Story Priority:
The first apostles relied on different spiritual content than we practice. They were laser focused on the life and stories of Jesus.
Jesus Stories Bible:
The stories about Jesus―and the stories Jesus told―have changed the world. They are still changing it today.
Welcome to Dinner, Church:
Church was not always done the way we do it. There was a time when Christians gathered around tables, included the strangers and the poor, ate together, and talked about Jesus. This form of church occurred mostly during the first three hundred years of Christianity, and was highly effective in bringing lost people to Jesus. While the church of today is very meaningful to Christ-followers, it is failing to help our lost neighbors and their way to the Savior. That is no small concern for Jesus’ churches, all of which are called to be in the rescue business.
This little book examines what it might be like for a traditional church to plant a dinner church in a nearby hurting neighborhood. Revelation 3:20 makes it clear that Jesus still wants to have dinner with sinners. That likely means he wants his church to set the table.
Dinner Church: Building Bridges by Breaking Bread:
Christianity is the greatest rescue project the world has ever seen. Yet, many churches across America are shrinking instead of growing. After spending eighteen years as a pastor in highly secularized Seattle, Verlon Fosner began to realize that the church had a sociological problem. While outreach efforts to and new wine were genuine, the church’s old wineskin was brittle and leaking. In other words, the traditional ways of doing church were not capable of housing a new wine that would be necessary to compel a secular culture to Jesus.
Somewhere in this struggle, Fosner and his leadership team began to consider the way church was done during the first three centuries, and the sociological implications of doing church around dinner tables. Inviting someone to a dinner with Jesus is a very different thing than inviting them to a worship/teaching event on a Sunday morning at a religious campus.
In Dinner Church: Building Bridges by Breaking Bread, Verlon Fosner unveils how the ancient dinner church was rebirthed in his Seattle community and how that vision changed his congregation forever. These pages also go over a compelling case for why many churches would do well to pause and see the pockets of lost people within the shadow of their steeples, and consider how a Jesus dinner table might open up a door to heaven for those neighbors.
The Dinner Church Handbook: A Step-by-Step Recipe for Community Evangelism:
With church attendance nationwide declining at an alarming rate, it’s increasingly clear that something must change. Instead of being drawn to the church steeple, it seems that today’s culture is actually repelled by it.
What if we went back to the form of church the apostles used? What if we recovered Jesus’ dinner table theology for the modern church?
Welcome to Dinner, Church, DVD
