Charles Warner|Daily Times Dallis Spicer counts the number of bags of soup ready for delivery by the members of Oakbrook Community Church as Tammie Burgess, Chrissy Wilkins and Bridget Fowler discuss delivery plans at the end of the table. Oakbrook held its first soup kitchen Saturday and members delivered soup to 80 people in the Jonesville area.

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Charles Warner|Daily Times Craig Wilkins, right, ladles vegetable soup into a pot held by Ray Gray, left, during Saturday's soup kitchen at Oakbrook Community Church. The soup was prepared and delivered by church members to the needy of Jonesville.

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JONESVILLE — A Bible study and the accompanying passage of scripture inspired the members of an area church to set up a soup kitchen and feed approximately 80 people on Saturday.

Deborah Henderson, teacher of the Women’s Bible Study Class at Oakbrook Community Church, said that while the church has previously delivered meals at Thanksgiving, Saturday was the first time it has fed the needy of the community outside the holidays. She said the church was inspired to set up its first soup kitchen by a passage of scripture accompanying part of a Bible study her class is doing.

“We are doing a Bible study at our church called ‘40 Days In The Word,’” Henderson said. “In one part of it we are encouraged to do a group project. It is from a Bible verse, Micah 6:8, ‘He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.’

“We were just thinking of ways we could do those, love people and walk humbly with our God,” she said. “We came up with feeding them.”

Henderson said her class prepared the soup and then delivered it with the assistance of other church members to a list of needy persons provided the church by Meals on Wheels. In making the deliveries, Henderson said church members reached out to others in the community and ended up delivering soup to more than twice the number of people on the list.

“We started with a list from Meals on Wheels in the Jonesville area,” Henderson said. “That was about 35 people, but as we made the deliveries it brought us into neighborhoods where there might be others in need. So the deliverers just asked people if they wanted a meal and we ended up delivering probably 80 meals.”

Henderson said the church was encouraged by the success of the soup kitchen and plans to hold another one in January. She said the church will also deliver meals at Thanksgiving.

“We were blessed by the whole thing,” Henderson said. “We are going to continue doing this and we will call ourselves ‘Micah Meals.’”

For more information about Oakbrook Community Church and Micah Meals call 674-1161.