Welcome to Dinner, Church

Welcome to Dinner, Church
Author: Verlon Fosner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 102
Release: 2017
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781628244229

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 find 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.

Welcome to Dinner, Church

Welcome to Dinner, Church
Author: Verlon Fosner
Publisher: Seedbed
Total Pages: 102
Release: 2017-03-17
Genre: Church
ISBN: 9781628244205

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 find 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.

Dinner Church

Dinner Church
Author: Verlon Fosner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2017
Genre: Church development, New
ISBN: 9781628243888

"Christianity is the greatest rescue project the world has ever seen, yet many churches across America are shrinking instead of growing. After spending 18 years as a pastor in highly secularized Seattle, Verlon Fosner began to realize that the church had a sociological problem. While outreach efforts to find 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 as 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 that 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 rebirth in his Seattle community and how that vision changed his congregation forever. These pages also offer 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. 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."--Publisher.

The Dinner Church Handbook

The Dinner Church Handbook
Author: Verlon Fosner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2017-06-23
Genre: Church development, New
ISBN: 9781628243925

"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? In this accompaniment to Dinner Church series, Verlon Foster begins by evaluating the rich scriptural history of the Dinner Church, and gradually works his way into the practical questions a leader might have: Where to plant? How long will it take to prepare? How much will it cost? What about the food? Is there a service order or liturgy? Who will come? How can one grow toward Christlikeness in this church? The need for this handbook grows by leaps and bounds once a church starts to notice a particular neighborhood in their town--really notice it. It's when the heart of the church swells in compassion for its neighbors who may never darken the doorway of a traditional church building that dinner churches are born."--Publisher.

We Will Feast

We Will Feast
Author: Kendall Vanderslice
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2019-05-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1467457337

Explores the practice of eating together as Christian worship The gospel story is filled with meals. It opens in a garden and ends in a feast. Records of the early church suggest that believers met for worship primarily through eating meals. Over time, though, churches have lost focus on the centrality of food— and with it a powerful tool for unifying Christ’s diverse body. But today a new movement is under way, bringing Christians of every denomination, age, race, and sexual orientation together around dinner tables. Men and women nervous about stepping through church doors are finding God in new ways as they eat together. Kendall Vanderslice shares stories of churches worshiping around the table, introducing readers to the rising contem­porary dinner-church movement. We Will Feast provides vision and inspiration to readers longing to experience community in a real, physical way.

Table Talk

Table Talk
Author: Mike Graves
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2017-10-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532618778

For nearly two thousand years followers of Jesus have gathered in churches to eat a meal called Communion in his memory. In Table Talk, Mike Graves claims if we could travel back to those earliest Christian gatherings, we would realize we are not just two thousand years removed; we are light-years removed from how they ate when gathered because eating was why they gathered in the first place, a kind of first-century dinner party. Four characteristics of their Communion practices would leap out at us, traits that are scattered throughout the New Testament, but that often go unnoticed: how the meal was part of a full evening together, promoting intimacy; how it was a mostly inclusive affair, everyone welcome at the table; how it was typically festive, more like a dinner party; and how afterwards they enjoyed a lively conversation on a host of topics. But Table Talk explores more than just Communion practices, because a new way of doing church is happening around the world, gatherings more horizontal than vertical. For two thousand years Christians have oriented themselves toward God in the presence of others; now a growing number of congregations, part of the dinner church movement, are orienting themselves toward each other in the presence of God. This book tells their story and helps us rethink our own.

Dinner Party with the Saints

Dinner Party with the Saints
Author: Woodeene Koenig-Bricker
Publisher: Paraclete Press
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2021-02-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1640604219

Welcome to a dinner party in heaven. With a charming blend of imagination and historical detail, the bestselling author of 365 Saints invites you to get to know the saints in food and fellowship. Hinting at one of the traditional images of heaven, the Banquet or Marriage Feast of the Lamb (Revelation 9:9), the author gathers sixteen holy souls, enabling you to better understand what they were like on earth. Combining fictional narrative, fascinating biographies, and mouth-watering dinner party recipes, the book offers a resource for families and other groups to celebrate saints spanning the history of the Church, and to better understand the “people behind the halos.” Recipes by classically-trained avid home cook, Celia Murphy.

