Along the Way: Cooking, but never eating, Berea layman yields spirit of – Overcoming pain to serve others

Imagine how hard it would be to work as a cook preparing enticing meals and scrumptious desserts to be served to hundreds of guests, but never getting to eat one bite. Now imagine doing it for 16 years!

David Cooper did.

Todd Deaton

Cooper served as the food service director at Berea First Baptist Church, Greenville, for some 16 years, preparing meals for hundreds of other people, though he could not eat any solid food himself. He couldn’t even taste it.

“You need look no further than this church’s kitchen to see David’s servant spirit,” his pastor, Ronald Vaughan, said. “Every bite of food he cooked was to meet the needs of others.

“When David Cooper set the table, it wasn’t a meal; it was a feast,” said Vaughan. “He put many feasts before us here at Wednesday night suppers and sports banquets and new members lunches and Thanksgiving dinners. He did the same for countless events in our community.”

David Cooper

About 26 years ago, Cooper was diagnosed as having a catastrophic digestive system illness. Surgeons removed most of his digestive tract and gave him a year to live.

But through his determination and the joy he found in serving others, Cooper learned to cook and began to share his newfound talent with others. “The church invited him to help in the kitchen, which grew into a ministry that touched thousands,” said Vaughan.?

He died this May, after living a quarter of a century longer than his doctors believed he could survive.?Berea First Church recently named its kitchen “David’s Kitchen,” celebrating the spirit of the man who overcame great physical limitations and pain to serve others.

“David’s life, his heart, his spirit was itself a feast,” Vaughan noted. “When we who knew and love him stop to think about the times he helped us, the lessons he taught us, the laughter he gave us, the courage he inspired in us, we see that David fed our spirits as well as he ever fed our stomachs.”

Berea First Baptist Church named its food service ministry “David’s Kitchen” in memory of David Cooper, who served as its director from 1992-2007. Below, from left, are Kevin and Lindsey Cooper, Tom and Allison Cooper Chamness, their children Christopher and Caroline, David’s wife Nancy, and pastor Ronald Vaughan.

His fellow church members will attest that Cooper didn’t just serve you food, he made you feel like the most important person in the world. “We are bigger people, with a bigger appreciation of life and a bigger faith in God, because of the feast we always found in David’s presence,” Vaughan said.

Cooper had the ability to see endings as new beginnings, Vaughan noted. When a terrible digestive disorder took a toll on his health, and he lost his ability to work as a mechanic, he refused to dwell on the past. He saw it as a chance to learn a new skill: cooking.

Cooper decided to learn how to bake, and asked his mom to teach him how to make pie crusts. “And one lesson at a time, the disabled mechanic who could eat no solid food became a masterful cook,” Vaughan explained.

That’s when God took Cooper’s newfound gift and turned it into a ministry. Cooper took some baked goods to the church to some volunteers who were decorating the sanctuary for Christmas. When word of his culinary skills spread, he was asked to feed the cast members for the church’s annual Living Christmas Tree production. It wasn’t long until the entire congregation called him to direct its food service ministry.

“And when David answered that call, we saw another great truth at work in his life: a God-given sense of purpose can lift a person up – even a person suffering great pain,” Vaughan said. “That became a gift to us all”- along the Way.