CLOVER -- A small group of volunteer cooks has been serving lunch to anyone who's hungry at the Clover ARP Church fellowship hall every Wednesday for 20 years.
How many have they served? No one has kept count, but with an average attendance of about 50 over 52 weeks for 20 years, the church easily has fed 50,000. The chow is free, although donations are accepted, and the noon meal is healthier than anything handed through a drive-through window.
“We're all retired guys,” said Ed Harvey, one of a few male and female volunteer cooks, who usually number from six to nine. “And we don't take a Wednesday off.”
On Wednesday, the 20-year anniversary of the first ARP luncheon, they served stewed beef over rice with green beans, boiled carrots, a roll and sweet tea. Carolyn Bell makes the tea every week.
For dessert, there was cake. Lots of cakes: one, a store-bought yellow cake with white icing and “Happy Anniversary” scrawled across it in yellow and orange; the others, home-baked by several of the women.
“We got a lot of cakes,” said Bill Jackson, who has been serving the lunches for 19 years. “Seems like everybody wanted to bring a cake today.”
The luncheon idea was cooked up in 1989 by then-pastor the Rev. Calvin Draffin and five church elders at the time, Jim Dickson, Frank Smith, David Fanning, Ben Robinson and pianist Mary Emma Dickson. The first menu, served Nov. 15, 1989, was half a sandwich and soup. Today, the cooks are Harvey, Jackson, Bill Wooten, Dick Burrell, Mike Hartman, Jerry Bailey, Jack Westmorland and Bill Nealands.
“A lot of it had to do with the previous fellowship hall,” Draffin said. “It used to be downstairs in the old building next to the church. It was hard for our older members getting down there.”
After the church built the new fellowship hall, Draffin and the church elders wanted to use it, and he suggested a fellowship luncheon. They switched from a Wednesday evening church service to the lunch and never looked back.
“It started as a prayer meeting, and it is still that primarily,” Jim Dickson said.
About 35 people showed up for that first meal.
“We had an agreement among ourselves,” Dickson said of the elders at the time, “that if we ever ran short of funds, we'd make personal donations to keep it going. But as a result of our prayers and keeping the cost of food down, we never had to.”
Every Wednesday, a small collection plate quietly greets diners at the door. Those who can afford to give do so generously. Jackson uses the money to buy the food, and any surplus goes into the church's mission fund.
Once, Dickson recalled, someone donated $5,000. Along with several meals, the donation also paid for a lot of mission work.
“Twenty years is a long time to keep something going,” Dickson said, and Smith, Fanning and Robinson have since passed away. “But it was never a struggle. As we left or died off, there's always been younger men to come in.”
Jackson was working full time that first year, but he retired by 1990 and began helping. About seven years ago, Draffin left the church — he now serves as a pastor in Due West — and Jackson took over buying the groceries and planning the meals.
“I think the Lord calls us, and we're here to serve,” Jackson said. “I've been cooking all my life, and I like to cook,” he added, smiling.
The first lunches were simple, and stacking meat and bread for sandwiches and heating up soup were the only culinary skills required. That quickly evolved into home-style cooked meals under the direction of Ben Robinson, who was a cook in the U.S. Army.
“He'd say, ‘Cook it like your mama did.'” Jackson recalled.
When it comes to cooking food for 50-plus people, it pays to get there early. The volunteers ususally begin preparing the day's meal around 9 a.m.
“We joke about that,” Jackson said. “The last one in has to be the dish washer.”
The luncheon has become a community affair. On many a Wednesday, more diners belong to other churches than belong to the ARP. Eleven other area churches participate, and members feed residents of nursing homes, including Chandler and Morningside in Rock Hill, that bus retirees over at least once a month, Jackson said.
The volunteers also make about 10 house calls each week, delivering hot meals to church members who can't get out and about.
“I didn't expect that,” Dickson said. “It is a social get-together. It's fun.”
“We come just about every week,” said Kathy Clinton, one of the regulars who attend church elsewhere. Clinton attends Allison Creek Presbyterian Church in York.
“I can go anywhere for lunch,” Clinton said but added that she can't go anywhere to hear someone such as the Rev. Evan English, the current pastor. “He's what keeps me coming. He's a real sincere guy.”
Oh, and there's another reason, too. “The food is always good,” she said.
Want to know more?
Clover ARP Church serves lunch at noon every Wednesday in the church fellowship hall at 127 Kings Mountain St. Donations and help are accepted. Call the church office at 803-222-9584 for more information.
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