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It's 10:30 on Monday morning, and Dilworth's First Christian Church bustles with volunteers who carefully tuck silverware into crisp, white napkins and line the fellowship hall's tables with porcelain plates.
Inside the kitchen, another group of helpers has converged around a stainless steel island, where they cut and paste homemade breads into small sandwiches and monitor fresh soup and veggies on the stove.
The team works on a hard deadline as homeless, unemployed and financially strapped visitors emerge from all corners of the city to the front steps of the Dilworth Soup Kitchen on East Boulevard.
It might seem an unlikely place for a soup kitchen – tucked among chic boutiques surrounded by Charlotte's old neighborhoods. But in the words of its organizers: “There are a lot of hungry people,” and the poor economy has heightened the need to help.
The kitchen, which started serving lunch once a week, now serves twice a week, aiming for each visit to be more than a meal.
The goal is for folks to feel at home, says volunteer Allen Saxe as he removes freshly baked spuds from the oven to a warming plate. It feels like Thanksgiving as the smells of Bob Sills' “Knife and Fork” soup waft into the dining area, where volunteers stand ready, awaiting their guests.
Before the doors open, they all gather in prayer.
“...Bless these folks...Please let them leave here nourished in body and spirit, Amen,” they say.
Volunteers greet the visitors one by one – sometimes with a handshake, often with a hug or a pat on the back and an inquiry about how it's going.
David Greene, a middle-aged man in jeans and a red T-shirt, is among the visitors. He sits quietly alone at the end of one table as about 30 others fill the fellowship hall.
Like many of the guests, Greene's gotten to know the volunteers and others who've befriended the soup kitchen out of need and who keep coming back because of its kindness.
“I've never been anywhere like this, where they ask you how you are, what you would like and serve you personally on real plates,” he says, munching a peanut butter sandwich. “There are a lot of good people still around.”
Greene, who says he served in the Navy briefly, worked as a mechanic and for a car dealership before being laid off and becoming homeless. He finally saved enough money for a tent, he says. Now he's saving what little he gets in unemployment checks to rent a room while he looks for another job.
His challenges are felt by many in the room – even some of the volunteers who worship with First Christian Church and other congregations or who just live in the neighborhood.
Mark Ellis has been serving and washing dishes at the soup kitchen after getting laid off last year from Klingman Williams, where, he said, he was responsible for high-end office installation.
“I come here just to come here,” he says. “After the first week, I was hooked.”
The 56-year-old relates to the guests, who sometimes walk in self-consciously but always leave smiling, he says.
Ellis and others have their system down – from passing bowls of freshly cut croutons to refilling glasses and honoring a few special requests during the one-hour lunch.
The faces and backgrounds of the guests are as diverse as the servers who came together last year when Saxe, a Dilworth neighbor, and the church's pastor, the Rev. Jolin Wilks McElroy, agreed this was the time and a place that could help.
“In every neighborhood congregation, there are people who love to cook,” Saxe says.
He and McElroy reached out to Havurat Tikvah – Saxe's Jewish congregation – as well as Dilworth United Methodist, St. Andrew's Presbyterian, Communion of Faith Christian and SouthPark Christian. They opened the soup kitchen doors on Christmas Eve and have been serving lunch on Wednesdays ever since.
Because of an increased need, they recently added Monday lunches to the schedule – with the help of food donations from local markets, restaurants and other agencies.
“Everyone knows what food and sharing means,” Saxe says. “We are just taking it another step further to help our community.”
