Sunday Dinner is a free, Sunday afternoon community dinner program designed to help those who are in need of a warm meal, or just a warm smile and some fellowship on a Sunday afternoon. Our original intent was to reach those who were homeless and/or seriously in need of a warm, well-balanced dinner. However, being in the Rochester suburbs we have less homeless, and more elderly. So, our guests tend to run about 80% elderly, who are probably there more for the fellowship than from a need for food, and 20% people who are in low-income or jobless, subsidized housing, situations who do need a good meal. Our guests arrive around noon for a well balanced sit-down (they sit down and we serve them everything and then clear it all away) dinner that we serve to them around 12:30pm. Typically we serve around 45-50 people in the Fellowship Hall and deliver another 55-60 to people who are unable the get to the church for dinner.

Here is a typical “Sunday Dinner” Sunday for us:

• 9am Cooks arrive to start preparing the dinner
• 10am Setup crew comes in to set up the dining area
• Noon Guests start arriving, Servers arrive, Deliveries get staged
• 12:15pm Deliveries get picked up crew arrives
• 12:30pm Blessing, dinner serving starts, Cleanup
• 1:00pm Everything is served, cooks go home, some guests start to leave
• 1:15pm Most guests are gone, servers are finishing cleaning up the dining area and putting tables and chairs away, vacuuming the floor
• 1:30pm Servers are done and gone
• 2:00pm Cleanup crew is finished washing and putting away all dishes and goes home

• Set-up – This job takes about 30 minutes.
• Cooks – This is the group that plans, cooks and puts the food on the plates.
• Servers – These are the people who take care of our guests.
• Clean-up – these are the folks who wash all of the dishes and put everything away.
• Deliveries – these are the people who pick up the dinners from the kitchen and deliver them to people who cannot come to the dinners.
• Greeters – these are the people who stand at the doors to welcome people to dinner. They start at noon and leave when we do the blessing around 12:30pm.
• Desserts – all of our desserts are home-made by the congregation.
• Volunteers are usually scheduled to work once every three months (once per quarter), and quarterly “team” listings are emailed.

If you would like to volunteer for Sunday Dinner or would just like more information about Sunday Dinner, you can call Mark Renfro @ 585-721-2513

Shelter Visits & Cooking Ministries

Sanctuary House women’s shelter and Francis Center men’s shelter are visited monthly, taking a hot meal and fellowship. St. Josephs House of Hospitality is a shelter we visit on Mondays during the winter months, and small groups from the church choose a Monday to prepare and serve a meal. Help prepare food for delivery by teams going to the city shelters and tutoring program.

Learning Links

This is a weekly tutoring program at the Pines of Perinton. Find additional information at this link.

Gleaning

During harvest time in the fall, a group goes to Bejo Farm in Geneva to glean vegetables. The gleaned vegetables are given to Foodlink, which then distributes them to people in need.

United Methodist Women

United Methodist Men

UMM meets each month for breakfast. They hold educational and spiritual growth programs, usually with a guest speaker. There is also a men’s small group that meets weekly. Additionally, the men participate in lawn care, maintenance and snow shoveling; provide the greenery for our Advent decorations; and host pancake breakfasts for the congregation.