The Covered Dish Supper

Growing up as the son of a Baptist minister brought with it many unique experiences, substandard housing, Sunday night services and living next to a cemetery just to name a few. Being Baptist, of course, meant that church wasn’t just for Sundays. As the child of the Pastor you were expected to be at church every time the doors were opened. For me that meant Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, plus that special service meant for the faithful few—Wednesday night prayer meeting. In addition, for the even faithful fewer, there was Tuesday night visitation. Thankfully, kids weren’t expected to endure that drudgery. So growing up the church building became like a second home for me. And what a strange place it was.

First, there was the smell of the place. Even though our church was meticulously cleaned by a team of janitors, there was a persistent odor that permeated every inch of the building. Perhaps odor is the wrong word. The smell wasn’t exactly a bad smell, rather it was unique inasmuch as I have never encountered its like in any other building I have entered in my lifetime. It was a baffling combination of mold, hair spray, and Aqua Velva…with hints of furniture polish and mothballs. To me that smell meant…church.

Then there were the odd names thrown about to describe sections of the building that I have never heard used in any other context. Words like narthex, vestibule, and the all important fellowship hall. Although I never got an understandable explanation of what a narthex was, I knew exactly what the fellowship hall was and what purpose it served. It was the place where from the day I was born until I graduated from high school, all the most prominent meals of my life were served. I am referring, of course, to the Baptist covered-dish supper. Some churches called them pot luck dinners, but rumor had it that it was mostly liberal churches that used that term. For us, it was covered dish suppers, and they were amazing. It seemed like we had one at least two or three times a month, usually either on Sunday nights or after the service on Sunday morning. The reasons given for having a covered dish supper ran the gamut from celebrating some significant anniversary to mourning someone’s death. Sometimes it seemed like any excuse would do. The thought was that people who eat together, stay together, I guess.

The work that went into a covered dish supper was done by a surprisingly small group of women. These were the ladies who actually ran the church, worker bees who could organize a meal for 150 people in a matter of minutes, with enough food to fill rows of folding tables for as far as the eye could see. Then, after it was over, they would drag their husbands in from the parking lot to put away the tables and chairs, carry out the trash and mop the floors. It was an amazing organizational and culinary feat.

But, the covered dish supper eventually disappeared from my life. First I started attending a much larger congregation where the sheer size of the membership made impromptu meals problematic. Then about six years ago I joined a Presbyterian church and apparently we don’t do the covered dish thing. At Hope, we have meals catered! I didn’t realize how much I have missed it until this past Sunday. I attended a retirement celebration for my Mother in Law, 25 years of service as the church secretary at Hunton Baptist church. It was my first time inside a Baptist church in a while…same exact smell. After the service we were herded through the vestibule, across the narthex, into the fellowship hall, where we were greeted by this…

The ham slices were half an inch thick. The fried chicken wasn’t from Chick-fil-A. Was it homemade? Maybe. Then came a plethora of macaroni dishes, mac and cheese, and mac and some such thing which I couldn’t identify. There were green bean casseroles, corn pudding, and three different options for potato salad. There were deviled eggs, black-eyed peas and a giant bowl of butter beans. There were only three beverage options, water, sweet tea, and coffee.

The dessert table was filled with pre sliced cakes, pies, cupcakes and cookies. Four types of pound cakes (I sensed that perhaps there was a backstory of feuding bakers), pecan pie, and one plate of brownies that remained untouched—no doubt a back story there as well.

It was a lovely meal and a joyful experience to revisit.

As we were leaving I tried to stay clear of the army of stern-faced old men as they lifted the tables and chairs onto racks and rolled them away. 

Probably stored them in the…narthex.