Soup Kitchen Quandry

Not so long ago at The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen our regulars were able to hang around and enjoy several cups of soup before collecting their takeaway pot for home.

Sadly the recent growth of the Soup Kitchen means that those days are long gone and now as we use our biggest pans to make 140 litres of yummy soup, there's only enough for one cup each and a pot to take home.

It truly is a privilege and a joy to be able to serve so many people, but it's also getting to a point where we need to have a serious rethink about how we manage it all. Not because of any problems with our regulars, they're always very well behaved and very grateful for the food, but we want to be able to manage the event in such a way as it's more than just a perfunctory service of giving a cup of soup and a takeaway pot as quickly as possible just to deal with everyone as speedily as possible.

We are at the point of needing to get bigger pots, we currently use two 70lt pots, but we had run out of soup after 40 minutes last night and had to turn away a small handful of folk which is always heartbreaking.

We also want to be able to bring the Soup Kitchen back indoors, but at present it's simply too big and our premises are too small to facilitate it. We really need to buy the building so we can create the space to cater for everyone.

Prayers and wisdom are much appreciated.