhood has a lot of people just “stop by” for a short time.

 

Each week, participants share their highs and lows, their ups and downs. Eating soup, sandwiches, and sometimes heaping baskets of french-fries, people share their life with each other. Happy stories, sad stories, and miraculous stories get shared. People bond together to create caring community. We follow the lectionary, with responsive psalms and the appointed gospel reading of the week. Though Pastor Richard may give a few words of background on the readings, he does not deliver a sermon. Instead, the group mulls over the passages and what they mean for their lives. The prayers are spontaneously created, centering on what is going on in the lives of attendees as well as the needs of the community and wider world. They sometimes get teary. That’s followed by a song, which always goes surprisingly well, even when attendance is low.

 

This is church. Caring; connecting; hearing and learning about the Word; singing praises to God. Some regular attendees have combined this with service, doing things like helping others in dire need to obtain firewood and blankets in the dead of winter, as well as helping out at Christ Lutheran’s clothing pantry.

 

S3 has been made possible by support from a number of sources that have supported Christ Lutheran’s ministries to this Old North Dayton neighborhood, including Peace Lutheran Church in Beavercreek, the Lutheran Church of Our Savior, the Southern Ohio Synod, and the ELCA. This ministry does not cost a lot of money. The food and drink are free to attendees because many in the neighborhood cannot afford to pay for it, though some people discreetly put money in a donation box on a side table. The net result is that it takes about $80-$100 per week to keep the dinner church going. Unfortunately, it appears that Christ Lutheran will be closing soon, ending a run in Old North Dayton that started in 1896. We are determined, though, that Saints, Sinners, & Sandwiches will continue as a legacy of Christ Lutheran. Please pray for us, as we discuss with several congregations how to keep this grace-filled mission going.