For All Who Hunger

For All Who Hunger
Author: Emily M. D. Scott
Publisher: Convergent Books
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2020-05-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 059313558X

Emily Scott never planned on becoming a pastor. But when she started a church for misfits that met over dinner in Brooklyn, she discovered an unlikely calling—and an antidote to modern loneliness. “I absolutely devoured this exquisitely written memoir.”—Nadia Bolz-Weber, New York Times bestselling author of Shameless As founding pastor of St. Lydia’s in Brooklyn, New York, where worship takes place over a meal, Emily M. D. Scott spent eight years ministering to a scrappy collective of people with different backgrounds, incomes, and levels of social skills. Each week they broke bread, sang hymns, made halting conversation with strangers, then did the dishes. In a city where everyone lives on top of each other yet everyone is lonely, these gatherings around a table offered connection and solace that soon would become their lifelines. When Hurricane Sandy slams into the coast of New York, Scott and her church members are faced with a disorienting crisis. Startled by the impact of the storm on their more vulnerable neighbors, they learn to work alongside one another, bailing water out of basements and canvassing emptied apartment buildings. Every week, they return to those steady, strong tables at Dinner Church. Together, they find community, even in the midst of disaster. Scott discovers how small acts of connection hold more power than we realize in a time when our differences are being weaponized, and learns to create activism and justice work fueled by empathy and relationship. With tenderness and humor, Scott weaves stories and reflections from the life of her unlikely congregation while articulating the value of church as a place where people can hear not only that they are loved but that they are good. For All Who Hunger is a story about a God whose love has no limits and a faith that opens our eyes to the truth. There’s a place for you at the table. Praise for For All Who Hunger “In this intimate and openly heartfelt debut memoir, Scott explores the power of faith and community as strength-building resources for navigating difficult times. . . . A moving personal memoir and an accessibly reverent meditation on finding faith through unconventional acts of worship. Highly inspiring for anyone seeking solace in our modern world.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Lutheran pastor Scott asks in her exceptional debut: if you strip from church all ‘the creeds and the chasubles,’ what would be left? The answer, for her, became St. Lydia’s Dinner Church in New York City, which she founded in 2008 as a place for queer, marginalized, artistic, nerdy, and often lonely lovers of God to gather for bread, wine, and the words of Jesus . . . Scott’s writing is leavened by a healthy dose of self-awareness, and her stories capture the humanity of her mission and community with a light sacramental touch.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Recipes from Open Table Dinner Church

Recipes from Open Table Dinner Church
Author: Melissa Pace
Publisher: Independently Published
Total Pages: 46
Release: 2018-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9781790574025

We bring you this cookbook from Open Table Dinner Church. At Open Table (an Emerging Ministry of the UFMCC and affiliated with the UCC), we gather for a meal that nourishes mind, body, and spirit. Through our stories, song, and prayer we co-create community around the table that we build together. All who gather participate in mind, word, or doodle as we engage in storytelling, spiritual practices, and theological reflection (when we think about faith and God, Goddess, Alice, Gaia, something other, the great unnamable, feel-it-but-can't-say-it, know-it-can't-name-it, divine). This is a church where we connect, contemplate, explore, and put our faith into action. This table is open to all who hunger. All who thirst. All who seek. All who question. All who doubt. All who know. All who desire. This table is open to all. Open to you just exactly as you are for you are whole and you are holy and you are beloved. At this table we serve food that is vegan and gluten, and it is soy, nut, and seed free. This food is prepared without added salt, oil, or sugar (this is called SOS free cooking). We cook this way for three reasons. The first is to ensure that the most common dietary restrictions are accommodated for. The second is to offer healthy, nutritious meals to nourish and fuel all aspects of our beings by way of our physical bodies without adding anything that may tax the digestive system or health. The third is to allow the ingredients to be celebrated and experienced as close to the way they exist in nature as a symbol of our practice of loving ourselves, just as we are, in our authentic state. This book also includes cooking tips and information about the medicinal benefits of some of the ingredients. We invite you to make this book your own; we offer it as a starting place for folks to experiment, adding your own flavors and ingredients to what we offer from our table. A table that is growing and changing and providing deep and meaningful experiences each time we gather. All proceeds from this book will help us to continue this work. We deeply thank you for your generosity and support. Love, The Open Table Dinner Church Community

Weird Church

Weird Church
Author: Paul Nixon
Publisher: The Pilgrim Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2016-02-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0829820361

A wake-up call to anyone who still thinks church revitalization is simply a matter of doing better the things that used to come so easily. However, for the innovators whose ministries cannot fully be measured or understood by the old paradigms of members and money, Weird Church offers compelling vindication and encouragement that may cause them to stand and cheer