St. Edna Community Table

St. edna community table

The St. Edna Outreach to the Poor Ministry has a formed a subsidiary ministry called St. Edna Community Table to welcome and serve all who seek nourishment and fellowship.

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me” Matthew 25:35

The first summer of providing dinners once/month (in conjunction with other Arlington Heights area churches) was hosted by the St. Edna Community Table Team in 2014. For the summer seasons since 2015, we hosted dinners twice/month on the first and third Sunday evenings.

We warmly welcomed other St. Edna parish ministry groups to sponsor the dinners. This is a wonderful way for our parish community to reach out in service to those who are less fortunate.

The 2023 SEASON WAS STILL DIFFERENT

This was our tenth season for Community Table. Unfortunately, Journeys was still housing as many as 120 homeless clients in three local hotels because only about a third of the usual PADS sites have reopened. Most of the PADS site churches and other churches, like ours, have been providing meals for the clients living in the hotels.

Since May 2020 SECT has been providing meals twice a month most months in a ToGo format. This has been a larger financial commitment than our usual 10 dinners a year, but we have been managing because of generous parishioner support of this ministry. Beginning in May 2023 we plan to start up our regular summer season. We are scheduled to serve dinners on the 1st and 3rd Sundays from May-September. We were grateful to be back to our pre-pandemic format of offering meals indoors in our beautiful Parish Center.

We ask for continued prayers for this ministry in these uncertain times. If you would like to help financially, the alms received on the third Sunday of most months benefit St. Edna Community Table, or you can send donations directly to the office and indicate that the donation is for SECT. We have set up a web page using SignUp.com to allow our sponsoring ministries and interested parishioners to sign up to contribute key items, like baked potatoes, sack lunches, etc. for our dinners.

Here's how it works in 3 easy steps:

1) Enter this link to see our SignUp on SignUp.com (click link): https://signup.com/go/bDdNkgb

2) Review the options listed and choose the spot(s) you like.

3) Sign up! It's Easy - you will NOT need to register an account or keep a password on SignUp.com

Below is our schedule of dinners for our ‘Summer 2023’ Season along with the sponsoring ministry. It was a huge success. Thanks to all who helped this year! We look forward to next year's season.