Turns out, Bells Dinner Church might not have stolen my acrostic, but maybe they modified it. Theirs stands for Belong, Eat, Listen, Learn, Serve, which I think sounds great.
Bells Dinner Church meets, eats, learns together, and encourages each other to serve the world (or neighborhood) around them.
THRIVE, BELFAST
In Ireland there’s a really interesting dinner church called Thrive that’s designed as a “story and table gathering” for women. They meet monthly around food and storytelling in a safe environment where women can share freely and openly.
Thrive is part of Redeemer Central, a new church that meets in a beautiful and historic church building right in the heart of the city. While their regular services aren’t dinner churches, they do meet around tables in a cafe-style gathering.
DINNER CHURCH COLLECTIVE
In Seattle, they’ve taken dinner church next level, by launching a collective of ten gatherings around the city.
Started by Verlon and Melodee Foster, the Dinner Church Collective is a network for resourcing and supporting new forms of church across Seattle, and now around the world. What is dinner church? Here’s how they describe dinner church:
“It is a practice that piqued the interest of non-Christians and Christians alike. It is simple and affordable. It was a practice Jesus used with his disciples. It was a practice that the Church Fathers developed to reach and disciple believers across the ancient world. A meal, music and message.”
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I’m not proposing dinner church as the only way to do church, nor necessarily as the best way. It’s one of the ways Christians around the world are finding to do church in a fresh, new way.
You’ll need a table (or a few tables), some food, a basic liturgy, a welcoming spirit, lots of prayer and patience and grace, and a willingness to do life with a group of neighbors as you orient your lives around Jesus together.
Maybe God’s calling you to launch a dinner church too?
This article on what is dinner church originally appeared here.
