What happens when your church starts meeting people who find Sunday morning worship strange, or even alienating? Watch how one Church created a new space to bring the kingdom of God to their new friends.
Zion Lutheran describes Dinner Church this way on their website:
Dinner Church is worship; prayer; a meal; a time of relationship-building and meeting new friends; a liturgy of the Eucharist; a place to be heard and seen; an extended family on mission, discovering a calling to serve our neighbors and neighborhoods; faith formation for kids and adults; a church without walls that does not discriminate or exclude anyone—and especially welcomes those who have been judged, hurt, or excluded by churches.
Why Dinner Church?
Innumerable people live in need or isolation, but they aren’t interested in the traditional church. They’re ready for a fresh expression, an incarnational approach that meets them where they are. People need food, and they need company. That’s why the Dinner Church exists, to step into the need that exists in our neighborhoods for the love and power of Jesus. Ever notice how much of Jesus’s ministry is done at a table?
Interestingly, Jesus’ dinner table theology still works today. There is something very powerful that occurs in lonely people when they are invited to a table full of food that Christ paid for. Many church leaders are finding that when they start serving a Jesus dinner, the room starts to fill up with more isolated people, strangers, and seculars than they have seen in decades. In so doing, a divine spark starts to occur that can only be explained by Revelation 3:20, which makes it clear that Jesus still likes having dinner with sinners. He just needs his followers to set the table.
This is the essence of Fresh Expressions, the expression of incarnational ministry. When people are being fed, being welcomed to a table and cared for, then there is a platform for community, and those who may not know Jesus have an opportunity to learn more.
That’s what it’s all about.
Would you like to experience and even learn what a church centered around meals and building community could look like? Then check out the opportunities below!
Dinner Church and Fresh Expressions Immersions
Witness real-life churches who have transformed into networks with multiple expressions in a three day on-site experience.
Dinner Church Immersion, Sep. 16-18
Join Verlon and Melodee Fosner and the team at Community Dinners to discover how a 100 year old traditional Pentecostal church was transformed into a network of more than a dozen dinner churches.
Fresh Expressions Immersion, Williamsport, Pa Sep. 29-Oct. 1
While participating in expressions like a rugby church, swing dancing church and dinner church, you will rediscover your own passion for what church can look like.
Fresh Expressions Immersion, Wildwood, Fl. October 25-27
Join Michael Beck and the Wild Ones to witness how a church of less than a dozen elderly members has exploded into multiple weekend gatherings and more than 15 fresh expressions in tattoo parlors, dog parks, burrito joints and more.
