Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Churches, restaurants to offer Lent services, soup


For the fifth year in a row, churches and restaurants in Charlotte's Elizabeth neighborhood are banding together to mark Lent each Wednesday with a service and some soup.

"Wednesday Worship in Elizabeth," open to the public, will begin on Ash Wednesday, March 5, and continue every week through April 16.

Each Wednesday, the service will start at noon, with a soup and bread lunch for $5 at 12:35 p.m.




Hawthorne United Methodist Church, 501 Hawthorne Lane, will be the worship and lunch site every week.  But a different church or hospital chaplaincy will lead each service.

Seven restaurants and a culinary school will take turns providing the lunch of bread and soup.

All proceeds from the lunches will be donated to the Community Culinary School of Charlotte, which trains adults who have had trouble finding jobs, and to Second Helping, a carry-out kitchen on Central Avenue started to provide jobs for formerly incarcerated women.

This year's theme, "There and Back Again," is meant to evoke reflection on the Lenten journey into the spiritual wilderness and back again.

Here's the schedule, the churches, and the restaurants:


  • March 5: Caldwell Memorial Presbyterian and Community Culinary School of Charlotte and Second Helping.



  • March 12: St. John's Baptist and Crisp.



  • March 19: St. Martin's Episcopal and 1900 Mexican Grill.



  • March 26: Center City Church of Charlotte and Common Market.



  • April 2: Presbyterian/Novant Hospital and Hawthorne's New York Pizza.



  • April 9: Education at Carolinas Medical Center, Mercy Hospital and Nothing But Noodles



  • April 16: Hawthorne Lane United Methodist and Sabor Latin Street Grill.


More details here.


-- Tim Funk



    

3 comments:

John said...

What about Wednesdays? The ONLY Wednesday that really matters is Ash Wednesday. Tim Funk claims to be a Catholic, yet he fails to mention that after Ash Wednesday, it's Fridays that matter during Lent for Catholics, the only Christian denomination who actually observes Lent! For those Catholics who are looking for somewhere to observe Lent on Fridays, you are welcome at St. Thomas Aquinas near UNCC where we do a fish fry on Friday's during Lent from 6:00 PM - 7:30PM.

Anonymous said...

Really, John? "...the only Christian denomination who actually observes Lent!" Uh, no. And it may be good Lenten discipline, on Wednesdays, Fridays and otherwise, to give up pride and contentiousness about a season of prayer and mortification. Blessings at St. Thomas Aquinas, and Blessings in Elizabeth, too, as we all try to become a bit more like Jesus.

John said...

There may be a few others who recognize it, but it is barely on the same level. For 1,500 years there was only one Christian church, and only a couple that continue to recognize the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, as He commanded. I'm always amused by fundamentalist who claim that every word in the Bible is the inerrant word of God, yet reject John 6:53.