Bar-B-Que Fund's Outreach Works to Binds Church Members Together

by Nellie McNeil
Upper East Correspondent
All Saints’ Church, Morristown, has found a way to pay for outreach and at the same time create camaraderie.

It’s their All Saints’ Bar-B-Que held spring and fall for almost thirty years.

“We’ll net $7,000 from our fall sale,” said Linda Dietrich, current chairperson.

Begun in 1970 as Hamblen County’s Centennial event, the Bar-B-Que first retired the mortgage on All Saints’ sanctuary.

Since then, more than $60,000 from the proceeds of the Bar-B-Que has been returned to the community. Administered through the Outreach Committee, these funds are granted to applying organizations. An important criterion for eligibility is that a member of All Saints’ must be involved in the applying organization either as a volunteer, board member or employee. Funding is a way of confirming parishioner’s service to such agencies as the Homeless Shelter, Victims of Domestic Violence, Girls’ Club, Alzheimer’s Center, Keep America Beautiful and the Soup Kitchen.

“It’s putting money where our hearts are, hands touch and work is,” Dietrich said.

Grant requests are received twice per year for review and must show need and evidence that funds will be spent on a specific project, not for on-going operation.

“Remaining funds then go farther outside our four walls – to our commitment to the Diocese,” Dietrich said.

For this past October’s Bar-B-Que, volunteer parishioners put a record 6,000 pounds of Boston butts on the grill over the fiery pits located on church property near the railroad tracks.

“I never saw so much meat in one place at one time,” commented the Rev. Jay Mills, interim priest at All Saints’.

According to Dietrich, however, even though they prepared more meat this year, they sold out earlier than ever before.

So popular is the All Saints’ Bar-B-Que that it has become All Saints’ definition around Morristown. “We’re known as the people who do the Bar-B-Que,” Dietrich said.

For this two-day event, there are jobs for everyone, age or infirmities notwithstanding. Many pitched in at the pits, helping in six hour shifts for sixty hours around the clock. Some parishioners filled corporate orders – about one-third of the overall sales. Some set up tents in the church yard. Others chopped, ground, mixed and packed slaw while some did the same tasks to produce sandwiches. The clean-up committee was always present. Day schoolers helped at the pit, parishioners in wheel chairs packed meat, and one with a broken leg even swept the floor from her wheel chair.

A featured item is “Smokey’s Own All Saints’ Hell, Fire and Brimstone Bar-B-Que Sauce,” concocted by All Saints’ former rector, the Rev. Smokey Oats. Volunteers make, bottle and sell the popular sauce.

“When all the jobs have been ‘womanned and manned” in this labor-intensive event, we realize that the benefit is not necessarily money. While working, we’re standing around talking. It binds us together,” Dietrich said.

So important to All Saints’ is the Bar-B-Que, according to its chairperson, that on the search profile for a new rector they have written this requirement: “just has to love barbecue."