Long-established team — at least 2015 and likely earlier Leader of record (2015): Deaconess Grace Foster-Miller [Current leader — to confirm]

The Catering Team is one of the most relied-upon ministries at HBC. As Deaconess Grace Foster-Miller wrote in the 2015 Anniversary Booklet, “The fellowship is such a busy one with two conferences each year that requires catering, Harvest Supper in September and Guest Service dinner in July. It is quite a hectic job and requires a team for the food preparation and the serving of the meal. It is not easy to prepare meals catering for 120 people at conferences or to cope with the mammoth crowd at Guest Service that is up to 300 people.”

The team supplies food and refreshments for HBC’s many special occasions: church anniversaries, the annual Harvest Supper (which has been a tradition since at least the 1880s), the Guest Service dinner, the West Indian Christmas Meal (a centenary-era tradition continuing today), conferences (two each year, attracting around 100–120 participants from various denominations), baptisms, funerals, and the regular fellowship meals that punctuate the church calendar.

Catering at HBC has roots stretching back into the church’s earliest days. The first annual supper “for about 200 poor persons” was held in February 1896, only six years after the building was opened. The Sunday School Tea for 100 poor children was first held on 26 March 1897. The Centenary-year celebrations of 1990 included a Harvest Supper (7 pm), a West Indian Christmas Meal (also 7 pm), and the Sunday School Party. The 1920s scrapbook records the Institute Christmas Supper of December 1926 as “the largest number that the Institute had yet had to a function of this character.” Hospitality has always been a defining feature of HBC.

Sources: [125th] p. 53; [Centenary] (1896 annual supper, 1990 events); [Scrap] (1926 Christmas supper); [Web History].