The Most Important Meal
Attendees and volunteers reflect on what Sunday morning prayer breakfast means to them
Asiago cheese bagel? Cinnamon raisin? Plain? How about coffee? An orange? A boiled egg? Food for the next two or three days?
One by one, men, and an occasional woman, make their way down a bank of tables in Fifield Hall in the still-dark hours of a Sunday morning for a meal and a bag of groceries to go. But there’s more on the menu here than breakfast. Staff and volunteers try to fill the heart, soul, and even the mind, as well as the belly.
Every guest is personally greeted, many by name. Do you need socks? Gloves? Hygiene products? Prayer? Conversation? Even a hug? Someone will provide it. Need to file income tax? Paul Dimmick is in the hall to help.
This Sunday morning meal is a scaled-down version of a First Presbyterian tradition. Dating back to 1981, people began coming in off the streets to partake of the coffee and pastries the church provided for members. Word spread, and the crowd grew. Members saw a need and decided that a more substantial meal should be provided for their hungry neighbors.
Over the years, hundreds of volunteers served thousands of guests. Menus varied but included at different times eggs, biscuits, doughnuts, toast, fruit—and always cheesy grits and coffee. “The best grits in town,” some guests said, and volunteers had T-shirts made bearing the boast.
With the pandemic, a few volunteers continued to come, handing out catered breakfasts, but guests had to remain outside. In early 2022, the arrangements changed again. Bagel Rescue, a nonprofit organization that connects restaurants with unused food to charities, began furnishing provisions for the breakfast. Guests were invited inside to drink their coffee and the church began providing a few days’ worth of takeaway food. A closet well stocked with warm clothing and personal care products opened off the dining hall. More volunteers are coming, and they and the Community Ministries staff continue to make the breakfast more welcoming.
The current service is “a place in between” the boxed meal, handed out during the worst of the COVID shutdown, when food was often cold by the time it was consumed, and the heyday of the hot breakfast, said Rev. Kate Culver, a Community Ministries pastor who was an intern at the church while studying at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology.
“Do we look forward to the day when we have a full breakfast again? Absolutely,” she said. “What I loved about being an intern here was sitting down at a table with people and talking to them. The breakfast is an important tradition we have. We are known for it in the city.”
No one can tell when restrictions will be lifted enough to resume the traditional meal. More disruption to routine is expected when construction begins to renovate, modernize, and expand the campus, including Fifield Hall. In the meantime, guests are grateful for what’s provided to them.
Some have been coming for several years. Others are newcomers. Most are wearing backpacks or tugging duffel bags that hold all their belongings. Each carries one or more other burdens as well: poverty, hunger, homelessness, addiction, mental illness, a criminal record.
Ronnie Lord, fifty, has been at the church on Sunday mornings “off and on for a couple of years.” He says he was working in sales and marketing in the 1990s when he became addicted to painkillers after breaking his jaw. He went on to construction work but kept landing in jail, first on drug and weapons charges, later for violation of probation. His yellow jacket is stained, and he wears a wool cap over light-brown hair.
The menu is always changing, but the key ingredient, hospitality, is always present.
“I feel peaceful and safe here,” he says of the church. “You come in here during the week and on Sundays, and you don’t have to look over your shoulder. The people here bend over backward to try to help you. They provide a lot of services. But just to come in here is the best thing.”
He’s working as a day laborer now and attending meetings to try to stay sober. “I won’t be on the street long,” he vows. “Hopefully I can do some good for people when I get back on my feet. I may not have been the most caring person before. When I did have money, I didn’t even think about the other person. This has changed my outlook. I can thank the church for that.”
Larry Barwick, forty-four, is here for just the third time. His neat blue heather sweater, wool scarf, and short-cropped hair lead some people to mistake him for a volunteer. “I’m the guy who never thought he would face homelessness,” he says.
Barwick, who was working at home during the pandemic, lost his job after he was evicted, and his possessions, including his office equipment, were put on the street. He is now living in his BMW with his American bulldog, Hope. “I prayed like I’d never prayed in my life,” he said. “The only response I heard was ‘Humble yourself and ask for help.’”
He couldn’t go home to his family, he said. They disowned him two years ago when he finally told them he is gay and HIV positive. He was raised in a church “that made me feel like God was inaccessible to me because I was gay,” he said.
