25 Years of Cookie Ministry: A Simple Way to Welcome Church Visitors

THE CHURCH
Summerville Baptist Church in Summerville, South Carolina 

THE CHALLENGE
First-time visitors can feel ignored or forgotten if the church doesn’t follow up. 

ONE BIG IDEA
Personally take cookie mix in a jar to their homes. 

For more than 25 years, 89-year-old Patricia Hunt, aka “Ms. Pat,” and her fellow Sunday school classmates, have gathered around her kitchen table to fill canning jars with the dry ingredients for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. 

That is because Summerville Baptist Church in Summerville, South Carolina, delivers these cookie ministry gifts to first-time visitors’ homes. 

“The mission is to reach more people for Christ,” Hunt observes. 

RELATED “TRINITY BAPTIST CHURCH: FOLLOW THE CLUES”

The idea for this outreach came after a deacon at Summerville Baptist heard about a cookie ministry at another church while on a mission trip, Hunt says. Summerville Baptist soon launched their own cookie ministry, and later, Hunt became the leader after the first leader retired. 

Today, first-time visitors who fill out a card during service get a follow-up visit the next day from a deacon delivering the cookie ingredients and an invitation to visit again, explains Braeden Kershner, Summerville Baptist’s creative arts director and marketing manager. 

“The cookie jars are an effort to make visitors feel more welcomed,” he notes. 

To make the jars, Hunt says she and up to five volunteers work like a production line, with each person adding an ingredient to the jars: chocolate chips, dried oats, white sugar, brown sugar and flour. 

Afterward, they attach cards to the jars listing the wet ingredients to add along with the baking instructions, as Hunt describes: “When we first started, we would make three dozen cookie jars, and they would last three to four months. Now, we’re doing six dozen cookie jars every two months.” 

Going Forward

At the time of this writing, Hunt said she would retire as ministry leader at the end of 2025, and the church would move the cookie operation from her kitchen to the church. 

Through this ministry, Hunt realized her purpose as an older church member. “I can do this much to help people know the Lord.” 

Kershner adds that people often overthink evangelism. 

“Opening up with, ‘Have you been washed in the blood of the Lamb?’ can be too much for people. But a warm handshake or a cookie jar can be enough to start a conversation,” he says. “Food brings you together.”