Volunteers Needed!
Women in God’s Service (WINGS) is putting together a team of volunteers (men and women) for funerals at BSLC. This is an opportunity to make use of our beautiful Welcome Center and kitchen and provide a much-needed service to our Beautiful Savior families.
Help is needed to set up, cook, serve and clean up for families using Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church for funerals.
Set up includes pulling tables and chairs out from the storage racks, placing tablecloths, flowers, and silverware on the tables with condiments, and setting up the banquet tables for service. This generally takes 1-2 hours the day before the funeral.
Cook. The current policy suggests that families use outside catering companies for the funeral meal. If we can find enough volunteers, a group can be assembled to cook a brunch or luncheon meal. Different volunteers are needed to shop, chop, and cook the meal.
Serve. There are different levels of catering provided for funeral events. The BSLC kitchen is not licensed to allow outside companies to use the facilities for cooking; however, the kitchen is available for refrigeration and warm up. Most companies bring the food to the Welcome Center hot or cold. Sometimes they provide staff to serve and sometimes they require a few people to serve. If that is the case, we need 3 volunteers to serve the food.
Clean-Up. If a meal is catered, disposables are generally used and the clean up is minimal – making sure trash is taken out, tables are cleaned and returned to storage. We will need 3-5 people for a catered luncheon. If we provide the full luncheon with food, dishes and tablecloths, a full crew is needed to clear the tables, run the dishwasher, take home linens for washing, and take out the trash. In a perfect world we would have 10 people to accomplish a full luncheon and it would take 1 hour after the event.
As you can see, providing funeral luncheons can be a large or small task, but one that shows the love that we have for each other by honoring members of our congregation as they journey to their eternal home.
Please consider signing up for one of these volunteer positions by contacting Karen Ingram or Helen in the church office. It is hard to determine how many events we will have, so the more people we can contact, the easier it will be. If we do not get enough volunteers, we will have no choice but to require families to hold funeral luncheons off premises.
Thank you for your consideration, and please, volunteer today!
Karen Ingram
Add yourself to the volunteer list via email (office@bslcmi.org) or phone (248-646-5041)