Father Ed Chinery

By Roger Paradiso

Father Ed is Associate Director at Church of the Ascension on 11th Street and Fifth Avenue. I met him years ago when my film, The Lost Village, played at the Resistance Cinema located in the Parish Hall. This was a couple of years before Covid. And it’s all gone downhill since then with lots of artists and people hurting. I asked Ed about his outreach program at Ascension Church which, many decades ago, was one of the most wealthy and supportive churches in Manhattan.

He runs what he calls “a very robust, but moderately sized pantry program” that serves a population that self identifies with the 98th percentile as monolingual and Chinese. In the beginning of his tenure, Ed saw that “the canned food we were giving out was not culturally compatible with this population. So, it took me several years to convince the parish leadership to rethink the process.”

Ed’s job was difficult. “I found right out of the gate that the people on the pantry line could burst into very aggressive behavior. It got out of hand a number of times which made me call the police and they wanted to help. I asked to have a squad car standby just for the optics. They said, ‘I can do better than that, I’ll send an officer who speaks five Chinese dialects to help you out.’ ”

This led to several new relationships for Ed and the Church. “I’m now the clergy liaison to the Sixth Precinct [NYPD]. They send me to the citizens police academy. I’ve had training. I go there on the mornings of 9/11 and I offer a prayer on the street for them,” said Ed. “It’s been a wonderful relationship since Officer Lee came to help us out. It was a sea-change in terms of the energy and that brought us to a place where we were able to enthusiastically comply with the food bank’s strong recommendation that we go from pre-packaged bag distribution to an in-house, indoor client-choice model. So since 2018, we set up our parish hall as a table-top grocery store where people choose what they would like.”

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And whoever gives even a cup of cold water
to one of these little ones in the
name of a disciple—truly I tell you,
none of these will lose their reward.

—Matthew 10:42

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Ed has become a “go to” guy and Ascension a “go to” pantry for food-challenged Asians, some of whom have also formed new relationships with the Church.

“On top of that, we recently partnered with the Episcopal Charities Foundation. Their Food Sovereignty Program has providers of different kinds of food stuff. They linked us with a small farm in Poughkeepsie that specializes in growing Chinese vegetables,” said Ed.

“You can’t even imagine the difference our clients experience with the program. To have an agency when they didn’t before. The first few times I was holding back tears because I would see this little old Chinese lady choosing which things she wanted.”

“You‘ve got to see the looks on their faces. Some of them have said in broken English, ‘my grandmother used to make this.’ Now we give out mostly fresh produce. Some rice, rice noodles and cereals that they like. We’re one of the only programs that gives out cooking oil and frozen protein, not canned.“

Ed explained, “When the program began we were serving people who were food insecure—that included black, white, and brown people. Five years later, Chinese people started showing up and their numbers grew and grew.”

There were three or four other Saturday morning pantries in Ascension’s neck of the woods. “Folks would make the circuit, and trust me when I say this population might be down on their luck in terms of socioeconomics but they are brilliant when it comes to learning about these programs, accessing them, and coordinating to get the most at maximizing the experience,” said Ed.

He has gotten some push back from a few neighbors in one of the most expensive areas of Manhattan. “They like to cause a ruckus because of the noise on a Saturday morning. Sometimes, I want to say, “listen, not for nothing but if you want to sleep in on a Saturday morning, I’ve got a nice home for you in Westfield, NJ. This is New York City. This happens twice a month for like all of an hour.’ ”

This street has been hailed in the press as one of the most affluent in NYC and many residents have volunteered to help. “Especially during COVID, we had such an influx of people coming who were distressed about all the suffering they saw,” said Ed. “This whole team just fell into place to help. We get people from the building right next door, 40 Fifth Avenue—some of the most affluent people in the world. We must get $10,000 in contributions from them every year.”

Ed told us about a guy who just moved in to 40 Fifth Avenue and started coming to church. He wanted to find out who was behind the pantry operation.

“The guy is probably in his 80s and he’s volunteering and throwing money at us,” said Ed. “There’s lots of stuff around this program that makes you not lose hope.”