A smear of peanut butter and daub of jelly on wheat bread marked a ministry milestone Tuesday for the South Broadway Christian Church.
The 50,000th sandwich, tucked alongside cookies and chips in a brown bag, became one more tiny edible ambassador from the Disciples of Christ congregation to a group of neighborhood men, recently homeless, who are newly employed and making new lives.
For about seven years the Sandwich Ministry, a crew of about a half-dozen church members, has met weekly in a small, dark, basement kitchen in the “catacombs” of their century-old church to turn out 175 lunches.
The crew averages just under three sandwiches a minute.
They use only peanut butter and jelly because these ingredients keep indefinitely.
The crew uses smooth peanut butter because crunchy tears the bread at their spreading speed, said organizer Curt Wiedeman.
“You usually end up wearing either peanut butter or jelly home,” Barry Roberts said.
This Sunday, the congregation will honor the Sandwich Ministry by sitting down after services and sharing a sack lunch, Mark Pumphrey, the church’s pastor, said.
Of course, he said, the honorees have to make everybody’s sack lunches.
