2 minute read
Renewing around the meal
Rev. Peter Overton | Saltbush Scattered Community Minister, Far North Coast Region
Spring is a season of renewal, a time of seeing new life in flora and fauna and for us to see our aging python snake emerging from slumber and hopefully enjoying a feast of bandicoots that have been ravaging the garden and lawn. Like the same magpies that swoops the mailperson each spring, and their babies who follow me as I mow the lawn. There is a sense of energy around our community this time of the year. A renewing of life, and perhaps even the birth of new opportunities.
So, have you ever thought of renewing the Church around a meal? In 2009, Saint Lydia’s, a Lutheran church in Brooklyn, New York garnered national attention when it began holding a weekly service over dinner. Longing to dispel feelings of isolation often reported among young New Yorkers, founder Emily Scott decided to model her service around the early church practice of having a meal together as Eucharist. This has now become a movement called “Dinner Church”
While every church has its own feel, the concept is the same: connect with others in a language spoken by all—food. the services aim to feel like a dinner party, fostering conversation among men, women, and children who might otherwise never meet.
These churches encompass a range of denominations, both conservative and progressive, and they meet in a variety of settings: in church basements, restaurants, gardens, and art galleries. Found in urban, suburban, and rural areas, they attract wealthy, middle class, and unhoused neighbours. The intergenerational and multi-ethnic congregations create engaging dialogue; the meals become a space where diners can disagree and still maintain close relationship.
Throughout the evening, they read Scripture, sing, and pray, but most importantly, they eat. Central to the process of eating is engaging in dialogue, providing space to respond to the Scripture or sermon.
This new way of doing church, which Saint Lydia’s fondly coined a “dinner church,” is modelled after the earliest gatherings of Christians as described in Acts 2: “They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,” (Acts 2:46).
For the first 300 years, Christianity was done around dinner tables more than any other gathering model. Something very powerful happens when meeting in this manner. By intentionally pulling together a diverse group of people around the shared need to eat, it is impossible to worship without acknowledging the variety of needs and experiences of those around the table.
So, in the season of spring and the challenges over Covid 19 are you open to renewal? Why not open the doors to your churches, halls, homes and playgrounds and expand your table and form community around a meal and a story. You might change the world like the meal did in the first three centuries of the early Church. Perhaps it’s time to welcome the stranger to a place “where everybody knows your name”, where people are met and loved as they are.
