On the second week of November, local media in southeast Texas trained their lenses on the region’s “most anticipated fall feast,” one that “has been serving up flavor and fun for 84 years,” as Fox Southeast Texas described it.
The annual St. Mark’s Chili Supper and Bazaar took place on November 13 at the parish’s gym in downtown Beaumont, Texas. The full-day extravaganza involved at least 100 volunteers from the church and drew parishioners, civic leaders, and county courthouse employees to savor the Texas staple. Diners also had a chance to support local vendors selling books, baked goods, and soaps and lotions at the bazaar.
Proceeds from the event are donated to local organizations serving the community. Profits from last year, together with the net income from St. Mark’s thrift store, Treasure House, led to $77,000 in grants to local causes—including a nonprofit that makes free beds for children in need.
What the community calls “chili day” is an impressive feat. Behind the scenes, it’s a massive undertaking preceded by at least 10 weeks of preparation, involving hundreds of volunteers, and thousands of pounds of ground beef.
“Each week we cook about 370 to 380 pounds of ground beef,” said Charles Teel, the chili ministry’s lead chef. He and fellow volunteers prepare the food on Tuesdays leading up to the fall feast. While speaking with The Living Church, Teel paused to “do the math real quick” on how much of the other ingredients was required.
“About 75 pounds of onion and a whole lot of tomato paste—that’s each week,” he emphasized. Their very own St. Mark’s Chili Spice is the secret ingredient, which Teel said is “a very unique spice blend … that’s been part of the chili recipe pretty much since the beginning.”
Frozen chili is available for sale on the ministry’s website by early August. Locals can pick up the goods from the church, while the spice bags can be shipped anywhere in the country. A former parishioner who now lives in the Northeast purchases 100 packets every year to give away as holiday gifts.
What began in 1941 with several women from the parish—mostly members of Episcopal Church Women—bringing homemade chili to serve as supper to raise funds is now a churchwide ministry in which members of the multigenerational congregation find a way to chip in and help. Teel’s mom, Ninette, who’s been part of St. Mark’s her whole life, said everybody has a job to do at the chili supper.
“There’s no one that we can’t find a job for,” she said. “Even if you can’t walk, we’ll put you in a nice and comfortable chair, and you can take up the tickets,” she added, laughing. “There’s a lot of hands involved in making this happen.”
Now that the demand and scope of the ministry have expanded, all of the chili is made on the church campus. According to the Rev. James Pevehouse, rector of St. Mark’s, at least 30 to 40 volunteers help Teel each week to prepare it. “It’s much more than just women’s ministry now,” he said. “It really is the entire church.”
During this year’s supper, the church served over 1,000 bowls of chili.
Christ, Community, Chili
Ninette remembers seeing her mom, Grace Walker, work at the chili supper when Ninette was a young girl. “She would bring me along, and I can just remember watching all the grownups cook and serve,” she told TLC. “There was always so much activity, and yet everybody had a good time.”
She added, “The fellowship was as important as the chili.”
It was around 1965 and the event attracted the whole community to the church’s doors. Billie Harland, an electrical systems engineer who has been worshiping at St. Mark’s since 2000 but has known Beaumont most of his life, also remembers his mom—who was working at the town’s Sears Mall in the ’60s—going to St. Mark’s to have a chili lunch with her friends.
Those who came for the supper saw the church and congregation working together. “There were several people who joined the church, probably because of their experience at the chili supper,” Ninette said.
April Cerkiewicz, who led the promotions for this year’s event, has been involved in organizing the supper since 2017. She has worshiped at St. Mark’s since 2013, after she and her daughters were invited to the Easter Egg Hunt. “It was the first place I felt … like I had a family and a true community,” she said, recalling a fraught time when Hurricane Harvey made landfall in the region in 2017.
Parishioners from the 8 a.m. service—which she and her kids didn’t attend, as they favor a later service—came and helped her pack what she had left from her house. This commitment to serving others has been embodied in the chili supper—the moment someone walks in the door to take part in the collective lunch and dinner.
“We’re serving Christ, community, and chili,” Cerkiewicz said of the words in the ministry’s logo. “You truly see the faith and the dedication that Episcopalians represent—the Episcopal identity, which is giving and serving.”
The supper is “all the chili you can eat,” and all the waiters are St. Mark’s parishioners. “When you come, and you turn your ticket in, you get to sit down and eat … we even wait on you, so you don’t have to get up and move around to get another bowl or wait in line.”
The Next Generation
The motto of Sleep in Heavenly Peace, which has a local chapter in Beaumont, is “No kids sleep on the floor in our town.” The nonprofit began in 2012 after its founder, Luke Mickelson, was inspired to build and donate a bunk bed after learning that some children in his town of Twin Falls, Idaho, slept on the floor.
Harland has been part of SHP since 2019, and the nonprofit has received grants from St. Mark’s. The local chapter delivers about 100 beds a month. Building them, Harland admits, is easy—it’s the delivery that becomes difficult. One delivery stood out for him more than others.
“I’ll tell you. I delivered a bed. It was [for] two little girls. They were 7 and 5, and they were on the top bunk together, and I’m sure they’re still sleeping together up there,” Harland said. “And the oldest one—they were both so happy. They were crying, and the oldest one said, ‘We never even had our own pillow.’”
“That’s just part of what the chili does,” he said. “There are so many other groups that the chili helps. So if you get me started on the beds, I won’t shut up.”
Harland and his wife, Cindy, have volunteered at the supper for many years together. He was in charge of disposing of the garbage (“I could usually tell how we were doing by how many bags of trash I took out”), while she worked on the serving line. Cindy, whom many in the parish called Ms. Cindy, also served in the parish’s Friday morning ministries.
Before 2020, Cindy injured her back. “It went south on her, and she had lost the use of her legs because she couldn’t see a doctor during COVID,” Harland said. Her situation worsened, and one night her heart just stopped. “And that’s … but she’s not hurting anymore,” he said.
Harland, who works at a plant in Port Arthur, 22 miles from Beaumont, continues to worship at the parish and serve in the chili supper, which he calls a “wonderful thing.”
“Because you see families up there, you know—you see moms and dads and the children serving. You see people coming up during the week to cook when we prepare for the chili, and the people are outside for drive-up service.”
Teel, the lead chef, is the third generation in his family to serve at the supper. His sister Elizabeth is also learning the ropes and has helped with the spice bags. Clark, Teel’s father, has been helping pack the to-go item for years. He said they’ve been packing up to 600 a year since they began making them available.
“I got used to serving in the church at a younger age. I saw my parents do it, and that made me active. And I think that’s what Charles has seen too. He’s seen his parents active, and now he’s active,” Ninette said. She said that this year, there have been quite a few young people working as waiters.
“I know some of their parents were a little concerned that they might not be able to do it, but if you give a child that kind of responsibility, they did it as professionally as any adult,” she said. “So we were very proud of them.”
Asked if the chili ministry would go on for another 85 years, the lifelong parishioner is unsure, “but it will be for a while because these young people in our church really enjoy doing this.”
During the most recent supper and bazaar, the youngest volunteer was about 12.
Caleb Maglaya Galaraga is The Living Church’s Episcopal Church reporter. His work has also appeared in Christianity Today, Broadview Magazine, and Presbyterian Outlook, among other publications.
