In St. Paul, Minnesota, a food truck ministry named “Shobi’s Table” is emerging as a mobile ministry serving hungry and homeless individuals:
If Shobi’s Table had a tagline, it might read: Not quite a food truck, not quite a church. It falls in between categories, much like the pastor who runs it and the people it serves.
“We [Lutherans] are a little bit odd, as far as Christians are concerned,” Margaret Kelly, the pastor-mastermind behind Shobi’s Table, told HuffPost. “We live in paradox. We say that we are both saints and sinners. We live in that uncomfortable grey area.”
The unorthodox ministry serves free hand pies one day a week to primarily poor and homeless people in St. Paul, Minnesota. Named after a passage in the Bible’s Second Book of Samuel, Shobi’s Table isn’t the first food truck ministry — and in fact borrows its truck from another Minnesota nonprofit, Mobile Action Ministries. But it’s certainly one of the few, and one that prioritizes food over religion and service over evangelism.
“[Lutherans] are gentle evangelists,” Kelly said. “We’re not asking people to take Jesus as their personal savior. God is calling people to us to be in relationship to us.”
For more on Shobi’s Table, please visit the Huffington Post here.