The Rev. Brad Smith is back in the pulpit after developing the Souper Bowl of Caring into a powerhouse, youth-driven charity that has raised $60 million over the past two decades for food banks and soup kitchens nationwide.

As the Souper Bowl's board of directors mounts a national search for a new director, Smith — who launched the organization and is now senior pastor of Eastminster Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, said he believes the timing is right for his departure and the arrival of a new person at the helm.

"I continue to believe that the Souper Bowl of Caring is a gift from God," Smith said. "I take comfort in that, and because I believe it is a gift from God ... it's not mine."

That philosophy has driven the Souper Bowl of Caring during its two decades of existence, said interim director Tracy Bender.

"It's not about Brad; it's not about me," Bender said. "It is about the thousands of young people who want to make it happen."

The Souper Bowl began at Columbia, S.C.'s Spring Valley Presbyterian Church in 1990 with a prayer, uttered by then seminary intern Smith, and a simple idea: Young people, armed with soup kettles, would stand outside the doors of houses of worship on Super Bowl weekend.

The young people asked for a dollar from each worshipper, and then selected the charity that would receive the cash.

On that first Super Bowl Sunday, the kids at Spring Valley and 21 other Columbia area congregations netted $5,700.

Each year it has grown, netting $10 million last year in cash and food donations alone.

Now many NFL owners, grocers and thousands of individual donors support the charity, which operates out of a donated doublewide mobile home off Trenholm Road Extension in Columbia.

All the money goes directly to charities selected by the youth groups.

It is up to Bender and her development director, the Rev. Stewart Rawson, to raise the $800,000 it takes to fund the Souper Bowl operational budget, which includes salaries for five full-time and six part-time employees.

In Souper Bowl's fledgling years, Smith took a risk to work full time to build the organization.

But he said he always knew he would return to the parish.

"Any local church is an inch wide and a mile deep in the lives of those families," as they experience births and deaths, tragedies and great joys, Smith said. "I like to say Souper Bowl is only a millimeter deep but 3,000 miles wide, the breadth of this country."