He is about to start a mail-sorting job for seventeen dollars an hour and has a lead on a basement apartment, he said. He’s found acceptance as well as food in Fifield Hall. “I thank God for this place,” he said.
When people truly feel welcome, they’re able to connect in unexpected ways.
On this Sunday morning, he is thumbing through books on a revolving stand near the windows in the fellowship hall. He rattles off ones he’s read recently: All Waiting Is Long, a story of sisters set in the 1930s; Little Fires Everywhere, the tale of a custody battle over the adoption of a Chinese baby; and Ya-Yas in Bloom, an addition to the “sisterhood” novels by Rebecca Wells. He also picks up books about self-help and faith.
The books are available for anyone to take, thanks to twelve-year-old Caroline Twombly, a student at Atlanta’s Howard Middle School. When she was just a third or fourth grader coming with her mother, Kristen Holtz, to volunteer at the breakfast, Caroline was disturbed that the guests had nothing to read.
“I like books,” she said between helping guests choose their bagels on Sunday morning. “I just thought that sometimes getting into a library is hard, and they could get books when they come here.”
Caroline’s mother, Kristen, began working at the breakfast with her older children about 2017. As a mother and the owner of a research and communications firm, she had no time for volunteering during the week. Even though the Sunday morning breakfast required being at the church as early as 6:00 or 6:30 a.m., the timing suited her and still does.
“I can go on Sunday morning, talk to people, give them food, and let them warm up,” she said. “It makes me feel good. I hope it makes them feel good as well.”
In addition to food, people can find personal care items, books, and even help filing taxes.
Caroline is not the only child growing up spending Sunday mornings with a room full of strangers, some of whom have become friends. Victoria and Beatrice Jones, soon to be eleven and thirteen, have been coming since they could toddle, said their dad, Gared. Beatrice, just learning to walk, passed out disposable cups to guests. When she was older, and the “risk reduced,” she began filling them with juice, he said.
“For me, that breakfast is the place where everything about our church, and everything about living in the world as Christ taught us, comes together,” her dad said.
And for the Grady girls, now grown women, being at the breakfast with their dad on Sunday mornings was a regular part of life, said mother Kim. “It was good for them to see that these were really just people who had come across a hard time,” she said. The impact of the breakfast became clear to Kim and Henry Grady when their youngest daughter, Julia, moved to the District of Columbia. “When she got there, in addition to finding a church home, she wanted to find a place to volunteer,” Kim Grady said. “She’s found a place where she can do breakfast. That made my heart happy.”
Of course, the adult volunteers also find richness, both in the opportunity to serve and in the relationships that develop.
Mariana Betancourt began volunteering in the fall of 2019, when she moved into town from Sandy Springs. Cuban by birth, she was brought to the United States by refugee parents when she was nine years old. “How could I not give back?” she asks. “It’s the right thing to do.”
At first, her service was “transactional,” she said, simply giving the guests who came the food they needed. But then relationships started to form. She said she had never encountered people with no place to live before. It’s a journey. I used to be a little afraid. I have such a different feel for these people now.”
More of the breakfast guests are now staying for the 8:30 a.m. communion service in the church’s chapel. They are scattered throughout the small congregation.
“We are building a community,” Betancourt said. “I’m glad. I want them to know they have a church home.”
Her sentiment echoes that of Pastor Culver. “We are a ministry that focuses on radical hospitality,” she said. “It’s important for us to engage in relational ministry. We want to make sure we create a place of ownership for folks and not just regard them as persons who are served. I believe that when you walk alongside somebody in a meaningful way, that’s when change happens.”
Some breakfast guests return during the week for a Bible study conducted by Culver. James Marble, sixty-one, is one of them. He describes himself as “a disability patient.” A breakfast regular since spring of 2021, he said, “It’s good to be able to come and have Bible study.” He doesn’t attend any of the church’s three Sunday morning worship services. Looking down at his dirty jacket and the battered bags at his feet, he says, “Being in this condition, I don’t want to offend regular church members. I don’t feel comfortable being in a church service as I am now, but the Bible study I do like.”
The Sunday morning breakfast—along with myriad weekday services such as mail, a food pantry, mentoring, and help with recovery of identification papers—makes First Presbyterian special, said Justus Wiseman, twenty-five, an intern from Candler School of Theology. “What it has done for me is to show me what a serving community looks like.” He plans to take his experience out into the world as he enters whatever ministry God has in store for him.
