Meal Church as an Invitation to the Community
by Joel Pancoast
Last year, I was fortunate to spend a few months during sabbatical traveling around the country visiting ministries that have experimented with “meal churches.” My congregation is good at meal fellowship, but meal worship is different, and presented an opportunity that matched two areas of our mission action plan of encouraging growth in worship participation, and considering ways of focusing on and improving our invitation to the broader community. When I started this exploration, I thought it would be a great experience for my congregation, but the more I have learned, the more I see that if the congregation is up for the challenge, it may be one of the best ways to reach into your community and the neighborhood around you.
Meal church – be it dinner or brunch church – is more than joining together for worship with a meal before or after. The idea of dinner church is rooted in the original Christian communities. For the first 300-400 years of Christian history, churches did not gather in large buildings, with people sitting in rows, listening quietly to a sermon. The earliest Christians would gather in someone’s home for an entire meal with worship, usually late in the day after everyone finished their work, so that everyone could gather, whether rich or poor. The first few chapters of the Acts of the Apostles describe these early gatherings around a meal and worship, with specific instruction to how those who had an excess would give generously to support fellow believers who had need. Also, deacons (the Greek word for “servants”) were appointed to help facilitate the meal and to ensure that food was distributed to those who were unable to be there in person (see Acts 6:1-7; Romans 16:1; Philippians 1:1; 1 Timothy 3:8-13).
The idea of gathering for a meal with worship was a direct response to Jesus’ own actions and teaching. Many scholars today suggest that to watch Jesus on an average day or to read about him in the gospels would reveal him doing two things repeatedly: healing and eating. These two activities gather people around some of the most important needs of humanity, including bodily nourishment, the need for community and belonging, and a connection to God. So the earliest followers of Jesus gathered as he had taught, around a meal provided for all, while reading the Scriptures, talking and teaching about God, praying and singing to God.
Between the years 300-700, the dinner church began to lose favor with those in authority, for the express reason that some Christians in positions of power believed the bread and cup of the Eucharist should not come into contact with sinners who had not yet been baptized! Also, they complained that these meals were too joyful! During this time in history, when Constantine legalized Christianity and made it an official religion of the Empire in the year 313, the church went mainstream and moved its meal worship out of homes and into grand buildings, and seemed to drift from the very notion of radical hospitality that Jesus emphasized in his own life and ministry. Finally, in the year 692, at the Council of Trullo, dinner church was officially banned, never to return as the primary way that Christians gathered for worship.
However, meal churches are starting to gain traction again today. The question is, are we wrong to worship the way we do, in a sanctuary or auditorium, with rows of people listening to preaching and Scriptures, singing songs of praise? Absolutely not! What the modern brunch/dinner church movement is proposing is not a better or right expression, but a fresh expression that provides an opportunity to reach the growing number of people who for many different reasons may have little interest in church today, and yet do recognize the value of community, especially over a meal. This model is not asking us to abandon practices of worship that have been important for developing disciples of Jesus for 1700 years, but it is asking us to also consider a possibility for us to gather with others who may not be part of our community in the very presence of Jesus in a way that is also in our very DNA as a church, with a meal of abundance!
After visiting at least eight different meal churches, it became obvious to me there is no right way to host a meal church. Some still have a very formal order of worship, while others focus simply on eating, fellowship, and hearing the Scriptures together. Some host meal church as a potluck, some cook the meal together as an expression of community, while others have the meal catered as an expression of God’s free abundance. Some have recorded music playing in the background, some sing ancient chants, and others sing modern praise music. Most will either begin or end the regular meal with Holy Communion, tying our own home tables to Christ’s invitation to eat with him, but some churches see Holy Communion as an obstacle to their mission of meal church. There is no right or wrong, except to be true to your own ministry’s character while considering what may be most inviting to your immediate community.
Regardless of the decisions made, if you are interested in exploring hosting a meal church, gather people with gifts of hospitality, community building, and evangelism to put together a meal, invite the neighbors for a community meal, and dine with them (and Jesus) at the table as a sacred, holy experience of worship.
