Staff photos / Ed Runyan Tammy Chuey of North Lima is shown stirring the sauerkraut and kielbasa at Good Hope Lutheran Church in North Lima Saturday afternoon at the church’s annual Kraut Fest, which is in its 38th year.

NORTH LIMA — With a motto of “A place that feeds the body and soul,” it’s not surprising that Good Hope Lutheran Church makes food a part of its mission.

Pastor Ralph Edwards said the church, which was founded in 1806, “has always had dinners as long as they can remember.” When he arrived as pastor in 2000, he discovered that the members of the church “were having dinners all the time. We have fish fries every other Friday until December and then we are going to stop until Lent,” he said.

“One of the main conditions of what we do is we give away food,” he said.

“When you come to church, you expect to get fed spiritually, but this place takes it all the way to feeding the body and soul. That’s their niche. They are always eating. I weighed 350 pounds when I came here, and I lost it and I gained it again,” he said with a chuckle.

What is surprising perhaps, is that the most popular dinner each year is the sauerkraut and kielbasa dinner that it served Saturday out of its basement dining hall and carryout tent outside.

The dinner is called the Krautfest, and it’s been a staple of Good Hope Lutheran Church for 38 years, said Wendy Edwards, the church’s secretary and wife of the pastor. This year’s Krautfest also had a basket raffle.

The Krautfest even survived COVID-19, Wendy Edwards said. “We just did it as a drive-through out of the tent instead of having people come downstairs,” she said of the Krautfest and other dinners.

The fish dinners are every Friday during Lent, but because of the dinners during COVID-19 being served outside in a tent, the man who runs the dinners, Michael Elford, asked if the fish dinners could continue every other week.

“We’ve been doing it every other week since then,” she said.

“I’ve gotten to meet a lot of really great people,” she said of the diners volunteers who run the dinners. “This team is something else,” she said of the workers. “We have wonderful volunteers. They show up early in the morning and peel potatoes and get it all going.”

The church is “definitely known for its dinners,” but the sauerkraut and kielbasa is the church’s best known dinner, Edwards said. Elford buys the sauerkraut, but he seasons it in a way the people like.

“People love it,” she said. “I’ve heard people say ‘It’s better than my mom’s,” Edwards said. “This is our biggest dinner.”

During the past year, Good Hope also hosted a barbecue dinner in October at the same time as the church yard sale, soup-to-go in April, a pasta bake in March, and beef tips and noodles in February. It had pigs in a blanket last November.

Church member and volunteer Nancy Barret said the dinners are a “good community service. I like that now we have sit down dinners again. We have good fellowship. We have three services , so we don’t always get to see everyone from the other services. And there are people in the community who come out.”

Bob Kepp of Poland said he drives 20 minutes down to the the church for every dinner they have. He uses the drive-through because it is convenient.

“The food is great. The people are even greater, and it’s a nice experience. It’s like going to church and not having to go inside. And the guy who runs it is a good guy,” Kepp said. His wife also likes the food, and he takes home extra meals because he owns rental properties and he sometimes takes food to his renters.

“They enjoy the heck out of it,” he said.

COVID-19 was devastating to Elford’s food-service business, but Elford and the church teamed up to keep his business alive and to employ members of the church who had also lost their jobs and other people outside of the church, Edwards said.

In addition to people being able to earn money making the dinners, the church also benefitted from Elford having a commercial grade refrigerator and oven installed in the church’s kitchen, Edwards said.

erunyan@vindy.com