Broken Bread Cafe service feeds more than 55 at Milford United Methodist Church

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Kathy Cleveland photos Les Coates instructs volunteer servers before the start of the first Broken Bread Cafe last Saturday evening at the United Methodist Church in Milford. The combined meal and worship service will be held on the second Saturday of each month.

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Kathy Cleveland photo Trisha Coates prepared the meal for the Broken Bread Cafe with the help of volunteers and using as many locally sources foods as possible.

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Kathy Cleveland photos Les Coates instructs volunteer servers before the start of the first Broken Bread Cafe last Saturday evening at the United Methodist Church in Milford. The combined meal and worship service will be held on the second Saturday of each month.

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MILFORD – “I’m open to the possibility of disaster,” Les Coates said the day before the radically different event he had planned for the United Methodist Church.

Coates need not have worried. Last Saturday night, The Broken Bread Cafe, a combined worship service and dinner, went off smoothly, and more are planned.

The idea for the cafe grew out of desire to attract more young people to the church, but it is open to people of different ages, said Coates, who is 33 and the church’s ministry director.

However, the event also grew out of a desire to encourage the use of local foods and to “paying better attention to where food comes from,” he said.

The menu included a cauliflower appetizer and a choice of three entrees: a Provencal fish stew, winter squash soup, and a white bean and escarole soup, each served with a green salad and bread.

Food came from local farms, including Butternut Farm in Milford, Random Hills Farm in Weare and the Jennings Family Farm in Mont Vernon, and breads were locally baked.

The menu also was prepared with food allergies in mind, with some options dairy-free, gluten-free, and tree nut-free. There was also a vegan option.

But at its core, The Broken Bread Cafe is a worship service, said the Rev. Thomas Getchell-Lacey, who led the communion service with the sharing of bread and the cup.

The pastor said the evening went well.

“Everyone seemed to appreciate the meal and the spirit” of the event, Getchell-Lacey said. “We’ll fine-tune it,” but the reaction was very encouraging.

There was music, scripture reading and poetry instead of a sermon, all designed to help “people discover the joy of Jesus Christ,” Coates said. “It’s a little like a wedding reception, or a strange worship service.”

Coates has a musical theater background, and Saturday he stage-managed the evening, right down to the entrances and exits of the volunteers, who served food on large, round tables set with tablecloths, china and candles in the church’s nave, where churchgoers normally sit facing the altar.

The idea for the service came from conversations between Coates and the pastor, and inspiration came from many sources, Coates said, including the traditional Mexican Day of the Dead dinner his wife Trisha has been cooking each year for the past four years.

On Nov. 1 or Nov. 2, the couple entertain about 20 people in their “tiny apartment” in Newmarket, Coates said. “I read a poem or two. We light a candle. It turned into a really meaningful meal.”

There were “many little things over the past two years leading us gently in a single direction,” he wrote in the blog called Broken Bread Cafe.

On Saturday night, Trisha Coates, a ceramic artist and hobbyist cook, was hard at work, with the help of volunteers, preparing food for far more people than she normally does.

About 55-60 people showed up, but there was plenty of food, and leftovers went to the Ash Street shelter in Nashua.

They will look into having shelter residents eat with them instead of bringing them leftovers, Coates said.

The church is planning for The Broken Bread Cafe to be a regular monthly service at 5 p.m. on the second Saturday of each month at the church on 327 N. River Road.

The Feb. 11 cafe will have the theme of healing, and already two hand and arm therapists have volunteered to do massages, Coates said.

To read more, go to the cafe’s blog at brokenbreadcafe.wordpress.com.

Kathy Cleveland can be reached at 673-3100, ext. 21, or kcleveland@nashuatelegraph.com.